Now that the All Blacks have won the Webb Ellis Cup @ at Rugby World Cup held in our little Stadium-of-4-million, the politicking (i originally wrote this as "poliyicking" - seriously, i really did!) has started with a bang.
However, i'm concerned that, reportedly, 1 in 4 young people aren't even on the Electoral Roll. Apparently, they believe their vote won't make any difference - WTF?! I could understand that if we were still stuck in the bad old days of FPP, but that's why we voted for MMP - to punish the pollies by taking away their artificially-inflated 'majorities' in Parliament.
And that's what some of them are so desperately hoping to get back!
Never mind the smoke-screen of "too much power wielded by minority parties" - that's just 'old-polly-speak' for "we hate having to fight for every bill we want to pass in the House - we want back our old unlimited power to tell Parliament to Naff-Off-We're-Going-To-Do-This-&-There's-No-Way-You-Can-Stop-Us."
That's what the MMP Referendum's all about - "anything but MMP" i.e. anything but having to run minority governments effectively answerable to Parliament (its original function!), or having to form coalitions with parties who may not agree with all of their stated program - running a hidden agenda is difficult, if not impossible (as it damn well should be!) without an absolute majority.
The worm in the rotten apple is SM (Supplementary Member) - a fig-leaf proportional system that delivers what the old hacks really want: a greatly increased chance of an absolute majority in Parliament, & a return to the unbridled power of government under an old, crooked, & easily corrupted voting system - FPP - with Parliament reduced to a noisy hot-air-filled rubber stamp.
No-one expects a return to FPP, & STV & PV are just there as window-dressing.
The Germans (where we got MMP from) know all about the horrors of the one-party state (in their case, Nazi-ism) & they routinely elect coalition governments to 'keep the bastards honest'.
