Wake up and smell the kiwi
Just wanted to link to a great article, with an even greater title, on the Macleans web site today.
The author, Chris Selley gives a good background on how New Zealand came to change its voting system and the voter reaction to the change.
Selley correctly points out that MMP has made the New Zealand House of Representatives more diverse and reflective of the population, as claimed by MMP proponents in Ontario.
Also, he notes that MMP has not been unstable, as stable and working coalitions have become the norm in New Zealand.
Finally, I was most intrigued by a quote from Raymond Miller, chair of the political science department at the University of Auckland, the leading school in that country:
"I've got 300-plus students studying New Zealand politics, and I have to explain to them how the old system worked," he says. "I don't think they have any affection for it, and there's certainly no sense of nostalgia."
You heard that correctly, young Kiwis are very pleased with the decision their elders made over a decade ago. I only hope Ontario voters will be equally cognizant of how young Ontarians want a political system that makes every voices heard and better reflects our great province's diversity.
1 comment:
I'm sorry but New Zealand is simply not comparable to Ontario. New Zealand is a tiny nation with a population that is relatively evenly dispersed. Ontario is a huge province with a population that is far from being evenly distributed. The fact is that thanks to Ontario's vast geography, there are many different issues that people living in other areas simply don't care about. And with the way our population is distributed,a geographically small, highly populated area of the province in the GTA can control the affairs of entire regions like the North. That makes those lower populated regions nothing more than colonies of the GTA, and that is not better representation for those people. With MMP and those MMP seats being determined by province wide vote, that just gives more voting power to the GTA and leaves these other areas out in the cold, with less guaranteed representation and less hope.
The fact is that there is no jurisdiction in the World that is comparable to Ontario with MMP, so Ontario is a real guinea pig. Making comparisons to small nations with denser populations does are not apt or accurate to what could very well happen here in Ontario
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