Kerre Woodham: The New Zealand political system David Parker wants

Long serving Labour MP and former Minister David Parker gave his valedictory speech in Parliament last night, where he gave his colleagues across the House a list of things to do, among his thank yous and goodbyes.  

Chief among them was closing the gap between the very wealthy and the middle class. It could be done, he said, with a tax on capital income, a wealth tax, some form of interest deductibility ban with rules for deductions to avoid double taxation. He said this would pay for a tax-free threshold for income earners up to $10,000 with the next 10,000 subject to lower tax rates.  

Another was that he hoped freshwater standards would endure in some form, and called on future Ministers for the Environment not to become Ministers for Pollution. Looking at you, Shane Jones. Parker also suggested a way of future proofing New Zealand against future disasters by getting the Reserve Bank to use a quantitative easing scheme to purchase a long dated bond in the event the Alpine fault ruptures, which is not a bad idea because that would spread the cost of the disaster over generations, rather than have one generation deal with it. He wanted to see the government take on the tech giants with a proposal to make their social platforms liable for harmful content shared on their platforms. And he called out MPP as a political system that is becoming worse over time, that is fuelling culture war politics.  

“Under First Past the Post, New Zealand became amongst the best country in the world, but MMP was meant to be better. Perhaps Doctor Hooten is right and MMP gets worse over time. It's the people's system, not ours. As things polarise and the hard issues don't get fixed, we should allow the people to again make their choice. I'd vote STV. All 120 of us would have to serve in a seat - that drives behavioural change. I'd add in a small upper house, 30 people appointed as in Canada, or voted in STV and limited to two terms each.” 

That was David Parker last night in Parliament talking about the New Zealand he would have liked to have seen when he left politics. The thing is, the public have had their say and they have chosen and then reaffirmed MMP. My conscience is clear. Like David Parker, I preferred STV – that's what I voted for back in the 90s and I still think it's a better system today. I think he's right when he says that MPs need to have electorates to which they are accountable. And I think STV would be a fairer, less divisive system.  

First Pass the Post was undemocratic. There were times when New Zealand elected a government that only had around 38 - 40% of the vote, and 100% of the decision making, and that's not particularly fair. Some form of proportional representation is more representative, it's more democratic. If we're going to live in a democracy, we might as well behave as though we're living in a democracy and vote and get results as if we're living in a democracy.  

So from his to-do list, which would you like to see MPs pick up on? And specifically, when it comes to the voting system, I don't think we've got it right yet. There will be some of you who vote, who have grown up with the MMP and that's all you have known. As someone who knows First Past the Post and MMP, I think MMP is better than FPP and producing a more democratic and fairer result. Is it perfect? Nowhere near it. I think we need to keep refining it just because we've voted for it once, reaffirmed it once, doesn't mean we have to be stuck with it forever. 

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