A picture that’s worth a thousand words*

*and all of them synonyms of “despair”

Last week’s budget showed not only that Finance Ministers lie, have always lied and will continue to lie, or that the National coalition is clearly focussed on making life easier for those whose lives are already pretty easy, but also that MMP is a crock of shit.

Have a look at the photo above, lifted from the NZ Herlad (NZ’s paper of record but only if you fork out a hefty subscription, otherwise it’s a paper of cassette). It shows this country’s leadership striding purposefully into Parliament to tell everyone how much extra they’ll be getting in their pockets a week – unless they’re among the 5000 or more public servants who just lost their jobs, or are on a benefit, or earn outside the very narrow band that gives a lucky few the price of three more takeaway chai lattes a week.

On the left of the photo we have the Prime Minister, next the Minister of Winning University Debating Championships and then the Minister of Finance. (Although she’s kind of in the centre here, for probably the first and only time.) They are members of the National Party, which scored a little over 30% of the popular vote in last year’s election. That’s not enough to govern on their own, so they had to do a series of increasingly desperate deals to get their feet under the government table.

Then we have, fourth from the left, the leader of the ACT Party, who’s also the Minister of Sop Titles To Keep Him Onside and currently acting (or ACTing heehee) Prime Minister. ACT got around 8.6% of the vote, with two electorate MPs and 9 list MPs. That gave them a front seat in the Coalition discussion.

And on the right we have the Leader of NZFirst. In last year’s election NZFirst scored just 6.08% of the vote. That means nearly 94% of New Zealand voters, or 2.67 million of the 2.85 million who cast a vote, didn’t want NZFirst anywhere near the government benches. Or, possibly, anywhere near Parliament.

Yet here they are. 8 MPS from a fringe political party have a say in the day to day business of Parliament. 8 people with no individual mandate to be there are making decisions on how the country should be run. Chosen from a party list that 94% of New Zealanders ran a fucking mile from.

(The remaining fringe parties got nearly as many votes combined as NZFirst – 5.57%. Yet none of them – from the dopeheads to the antivaxers, the sovereign citizens to the Empire Loyalists – not one got a seat in the chamber. And good thing too.)

How can this be? How can a motley bunch of also-rans whose claims to fame include a penchant for long words, flashy suits and… no, that’s about it – how can they be In Charge?

MMP is the short answer. It was designed to make elections fairer, to avoid the inconsistencies of First Past the Post, where one party can get many more votes than the others yet remain in opposition. And when you look at it, MMP is certainly a lot simpler than other systems that require compulsory voting and a degree in diferential calculus to work out – over a period of months – who should be running the place. Those systems are crocks of shit as well.

It’s not like we weren’t warned. Several knights of the Business Roundtable and their friends rallied against MMP when it was first mooted, and continued to rail. Some still are. Back then, the rest of us all probably thought that if that was the calibre of those against the concept – the rich, white and even richer – then MMP must be a good idea. They even said – as recently as 2011 – that MMP might even allow certain politicians to hold governments to ransom. “Stable government cannot be based on the ability of one man to bring the government down,” they reckoned. Because if a party is desperate enough to rule the world, they’ll promise all kinds of nonsense to secure the baubles of office.

Yea verily, all that has come to pass. We have a stable government all right, and it badly needs mucking out. Although it’s had to see where the sweepings might go as the current crock is already full, with its contents starting to seep from the cracks.