Policy moderation

Ms Ardern is a centrist, a selfavowed consensus politician.

Her singleparty majority government will not behave as the Labour and National administrations of the 1980s and 1990s did.

New Zealanders changed the electoral rules because they were sick of radical swings of the policy pendulum driven by singleparty majority governments ruling on the basis of a minority of the vote.

If MMP was designed to do anything, it was to lock in policy moderation.

In fact, in the early 1990s, the Treasury was concerned to implement its favoured neoliberal reforms before the electoral system changed, precisely because it knew policy radicalism would be next to impossible under MMP.

Where the David Langeled

Labour and Bolgerled National governments of the late 20th century were doctrinaire and divisive, Ms Ardern will be pragmatic and focused on results.

For better or worse, she knows exactly where the median voter lives. system is to produce legislatures that broadly reflect the people who choose them. On at least one count MMP is heading in the right direction.

In 1996, the first MMP parliament doubled the presence of women in the House of Representatives. By 2017, the proportion of women parliamentarians stood at 40%.

That figure got another bump on Saturday, pushing the number of women in the 120member legislature from 49 to 56.

Nearly half (46.5%) of all parliamentarians are now women, the vast majority of them — 73% — members of the Labour or Green parties. This lifts New Zealand from 20th on the international league table to ninth (two spots behind Sweden). painted as the party of urban elites. In fact, the fundamental question confronting National now is: what kind of party are we?

Once special votes are counted, it is possible Labour will have over 50% of the vote. Not only will it be the first time this has happened since 1951, it will also mean most New Zealanders have chosen a politics of communitarianism over a politics of individualism.

For the first time in our history, more people voted before polling day than on the day itself (a lot more — 70% of votes were cast early this year).

The very nature of elections has changed, meaning the laws banning political activity on polling day need to be revised.

(In the process, the problem of setting an election date to avoid an All Blacks test might be avoided.)

There is more to be digested, including that this parliament contains no smallparty tail to wag the big party’s dog.

But right now one thing is clear: MMP gets two ticks for its performance this year.

It has done exactly what it was designed to do. — theconversation.com