Steve Baron MMP: To Disembowel or Develop? (2,142 words) It was Winston Churchill who said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Like the names of loves long lost, we often forget, and so it is with politics. Politicians hungry for power often pray on this weakness of human nature and give us the opportunity to make the same mistakes over again. Y es indeed, we do have short memories, especially on political matters. At the next election voters will decide whether ornot to keep MMP or replace it with something else. So what does history tell us about our voting system and why did we change to MMP? Fora start, in 1978 and 1981, the Labour Party received more votes than the National Party but National remained the government, because they held more electorate seats. That is how First Past the Post (FPP) works. In 1978 the Social Credit Part y (now Democrats forSocial Credit) received sixteen percent of the vote, but only one seat in Parliament, then twenty one percent of the vote in 1981 which gave them only two seats in Parliament. In 1984 the New Zealand Party received twelve percent of the vote, but no Members ofParliament. These results, along with a growing distrust of politicians due to many broken election promises, and New Zealander's innate belief in fairness, led to calls for a Royal Commission, and change. As one of the many New Zealanders who got to vote for the first ti me in my life as an eighteen year old, in 1978, it just didn't seem fair that the part y that got the most votes didn't become the government, and the votes received by third parties did not reflect that vote in Parliament. In other words many votes were 'wasted votes'. Even as far back as 1979 there were calls for change, Professor Geoffrey Palmer , later to
