General Election & Referendum results
Special votes have now been counted and the results of the MMP referendum have been released.
Also, read Nicola Shirlaw’s post-election commentary highlighting the very low turn-out for the election: Has anybody seen the New Zealand voter?
Parliament
On 20 December the new and returning members of Parliament will be sworn in, and the state or official opening of Parliament will be on 21 December. On this day the Governor-General will deliver the traditional Speech from the Throne, setting out the Government’s legislative intentions for this parliamentary term.
The 50th New Zealand Parliament
At first glance this Parliament doesn’t look very different to the last one.
National is able to govern with the support of ACT, the Maori Party and United Future—the same support parties it worked with in the last Parliament. Labour and the Greens are still in opposition, and Hone Harawira remains the sole Mana Party MP.
Where this Parliament is quite different though (and we don’t mean Winston) is in the numbers. National came very, very close to being able to govern alone, without needing the support of any other political party.
Under a proportional MMP voting system this is very rare, and it is interesting that with one hand voters opted to retain MMP and with the other gave a single party such a presence.
After the counting of the special votes this weekend the final seat allocation is as follows:
- National – 59 seats
- Labour – 34 seats
- Green Party – 14 seats
- New Zealand First – 8 seats
- Maori Party – 3 seats
- Mana Party – 1 seat
- ACT Party – 1 seat
- United Future – 1 seat
The final result in two electorates is very close.
In Waitakere, Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni beat National’s Paula Bennett by just 11 votes, and in Christchurch Central, National MP Nicky Wagner beat sitting Labour MP Brendon Burns by 45 votes. It seems likely that both Bennett and Burns will seek a judicial recount.
> Read detailed election results on the Electoral Commission website
What type of government do we have?
As with the previous government, this will be a minority National government, governing with the support of the ACT Party, United Future and the Maori Party.
National has a confidence and supply agreement with each of the three parties. Such agreements mean that each of the three parties will vote with National on all “confidence” or “no-confidence” motions, and vote in favour of the annual Budget (the “supply”).
In parliamentary systems of government confidence votes are very important. If a government loses a confidence vote, it is expected to resign and either call a new election or give another party the opportunity to from a government.
Confidence agreements are not the same as coalition agreements. Coalition agreements see two or more parties joining together to form a government. Confidence and supply agreements give one party the support to govern.
National/ACT confidence and supply agreement
For a one man band, John Banks will be wearing a number of hats in the new Parliament. He will be Minister for Regulatory Reform (a portfolio previously held by Rodney Hide), Minister for Small Business, Associate Minister of Education and Associate Minister of Commerce. He will hold all portfolios as a Minister outside Cabinet.
The National/ACT confidence agreement also contains a number of policy areas National has agreed to support, in return for ACT’s support of National policies, including partial asset sales.
These include the already controversial introduction of charter schools. Charter schools are state-funded, but instead of being run by the Ministry of Education, are managed by private organisations such as iwi or businesses. Charter schools are likely to be free to set their own curriculum, school terms, teacher pay-rates and qualifications. It is likely that charter schools will be trialled in areas with low educational achievement and outcomes.
Also, raising concern is that National is “using “ its confidence agreement with ACT to implement recommendations of the Welfare Working Group, that go beyond those National indicated they would introduce before the election.
National/United Future confidence and supply agreement
Under his agreement with National, Peter Dunne keeps his ministerial portfolios of Revenue and Associate Minister of Health and will also be Associate Minister for Conservation. As with John Banks, he will be a Minister outside Cabinet.
Dunne has agreed to support National’s partial sale of state assets, and has received in return an agreement that no part of KiwiBank or Radio New Zealand will be sold, and that the sale of any public assets will be limited by statute to 49%.
National/Maori Party confidence and supply agreement
National does not need the support of the Maori Party to have a majority in Parliament. Its 59 seats, together with the support of John Banks and Peter Dunne, give National a 61 seat majority in a 121 member Parliament.
Such a wafer-thin majority however, made National understandably willing to secure the support of the Maori Party.
The agreement, called a “Relationship Accord”, is different from the agreements National has with United Future and ACT, in that the Maori Party agrees to support all confidence and supply votes, but only agrees to support National’s legislative programme on a case-by-case basis. This, for example, leaves the door open for the Maori Party to vote against legislation enabling National’s planned partial sale of state assets.
Pita Sharples will be Minister of Maori Affairs, Associate Minister of Education and Associate Corrections Minister (all portfolios he held in the last Parliament), and Tariana Turia will be Minister for Whanau Ora, Disability Issues, Associate Health Minister. She will also have some responsibilities in the social development portfolio but will no longer be Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector. Both Sharples and Turia will be Ministers outside Cabinet.
A key policy feature of the Accord is the establishment of a Ministerial Committee on poverty. The meeting will be chaired by Bill English with Turia as deputy chair.
MMP referendum results
Final results for the referendum on our voting system have also been announced.
57.7% of voters chose to keep the existing MMP voting system, with 42.23% voting for change.
In the second part of the referendum, where voters could choose which alternative system they preferred, First Past the Post was the most popular, receiving 46.6% of the vote. John Key’s favourite, Supplementary Member, was second.
Informal votes in the second part of the referendum were 33.4% of all votes cast, which means one in every three voters chose not to tick an alternative voting system to MMP.
Interestingly, FPP—the most favoured alternative to MMP—polled 31.9% of total votes (46.6% of valid votes). This was less than those opting for no alternative and casting an informal vote.
So, MMP is here to stay…
> Read more referendum results on the Electoral Commission website
What happens next?
You may remember that if a majority of voters voted to retain MMP, the government promised a review of MMP.
The Electoral Commission is expected to announce this week the process and timetable for the review.
Two issues not included in the review are the Maori seats and the size of Parliament, but the review is expected to cover:
- The 5% threshold. The requirement to gain entry to parliament (parties must either win an electorate seat or 5% of the party vote) received plenty of oxygen after the last election. Then New Zealand First received 95,356 (or 4.07%) of the party vote, but as it won no electorate seats, it failed to make it to Parliament. In the same election, ACT, on the other hand, received just 85,496 party votes, but by virtue of Rodney Hide winning Epsom, ended up with five MPs. At the time many thought this was unfair. One possibility is the threshold could be lowered to 4%.
- Whether party lists should continue to drawn up by parties or whether voters should have a say. Lists could be open giving voters the opportunity to rank their preferences on party lists.
- The Prime Minister’s complaint that MMP is a “weird system” (because even with winning 47% of the vote national is unable to govern alone) is unlikely to be part of the review.
We will cover this issue in more detail next year when the scope of the review is released.
Educating voters
Low voter turnout in this year’s election has renewed calls for civics education in schools.
Civics education could include, for example, teaching about central and local government electoral processes, and about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Engaging young voters to vote in their first election is usually the trick to creating a life-long voter.
Ex- Green MP Sue Bradford drafted a Members Bill seeking to lower the voting age and introduce civics education, but it was not drawn from the ballot before she left Parliament.
> Read more about Sue Bradford’s Bill
But what about the rest of us?
This election was particularly confusing and many people voting in the MMP referendum did not feel they had sufficient information or understanding about any of the alternatives to make an informed choice.
Special mention though needs to go to the New Zealand First voters who thought that voting for New Zealand First would just deliver Winston Peters, and failed to understand or scrutinise the party list that has given us himself AND seven other MPs.
But they weren’t the only ones not to scrutinise the potential New Zealand First caucus. The media really dropped the ball on this one too. It also shows that a little bit of election education could go a long way.
News
The Poor are getting poorer…
Earlier this month the OECD released their most recent report on income inequality.
The report found the gap between rich and poor in OECD countries has reached its highest level for over 30 years, and that the average income of the richest 10% is now about nine times that of the poorest 10 %.
The report also found New Zealand has one of the fastest growing income gaps amongst OECD countries.
The OECD report was released at the same time as a Statistics New Zealand Household Income Survey that found the number of households rating themselves as having incomes too low to meet basic household needs had increased by nearly 30,000 over the last four years. In that period unemployment and inflation both increased, with particular increases in food, petrol, energy and insurance costs.
The OECD report stresses that governments need to review their tax systems to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden. This can be achieved by, for example raising marginal tax rates on the higher income earners, improving tax compliance, and eliminating tax deductions.
The Government sets out its legislative intentions in the Speech from the Throne later this month. Any chance it will include some of the OECD”s recommendations?
But at least we are honest…
Transparency International recently released its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011.
This Index, which ranks 182 countries by their “perceived levels” of public sector corruption, found that New Zealand is perceived as the least corrupt country.
“Least corrupt” may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but the report goes on to say: “New Zealand has a strong and consistent reputation for clean government”.
So strong that we have been ranked either first, or first-equal for the past six years.
Before we get too smug, the same group’s Global Corruption Barometer released in December last year showed that 3.6% of New Zealanders surveyed said that they or someone in their household had paid a bribe to a service provider in the previous year. Not so glowing…