Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, October 26th, 2008 - 67 comments
Categories: election 2008, john key, labour, maori party, national, spin -
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So, let me get this straight. The Right says that the minor parties have to support a National-led government if National gets more votes than Labour. Even if a National government would go against everything a party stands for, even if it is a complete betrayal of the people who voted for them, minor parties are meant to kneel before Key if his party gets the most votes. What dream world are these people living in?
The Herald reckons only a government including the largest party would have ‘legitimacy’. Key says the Maori Party and other small parties would have a “moral mandate” to make him PM if National gets more votes than Labour. Morality eh? That’s an interesting one. After all, they say that you know you’re winning when your opponents start whining ‘no fair’.
Where does this supposed moral mandate arise from? The opinions of people who voted for another party, even if that overrides the wishes of their own supporters?
Would the Maori Party, United Future, and the Greens be ‘morally obligated’ to back National if it won 2 more votes than Labour? Or does this moral maxim only kick in at 20 votes? or 200? or 2000? or 20,000? or 200,000?
Did this moral absolute apply when it was National with fewer votes in 2005? I’m trying to remember the Herald and John Key saying that Labour would have to govern, that Brash shouldn’t even try to form a coalition and, if he did, it would be illegitimate. Maybe my memory is getting rusty.
Did this same moral mandate exist when Labour won more votes but fewer seats in 1978 and 1981? Did National let Labour govern owing to its clear moral mandate? Maybe some of our older readers can inform us.
Or let’s take a theoretical example. What if we had situation where one wing was split between two middling parties,(say, Labour and the Greens or National and ACT), each polling around 25%, and the other wing had one party polling 40%. Would the wing with only one major party get to rule every time simply because its votes were consolidated in one major party?
Hmmm, this morality thing turns out to be a bit complicated, eh? What seems to be a highly principled statement (to borrow a phrase from Bill English) often turns out to be just self-serving drivel.
The fact is the Government is the party or group of parties that has the confidence of the House. It is the party or coalition that has the mandate of the most voters to govern that ought to govern. There is absolutely no reason why that should need to include the largest party.
The Right is just scared because an LGP+M government is looking ever more likely. Well, Key and the Herald can cry all they want, the fact remains: the legitimate and moral government is the one constituting the largest alliance of parties, whether or not it includes the single largest party.
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Steve,
The Right are chosey when they apply the morality argument. Our mate Burt on Farrar’s blog, in defending National’s reluctance to pay GST last election, writes:
You may have forgotten, the GST couldn?t be repaid because National would have needed to break the law to repay it. Labour didn?t think making a law change retrospective for 1 year to enable that was OK. Instead they canceled the Darnton VS Clark court case, validated their own illegal spending over a period of 14 years and told us to move on. It seem you took the ?move on? message on board a little too literally.
High legal ground but the morality stinks especially when the hypocrites take Winston and Labour to task for their respective interpretations of the law.
MMP is here because the Nats won so many minority elections under FPP. The irony is wonderful.
The other point which they fail to acknowledge is on election day, they may not have the majority any more. Remember it was not that long ago that English delivered 24%, which is closer to where they deserve to be considering their lack of firm commitments this time.
No it isn’t.
Several commentators on the Left are encouraging a scenario whereby the overhang is maximised (Progressive voters giving party votes to Labour, Maori Party giving party votes to Labour or Greens, goodness, I wonder who has made those calls recently?). What is the purpose of this? Oh, that’s right, it’s to improve the possibility that even if the Right get the majority of votes, the will of the majority can be suppressed through a strategic manipulation of the overhang.
If the Left get a majority of the votes, then you’re welcome to form a Government. If the Left manipulate an overhang so that they can form a government with a minority of party votes, then go ahead and try it. It will be the death knell to MMP.
Of course the “block”, not the party with the biggest share of the vote has the moral mandate to govern. This statement by JK is just a threat to the minor parties.
If one block wins a majority but the, say, Maori party has an overhang, maybe then morals kick in to go with whichever block has the majority. Because that’s when things could get messy with proportionality and actual party vote support for a particular “block” converting into seats in Parliament. Similar (but not identical) to the Nat “majorities” under FPP.
the over arching feature of this election has been National and its adherents telling other people what to do. wherever you look there is someone from the gnats saying you must do or you should do this or that. why dont they just say ‘we are going to do this or that and let the people decide. behind every statement they make is the whiff of a strong arm and the disappointment that they cant actually use it.
National has never really understood that a majority of voters don’t vote for them and don’t want them as their government. They hate MMP because it makes that majority who don’t vote for them a tangible reality they can’t ignore.
If a majority of voters elect MPs from a set of parties who share enough common values that National is on its own…..then that’s just how voters roll.
National should try to get its head around democracy. Seriously. All the evidence to date says they not only don’t get it, but they can’t do simple arithmetic. Forty-five per cent isn’t a majority……
I don’t want people with such obvious and potentially serious perceptual dysfunction running the country.
It may have already been said but the Governor general does not seek out the party with the biggest share of the votes. After the election the parties negotiate and when a “coalition” has the required number **then** they go to the GG and ask to form the Govt. It therefore follows that whether the coalition is made up of 2 parties or 10 parties they have the majority and the remainder must have the minority. Simple.
There has been plenty of informed info on Public Address.
I’ve always wondered about the moral authority of a guy who uses two dead former co-workers to make a point. In the 2003 debate on the border security bill, John Key told Parliament that on September 11, 2001:
my boss, Michael Packer, died. He was giving a speech on the 108th floor, at Windows on the World. He perished with another two employees from Merrill Lynch, both of whom worked for me and whom I had recruited from the private sector.
In September 2001, Packer probably was the Australian-domciled Key’s boss in e-commerce, but I highly doubt Key had anything to do with the other two guys.
One of the Merrill Lynch trio who were killed that day was 26-year-old Robert McIlvaine, hired in July 2001 for a New York-based communications job (Key’s already in Australia remember); the other was David Brady, a 16-year veteran at Merrill and a New York based private client advisor who looked after 150 wealthy families. Not likely to have been hired by Key who had, in 1985, barely made his first forex trade.
So, let me get this straight. The Right says that the minor parties have to support a National-led government if National gets more votes than Labour.
No, thats not correct – thats a dumb thing to say – and its not correct even if they get more seats, either. Can you imagine the Progressives supporting National, or Act supporting Labour?
National has never really understood that a majority of voters don’t vote for them and don’t want them as their government
A majority of voters DO want them as their govt, even if a majority of voters dont vote National. I wont bore you with an explaination, you can work that out for yourself. In any case a Majority of voters dont vote for Labour NOR want Labour to be the government according to current polling – even if Clark is preferred PM.
Did this same moral mandate exist when Labour won more votes but fewer seats in 1978 and 1981?
The number of seats is more important in FPP than MMP because we elect a Govt. Many people still think we vote for a government, but it is parliament that chooses the Government now. We just pick who gets to choose. Never forget that we adopted MMP in the first place because we weren’t happy that the party with the most votes was not necessarily the Government.
What the right is saying, I think, is that if the second highest party in Parliament were to be come the Govt, that the parliament would be democratic, but the government would not because it is not the will of the people purely because most people expect the biggest party to be the govt, not the biggest left/right group.
In fact most expect the biggest left/right group to be in govt. Steve obviously doesnt think that is necessary if the right get more then the left but the Maori Party ( not part of the left/ right)) goes with Labour
That’s all. I’m not saying I think that, just offering the comment.
not the biggest left/right group Not JUST the biggest left/right group….
Steve.
The fact is more New Zealanders want a nat goverment than want a Labour one
more New zealanders want a nat government than want a green govt
more New Zealanders want a nat govt than want a NZ first govt
The the views of the majorty should be respected! its called Democracy!
It’s not complicated.
In an election based around personality, Key might have had a point.
In an election based around policy he is being stupid with his assertion.
Or then, as the ‘free marketeers’ demand heavy handed state involvement these days, he just might have a point again. A rather Stalinist one, but a point nonetheless. Strange days.
pp,
Ah yes. Why not come out and say it straight… you really want to revert to FPP so that the Nats have a chance of winning from time to time.
And this is one of the reasons why:
http://08wire.org/2008/08/04/first-past-the-post-biased-towards-national/
In a nutshell FPP is an inherently unfair system, giving about a 1.3% advantage to conservative parties. Given that many election results have the biggest voting blocks within within a few percent of each other, that is a pretty significant bias.
Rexlogix
What I want is for the party who gets the most votes to govern.Simple!
under MMP we have minor parties in a position to decide who governs with only 5% support! and even worse minor partys whose mandate is one of race being kingmaker!
FPP is not ideal but MMP has to revised in some way to restore democracy!
What I want is for the party who gets the most votes to govern
Steve, can you please elaborate as to why you disagree with this statement if Labour was to get the most votes and seats but a minor party was subsequently to govern with National?
If the Left get a majority of the votes, then you’re welcome to form a Government.
Thanks Tim, but I don’t think we need your permission.
If the Left manipulate an overhang so that they can form a government with a minority of party votes, then go ahead and try it. It will be the death knell to MMP.
Woah – tough guy!
National have been the beneficiaries of quirks in the electoral system more than once. If they are on the losing side of a quirk this time then I for one will not shed any tears. The people make the rules, the people vote under the rules, the outcome under the rules will reflect the will of the people.
All this National crying about the smaller party forming the government didn’t stop them from desperately trying to do it at the last election…
Well, thank you for your permission on what the will of the people will do r0b. See, we can both play the smarmy crap game on a Sunday morning, r0b, but it isn’t constructive, is it?
Really? National have been a beneficiary of the quirks of MMP? When? MMP was a system designed to give proportional support in Parliament so that governments would represent a majority of voters. FPP was never intended to deliver that outcome. We are not talking about a “quirk”. We are talking about a deliberate attempt by some on the Left to exploit a systematic design flaw in the system so that the will of the majority party vote is suppressed.
Nonsense. I haven’t seen National crying about the smaller party forming a government. If Labour, the Greens, Progressives, New Zealand First and the Maori Party together represent more party votes than National, Act and United Future, then nobody in National will have a right to cry about it. And I don’t remember Don Brash being desperate to form a Government after the last election. I do remember him saying on election night in 2005 that National hadn’t done enough to form a government, but that he would have discussions with other party leaders. That wasn’t desperation.
paw prix has a poor understanding of both democracy and the parliamentary process and seems to be just the point man for a national party blag on how they think democracy should work.
national brought in mmp
but
they cant make it work
the question is can they make anything work and so far the answer is no
This really is an absurd discussion. As r0b correctly points out National had fewer votes than Labour in 2005 and this did not deter them from entering into discussions with other minor parties in order to try and form a government. I do not recall any silly nonsense from the left about Labour having a “moral right” to form the government just because they had the most seats.
National had every right to make an attempt to form a government in 2005. I would have been surprised if they had not entered into coalition negotiations. And if the attempt had been successful then they would have had every right to form a government.
As for pp’s soundbite slogan ” democracy = govt by the party with the most votes” is nothing more than a fig leaf for FPP. And we have been there, done that… and didn’t like it.
Tim
Nonsense. I haven’t seen National crying about the smaller party forming a government.
Well pp is not equal to National…. but he is sure making a fuss all the same.
See, we can both play the smarmy crap game on a Sunday morning
Ummmm – what? Maybe you should switch to decaf Tim, you seem a little tense.
Really? National have been a beneficiary of the quirks of MMP? When?
I said “the electoral system” Tim, not “MMP”. Notably in 1978 and 1981 when Labour won more votes than National but was not able to form the government.
And I don’t remember Don Brash being desperate to form a Government after the last election. I do remember him saying on election night in 2005 that National hadn’t done enough to form a government, but that he would have discussions with other party leaders. That wasn’t desperation.
No no, of course not. Having fought a desperate, unethical and bitter campaign, narrowly lost due to being caught out in his lies, Don wasn’t a bit desperate to try and cobble together a coalition after the last election. Not even a teeny bit, I see that now. But his non desperate attempts to from a government in 2005 show that National has no qualms at all about the smaller party forming a government – as long as it is them. Makes the campaign they are running now rather self evidently self serving don’t you think?
Anyway, cheerio, stuff to do in the real world.
Tim,
MMP was really only a compromise choice. With only a single legislative house, and no independent executive authority, the FPP system really delivered ‘one party state’ rule.. And after the debacles of the Muldoon, Lange and early Bolger governments, in which a handful of wrong-headed individuals were able to hijack the entire political agenda, NZ was very ready for a better system.
The choices were really between MMP and STV. STV was technically the better system, but there were very few international precedents of it being used at a national level. In the end we went with MMP mainly because it represented the change from FPP that was most achievable, rather than the best possible.
PS – final quick thought on my way out the door.
Since the Greens have already declared that they can only work with Labour after the election, Green voters know exactly what they are voting for – a Labour led government.
The explicit vote for a Labour led government is Labour + Greens, that is the total that can be compared to the explicit vote for National.
r0b said:
No, that doesn’t make the campaign they are running now self-serving. National has never said that the groups of parties represented in Parliament that command the majority of party votes should not form the government. Straw man r0b. If the LPG gets more votes than NUFACT, then good luck to them.
RedLogix said:
I’d say that’s reasonable point, RedLogix. Every system is a compromise choice. The recommendation of the Royal Commission on the electoral system was that the retention of the Maori seats was not necessary to ensure Maori representation. It is the existence of the Maori seats that exacerbates the likelihood of the overhang.
Examples in other MMP systems show that the existence of the overhang is rare, and isn’t a feature in determining governments. Some commentators on the Left maximise the overhang and exploit it to potentially defeat the will of the majority of voters.
Steve, you’re way behind on this one. A few of us have already had this argument over here. Please excuse me if I plagiarise my arguments there.
There’s a lot of basic political theory missing in action here, so I’m putting my schoolin’ hat on.The majority of these `moral mandate’ arguments arise from the following fallacies:
1. We use a system of uncodified morality to determine who governs.
2. a coalition government with one large and several small parties is the same as a single-party government.
3. People vote against parties, not for a party.
4. Governments are non-exclusive.
All four of these are complete bollocks. Allow me to deal with them in turn. All I’m essentially doing is arguing a case for democracy being pursued by recourse to rule of law and mathematics.
1. We don’t use a system of uncodified morality to determine who forms a government; we use a system of codified law. This is one of the defining features which makes democracy superior to executive monarchy, dictatorship or any of the other systems we’d no doubt all agree are inferior. The transparency of the rule of law means everyone, knowing how the system operates, are well-placed to tune their electoral behaviour to suit. In NZ, the rules governing government formation (once an election has been held) are contained in the Cabinet Manual, here. Sometimes strict adherence to law produces bizarre results, but if you want rule of law, you have to live with its failings as well as its more frequent successes. On this basis I spend a lot of time defending the result of the 2000 US Presidential election, even though I dislike the result, on the grounds that the decision to halt the Florida recount was made by those constitutionally authorised to do so, acting on their properly-delegated authority. Yes, the Supreme Court may have been stacked – but it was stacked legitimately in law. This is a case for electoral reform, not a case for changing the result of the election.
Another point is salient: even under MMP, the party or bloc of parties with the most party votes does not govern by right. The party or parties with the largest number of seats in parliament governs by right. The overhang can play merry hell with this, and that’s the issue here: where a coalition includes one or more parties who have created an overhang, they can potentially govern with fewer than 50% of the party votes. Since the overhang is caused by the 5% threshold (and nothing else), the logical consequence for electoral reform is to scrap the 5% threshold, not to scrap MMP altogether. So I agree with Tim Ellis’ premise here: go ahead and try [to govern], but not his conclusion: It will be the death knell to MMP.
2. A party cannot form a government unless it has a majority of seats in the house. Definitions: a clear majority is when a party has 50% plus one of all seats in parliament and can govern unfettered, as was typical under first past the post. An effective majority is when a party has fewer than 50% plus one of all seats in the house, but can convince one or more parties to abstain on confidence and supply and allow it to govern alone. This is not the same as a coalition. So all this talk of a `National government’ or a `Labour government’ and most ludicrously a `Green government’ rests on the party in question gaining an effective majority in the house, which is very unlikely to happen in this election (except in National’s case where it is just unlikely). Let us ignore either of these results as uncontroversial for now.
Where there does not exist an effective majority, a party does not form government. This is a fundamental premise of proportional representation systems.Parties comprising a majority in parliament form a government. That means, on the basis of the hypothetical five-party coalition, Labour would not be the government, they would be a (major) part of the government, and the remainder of the government would be formed by other parties who between them made up majority. This leads into the next point:
3. You cast your party vote for a party, not against all the other parties. All the rhetoric that if people vote for anyone other than Labour they don’t want Labour in government is bullshit. It would be true if your vote was an implicit vote against all the other parties, but since you only have one vote, it isn’t. It’s stupid to argue that a vote for ACT is a vote exclusively for ACT, since if it were, it’d be a wasted vote. Under proportional representation systems, you vote for a party on the basis not only of their policy and political culture and all that, but on the basis of who they are likely to go into coalition with. The KBR understand this, as their `Labour First’ billboard makes clear, although some of them are wilfully pretending not to understand it when it suits them. This means (per point 2 above) that when you cast a vote for a party in the knowledge they are possibly going into coalition with other parties, you are tacitly giving them a mandate to include those other parties in government. THis puts the lie to the idea that a party without an effective majority has lost its mandate – that party can only be said to have lost its mandate if it and all its coalition partners fail to muster a majority of seats in the house.
4. Parties only get to support one government at a time. Per the Cabinet Manual I linked to above, government is formed when the Governor-General is satisfied that a party or bloc of parties has the confidence of the house – that is, 50% + 1 seats. Because each member has only one parliamentary ballot to cast, the question of who he or she supports is generally not in doubt. The idea that the party with the largest plurality of seats get the first attempt to form a government is in this sense meaningless – if they can stitch up a government, they can do so at any time – and if they can’t, they can’t. The G-G is under obligation to accept the first petition for government which has the confidence of the house. It’s that simple. Because of the exclusivity of the confidence ballot, that government’s formation necessarily prevents any other government from being formed.There’s no question that Labour forming a coalition government with other parties would prevent National doing so – if tany of those parties wanted to support National’s coalition government they are free to do so but have manifestly chosen not to. The only case in which this argument could be made is if a potentially swinging coalition partner publicly gave their vote to the first party who wanted it – in which case the shunned suitor’s argument is with that party, and nobody else.
My apologies for being so long-winded – but the degree of simple constitutional ignorance in these arguments can’t be allowed to stand.
L
there is nothing constitutional about your arguments lew. they are all just wishfull thinking to support the latest assertion of the national party about how people “should” behave according to them.
better luck next time
randal: That’s funny, I thought I was defending the current electoral law we have which could possibly return a Labour/Progressive/Green/MP coalition in November against the National party’s supporters who seemingly want a government to be formed on the basis of `moral mandate’ rather than electoral mandate.
But then – it’s not surprising you’ve misread it, since you seem to form your response to a given comment after reading the poster’s name, rather than the comment itself.
L
lew you are not defending anything. you are just filling up the space with mind numbing crap designed to bore voters to death and the quality of your output is less than the most junior of junior lecturers and not good enough to go in wikepedia.
just rubbish
R
(howzat)
in othe words, randal just doesnt understand what Lew has written. Thats why most of randals comments here are purile. Poor boy. I thought they were so good Ive linked them here
Steve I think that the supposed moral mandate came from the supposed mainstream that were hiding under National banners during the leftwing rainstorm at the in 2005
I read lews diatribe and I went to your site dave and just more of the same.
boring people to death with prose dense enough to make concrete
Just get on with it.
POlicies will always win the day.
National wants to use bribes but they aint enough dough in the kitty even for them
It seems to me that certain rightwhingers in this forum are just trying to erect a platform for future electoral reform but they are out of luck
read the ‘fern and the kiwi’ for a most illuminating outline of the kwi character and you will see why new zealand will never go back to fpp.
mmp is the only way kiwis have to stick it to big heads
you betcha!
R
(r am feeling really presumptuous)
Oh Boy ! The right still hasn’t lost it’s underlying belief in “born-to-rule” (for them that is), the exemplar being Wee-Shifty-Eyes unveiling his “established” convention that the party with the most seats is entitled………blah blah blah.
This against their endlessly prattled slogan throughout Labour’s terms – “….this minority Labour government.” And this from a party which had only 27 seats or so at the time they were caterwauling it. And this from a party under Brash that certainly acted as though it was unaware of any such “convention”.
What hypocrites they are ! Freaking out hypocrites as well with their self-stroking “born-to-rule” landslide bubble having all but burst.
Grow up girls and learn the territory. In the meantime enough of this – “It’s MY turn….” crap. Will get you nowhere except a lonely spot from which you can contemplate the fallacy of your “born-to-rule” fantasy.
Randal I am a supporter of both PR and the Maori seats – does that make me a left whinger or a right whinger?
WEOTN
“Born to rule”
Could you please explain who this refers to in the current parties of what you call the “right”
Or is it just a convenient bigoted smear you like to trot out ?
National have been the beneficiaries of quirks in the electoral system more than once.
And the electoral system was changed as a result. Don’t underestimate the power of the electorate to do the same thing if they feel that the current system doesn’t give them the government that they want. In fact, you’ll find the results of the Herald’s survey show that 60% of voters would consider a government that was not composed of the highest polling party under MMP to be “a rightful government”.
Parties who would sign up to a coalition of the minority would do so at their peril.
Dave some people are just idiots whatever party they support.
Are you in that category?
[lprent: Make a point - don't just attack other commentators. You'll stay in moderation until you improve or I get tired of releasing your comments]