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Herald supports making National the Natural Party of Opposition

by Whaleoil on November 24, 2011

No longer can we say our media is non-partisan. This election the NZ Herald mainly through its sister publication the Herald on Sunday has had a shameful selection of coverage and blatant attempts to affect outcomes. Today the Herald’s editorial comes out supporting MMP. It also comes out to support the left’s dream scenario of minor parties having to get 5% to get list MPs.

This situation, unique to our form of MMP, could be solved in large part if parties always had to secure at least 5 per cent of the party vote – irrespective of any electorate wins – to gain list seats.

What this means, in really simple terms, is National will have no coalition partners after 2014 if MMP is retained. It will have independents like Peter Dunne and John Banks. Only the Greens have made the 5% threshold in the last two elections, and only the Greens will make the 5% threshold again. A review that makes this change means that 2014 National will be without coalition partners.

If MMP is retained National will have no coalitions partners and will become the Natural Party of Opposition. John Key needs to realise that this referendum is a partisan battle that he needs to win or he is screwed, and only he can alter the outcome.

If John Key wants to be Prime Minister after 2014 he needs to give the same kind of speech David Cameron gave.

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  • Paulus

    Sorry I missed the Herald leader this morning, but I cancelled this rag three weeks ago, and have no intention of returning.

  • Andrew McMillan

    If the 5% rule were introduced, I’d agree that with the current state of play, National would lose strength in their coalition partners. But I’d expect that under this scenario, National would also pick up a greater proportion of the party vote, increasing their chances of governing alone. It could also see the merging of some minor parties – the Maori Party and United Future as an example; policy wise we’re pretty close.

  • Anonymous

    Well if they want to get rid of things that are “unique to our form of MMP” why aren’t they advocating dumping the Maori seats?

  • Chuck Bird

    I see the Herald is also happy to keep race based seats which have a lot less on the roll than seats on the general roll.  On average Maori seats have
    about 32,500
    voters as opposed to 44,300 for the general roll.  That sounds like gerrymandering to me.

  • Geraint

    Hahaha, you implied that our media was non partisan before this! The Dom is the most right wing piece of crap in the country, it’s just a banner for John Key!

  • Anonymous Economist

    The most important thing is to get Labour, Greens & Unions out of politics.

    When the only effective parties are say Nations, ACT & Conservatives, who the fuck cares what the voting system is.

    NZ is a capitalist, free-marked country. Consequently, communist/socialist/activist parties should not be permitted to exist

    NZ would rightly ban a neo-nazi party, or an Islamist-Sharia party outright.
    The same bans for the same reasons must be applied to Labour, the Greens & Unions.

    Actually for many more reasons: the last 5 elections have be ruined by Labour/Union corruption.