Free Speech Space with MJ - Amanda Vickers

MMP with Amanda Vickers

Amanda Vickers did a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in physiology, followed by an honours year (first class). She also has a veterinary science degree. Amanda worked extensively in the UK with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, helping to eradicate swine fever and afterwards Foot and Mouth Disease, before returning to New Zealand in 2003. Her interest in solving the problems the world faces began soon after that and she became aware of the connection between energy, the environment and the economy and how our money came in to being. Amanda was an outspoken activist against the TPP and was involved with instigating a petition to the Governor General and with organising rallies in Wellington opposing it. She is passionate about “Sovereign Money”, and personal freedoms, and Binding Citizens’ Initiated Referenda.

Welcome to another show, MJ’s Free Speech Space. And today we’re talking with the delightful Amanda Vickers from the Social Credit Party, which was very popular for a number of years and sat the last cycle out due to some unfortunate circumstances. And we’re going to be talking about MMP.

MJ: Well, why don’t we start, why don’t we get right into it? So, someone who’s been in the trenches, it’s pretty hard to get to that elusive 5%. I don’t, it’s a lot harder than what people think. So, and then a lot of people say, you know, well what is this 5%? How does MMP function? How many seats are there in the house? What’s the difference between a list MP and other MPs? And I mean, it’s just, a lot of people just don’t have that knowledge.

AV: Yep. Yeah, well, what does MMP entail? It means a mixed member proportional system. So we now have the opportunity since 1993 for the smaller parties to get, you know, access to representation in the House. That is the theory. And so we had a referendum for that in 1993, and the first election using the MMP system was 1996. And the purpose was to allow more representation in the House, but my view is that it hasn’t worked well at all. Because we haven’t had a lot more representation in the House since then at all. And so I think that system definitely needs to be tweaked or changed again. And there’s many ways to do that, but I think that it’s taken far too long to recognise that we’re just not seeing the results that it was designed to see. For example, there’s been no new political blood in our Parliament since MMP except for the parties that have come about through either Waka Jumping or a previous MP in the house. So they came with name recognition and they came with, you know, they were a household name a lot of the times. And so they had a head start and they were able then to get their party to follow them. There has been no new party that hasn’t had that advantage, managed to reach the threshold ever since NMP. So, I don’t think it’s working particularly well, although it’s certainly an improvement on the first pass the post system that we’ve replaced……

Imagine… if we’d had a threshold of three and a half percent for MMP, then I think it would have made a difference to New Zealand first in 2008. I think they would have got another five seats, and the Conservative Party in 2014, they would have got five seats.

MJ: It’s really interesting that the last election, we’ve actually gone back to first past the post really, you know, within the MMP environment.

AV: That’s how I feel. I feel like it’s just a complicated way of running first past the post, actually, is how I feel. Because all the little parties that are trying to get up to that threshold and have never done so, their votes will be removed from the poll and the votes of all the existing parties who have reached the threshold will expand to fill the pie, so to speak. So it really hasn’t changed a lot. And I think, I really wish, back when they had the referendum, I wish that single transferable vote had won, which means that you can list your preferred candidates in the order, you’d like to see them. So you might have an underdog, but you really like them.

In today’s system, people are reluctant to vote for them because they feel like it might be a wasted vote. But if you can order them, you can put them as number one, and if they don’t make a threshold, then you get your next choice, and then you get your next choice. And I really like that system. But I think when we had that referendum, there was just, I think there was a lot of confusion over all the options we had. And you know, I think MMP is certainly better than first past the post but it’s far from ideal. I think in the last three years the Labour Party had a majority so they could do whatever they want. So they were never going to, they weren’t even relying on a coalition or a confidence and supply partner at all. And so the point is that the opposition parties who aren’t in power are supposed to hold them to account. They’re supposed to be a real opposition and be a force to be reckoned with. My view is in the last term, I think our opposition was very weak on some major issues. But they were voted there to be that opposition and that’s democracy for you. You know, I don’t have to like it, but that’s the way I see it. But I think if we had some of the really small parties in there being a loud voice, it would have been really different because we would have had a completely different perspective on a lot of the things happening.

And I think the benefit for these little parties, even if they could get a seat, is that they would be able to get the resources from Parliament. There’s parliamentary funding, they get secretaries, they get research assistants, and they get media attention because they’re now in the House of Representatives. And so that would all help bring an alternative voice to our Parliament that we just don’t have now. I actually think we’re in quite a dire situation with the lack of diversity of viewpoints in the house. I’m seriously, seriously worried. More so as time goes on…