The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Mike Hosking: These electoral changes will never see the light of day

05 Jun 2023

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Welcome to the shortened week, with a good, old electoral slap in the face. If the Government were aiming for major change to the way we elect Governments they have got it, which is how these things work, of course. You set up a panel of people, who you have an idea as to how things will fall. You then get them to recommend a whole bunch of mad ideas, have some public consultation, which isn't really public consultation, and then make the changes you wanted all along. All of this while arguing it has little to do with you, but a lot to do with the people. And what a laundry list it is. - Lower the voting age to 16-years-old - Lower the party threshold to 3.5per cent - Extend parliamentary terms to four years - Have a lot of Māori involvement and oversight - Reduce the ability to fundraise It's pretty much what a heavily left-leaning group would drum up. It looks a lot like something the Green Party would dream up. We already, by the way, have polling for the voting age lowering and we don't want it. Every poll done on the subject has a very, very large majority saying that 18-years-old is just fine. The lowering of the 5 per cent to 3.5 per cent is inviting more parties, more madness and more fringe operators who will hijack an already hijacked system. If Winston Peters handing Jacinda Ardern the PM's job, having come a distant second, doesn't tell you all you need to know about tails wagging dogs, then nothing will. As for raising money, there is no right and wrong, or black and white. But making donations smaller always favours the left, who struggle with the corporates. What makes this stuff also egregious is they claim it's to make the system fairer. What on earth does that mean and why have, yet again, the media swallowed it? Your fair is not my fair. You could equally argue it makes the system more shambolic, it makes the system more left-leaning, it's a sop with a ludicrous amount of racial overlay. The upside is none of this is going anywhere fast. And I suspect that by the time the Government is changed in October, it will never see the light of day. The system we currently have is far from perfect, as indeed are all democratic systems. But in totality, it's not bad. And it's nowhere near in need of the radical shake up that is proposed here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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