RODNEY HIDE - Chris Bishop: MMP is bad for democracy

On Saturday night Chris Bishop lost Hutt South. Within days he had decided MMP is bad for democracy.

He told RNZ's Morning Report the country must review its electoral system. The vote-splitting campaign was "horribly" confusing, he said, and the 11-seat overhang, seven to National and four to the Māori Party, is not what MMP's founders had in mind.

(Well, it wasn’t confusing to us. And we don’t know what the founders had in mind. Punish Germany? What they had in mind is not the point; the point is this is the system that we have.)

"I think the Māori Party's got a lot to answer for with their campaign, and I think Harry [Mowbray] and his crew have got a lot to answer for as well. I think it's bad for democracy for a number of reasons."

(Why does anyone participating in democracy have “a lot to answer for”. And Harry Mowbray’s campaign paled beside RCR’s campaign with full page ads, a grassroots campaign delivering flyers, the endorsement of both ACT and NZ First, and within the law. The legacy media just can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that RCR has broken their stranglehold on election year reporting.)

Let's be clear about what happened.

National won 42 electorates. In each, more voters ticked the National candidate than anyone else. National won 29.21 per cent of the party vote, not enough to fill 42 seats. So National keeps its 42 electorate MPs and gets no list MPs. That's the overhang.

Nobody rorted anything. Voters filled in their ballot papers, as the law invites them to.

And the system Mr Bishop now says is bad for democracy has, on election-night numbers, kept his party in government. National, ACT and NZ First have 67 of 131 seats.

Mr Bishop didn't lose because people split their votes. He lost Hutt South on the electorate vote. Labour's Ginny Andersen leads him by 889 on the preliminary count.

Hutt South simply likes a change. It is set to change hands for the fourth election in a row: Mr Bishop took it off Labour in 2017, lost it to Andersen in 2020 and won it back in 2023. That's not a flaw in the system. That's Hutt South.

What National's low party vote did was take away his safety net. Mr Bishop was number three on National's list. In a normal year that's as safe as houses. This year the list was worth nothing, because National's candidates won more seats than its party vote paid for.

He told Morning Report it was "unusual" how low National's party vote was, and he was "gutted" for himself and his colleagues.

Unusual? National spent the whole campaign telling voters what to do with their two votes. Voters listened politely and did something else.

The Prime Minister called splitting "an insanely stupid idea". Sir John Key called it "the opposite of clever". In the final week Mr Luxon was still at it: "Do not do any of this split voting or strategic voting malarkey."

Mr Bishop himself, asked about the overhang tactic a couple of months before polling day, said: "I think voters would punish that kind of game-playing. We've got no intention of doing that."

There was one split vote Mr Bishop didn't mind. When Winston Peters endorsed him over NZ First's own Hutt South candidate, his response was: "I'll be working hard for as many votes as possible everyday until November 7." I don't recall him calling that bad for democracy.

Then there's his gripe about the campaign: "Every conversation you're having about that is a conversation not about the issues … An electoral system has gone wrong when an election campaign spends most of its time talking about how to game the system, not actually about the substantive issues facing this country."

Who kept that conversation going? National did. Day after day its leaders talked about how other people should vote. The party even complained to the Electoral Commission about Mr Mowbray's webpage. They set the police on him. If you want a campaign about the issues, don't spend it lecturing voters on how to fill in the ballot.

And voters weren't confused. They split their votes and got the centre-right government they wanted. The only people confused were those who thought voters would do as they were told.

Mr Bishop says: "I still think I've got a contribution to make, and I'd still like to help shape the future of New Zealand, and whether or not that's as an MP, time will tell."

Here's a first contribution: take the loss on the chin.

Voters had two ticks each. They were told what to do with them. They used them as they saw fit.

That isn't MMP gone wrong. That's MMP. It just didn't vote for him.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader