A longer parliamentary term could be on the ballot at the next election, the PM says. Toby Manhire debates the idea’s merits with Toby Manhire.
In its coalition agreement with Act, National agreed to support to select committee a bill for a referendum – and now Christopher Luxon has indicated that it is likely to go to a public vote at the next election.
Hang on, what?
No, not that one. The National-Act coalition deal also included a pledge to “pass the Constitution (Enabling a 4-Year Term) Amendment Bill through first reading in the first 15 months of the term”. The agreement with NZ First had much the same clause.
That means a bill to require a binding referendum on a four-year parliamentary term, likely to be based on David Seymour’s earlier version from the members’ ballot, should pop up in parliament by the end of the year. And while National has made no commitment to support it beyond a select committee, Luxon has previously voiced support for such a change, and on Friday told a Bloomberg audience in Auckland that he expected it “to be ready to take to the New Zealand people at the next election”.
And the New Zealand people will surely see sense and provide governments of the future with a timeframe that best serves policy making and delivery.
Nonsense. The New Zealand people will see sense and – not for the first time – cock their democratic snooks at such a daft proposal.
Come on now. Aren’t we all lamenting the chronic short-termism that afflicts New Zealand politics? Whether it be housing, transport or water – big infrastructure projects of just about every kind – our elected representatives are incentivised to compromise longterm visions for electoral challenges that are always just around the corner. Same goes for climate change. For AI. For enduring taxation changes. And so on.
Conflating short-termism and (relatively) short parliamentary terms is a mistake – good governments can paint a durable vision and get plenty done; to blame it on how quickly elections come around is a cop-out.
A three-year term in practice means a year of getting your feet under the Beehive desk, a year of mad rush to get stuff done, and a year of electioneering. No wonder we have such a mad-dash, slapdash governing approach with rampant, lamentable overuse of urgency.
Thank you for this lazy canard. The reality is that New Zealand voters almost always give governments a second term at least – a basic level of competence will ensure a minimum of six years in power. That’s plenty of time to get stuff done, if you know what you’re doing. Labour, for example, might mew and wail about having stuff like Auckland light rail, water reforms or fair pay agreements jettisoned, but if they’d prioritised those policies and put runs on the board, they’d be much less likely contenders for the bin.
If you’d sit up and look around the world, the message is resounding. A report five years ago by the Victoria University of Wellington Institute for Governance and Policy Studies made a compelling case for a four-year term. Of 190 countries with parliaments, it counted 103 with five-year terms, 74 with four-year terms, and only nine, New Zealand included, that go back to vote every three years. Many of the democracies we most often point to enviously, such as Finland, are four-year cycles.
I can think of one country that is really good at long-term infrastructure planning: China. Why don’t we just go with their approach to elections, and not have them at all.
Come on now.
Anyhow, for all your worldliness, you forget that our closest neighbour, Australia, has three-year terms.
Also snakes, spiders. Sharks that walk around on beaches.
Fundamentally this is a question of democratic principle. Former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer once called New Zealand “the fastest lawmaker in the west”; he says we continue to be an “executive paradise”. Few democracies delegate so much power to a small group of ministers. MPs are tightly whipped; rebels are not tolerated. We have no written constitution. We have no upper house. Our courts are not empowered to strike down laws made by parliament. We make the government accountable at the ballot box once every three years. Is that really asking too much?
Palmer supports a four-year term.
He does, but as part of a wider set of reforms, including increasing the number of MPs, so we have a bigger talent pool for ministers. The reality is that bluntest and most important democratic cudgel in the hands of the people is the power to chuck out a government we don’t like. If anything we should get that opportunity more, not less, often.
Right, but let’s not be forgetting that barely anyone is suggesting that we shift without a popular vote.
“Let’s not be forgetting”? Who says that?
OK sorry. Look, if the majority believe that we should shift to a four-year term, isn’t that democracy in action? The polling suggests that is how we’d vote, too. A 2020 poll suggested 61% backed a switch to four-year terms. A survey last year showed an even greater majority in favour of a four-year term for local government.
I see your polls and raise you two actual real-life referendums. Four-year terms were rejected by 68% of voters in 1967, and by 69% in 1990. That’s not very close. We’ve had our say and we said: no, thank you.
Not the people who are in the belly of the governing beast. In politics, this is that rare example where consensus flourishes – party leaders from across the spectrum are in favour of the change.
True. On the other hand, party leaders from across the spectrum are in favour of the change.
Good point. Can we agree at least that it’s an important subject to ventilate? The Independent Electoral Review, after all, saw arguments on both sides, and concluded that a referendum should be held. After all, do all referendum debates have to be divisive? Can’t they be healthy and illuminating?
Sure. But why not also have votes on, say, extending the number of MPs and changing the voting age.
If a length-of-term debate went well, then those could follow.
OK fine.
Good.
Lovely.
Good.
You hang up.
No you hang up.