NZide News: Decision '05

Nandor Tanczos

I'm not usually wont to write about pollyticks here, but as we have a General Election here in New Zealand tomorrow I thought I might introduce you to one of the more interesting characters on the electoral stage. The photo is of Nandor Tanczos (pronounced Tansos), who was the first Rastafarian in the world to be voted into a parliament, in 1999. Nandor, as everyone calls him, is in the Greens. He's popular with young voters, and is very intelligent and articulate. He's noted for his dreadlocks, his push to decriminalise cannabis use, his hemp clothing store, and his well known speech in parliament during which he accused other MPs (Members of Parliament) of being "drunk in charge of a country" in reference to their wining and dining habits. Ahem. To be fair he had one good idea which became law - wiping the slate clean for people with very minor non-violent offences who had not re-offended for at least ten years. Nandor is a smart guy but I won't be voting for the Greens.

We have a voting system called MMP here, which gives us proportional representation. I'll skip the complexities of how it works and get straight to the fact that we each have two votes. We vote for a candidate in our local electorate, and we vote for the party we want to see in government. Both votes count as a government vote. So for example a person in Nandor's electorate could vote for him as their candidate but vote for a different party to the Greens, such as National or Labour, as well. So in effect we can vote twice and then there's an equation which works out percentages and allots seats accordingly. That's how Nandor came to be in parliament. What this means in practical terms is that we end up with a coalition government each time. One large party and one or more smaller ones aligned. So once the votes are counted, negotiations start and it can be a while before we actually know who our new government is. I like our MMP system and it has worked well since we left the two party horse race we used to have. It is reliant on people communicating and working together. I also think it is a more democratic system as more people get the representation they vote for. Or to look at it another way - the government reflects us as a people more accurately under MMP.

Briefly, there are two large parties who have always dominated NZ politics. National, who are right, and Labour who I would call centre-left. Labour were left but were very influenced by Reagonomics in the 1980s and introduced their own brand, Rogernomics. The voters left them in droves. The voters later came back to them in droves and they have been the major governing party for the last two terms. Their leader is Helen Clark who is our current Prime Minister:


She's been one of the most, if not the most, popular Prime Minister NZ has had - I think because she is compassionate and comes across as having common sense. Having said that, I'm like many others in not being happy with some of her social engineering policies, e.g. legalising prostitution. On the right is National - but we had such an awful time under National in the past that I'm reluctant to vote for them. When they were in government a lot of small businesses and self-employed people went bust. They cut funding to our health system, and people suffered. I think I'm like many people in my lack of trust in National.

I know that some say that one should vote on moral issues. The difficulty I have is that the Right, who tend to take a view that I do on certain issues, e.g. against legalising prostitution, never propose that they will actually change the legislation if they come to power. The Prostitution Law Reform Bill passed by one vote. Yet I've heard no-one on the Right say they will revisit it. I think the law needed revising, and I don't agree with a harsh judgemental attitude to prostitues - but since the new legalisation we have had many more girls out street working. I've seen the increase and so have social agencies throughout the country. The law has given permission. Likewise we have no policy forthcoming to revisit abortion law. So voting morally pretty much comes down to economics here. And on the economics I am undecided.

Then there's the smaller parties. They range from reasonably sensible to ludicrous. Some are very left, one is far right, and some have grown out of political lobby focus groups. United Future has been a coalition partner in the current government and has mainly Christian members. They aren't preachy, and seem to be sensible and hard working. I think they'd be center-right. It's difficult to know what their policies are or what the fine print is on some of their ideas. But they have provided a balance in government in some ways. The Maori Party want two retirement ages for people to receive the pension - 60 years for Maori and 65 years for everyone else. So they can forget about getting my vote. Destiny NZ arose from a church denomination that lacks diplomacy and are likened by some to a cult. United Future leader Peter Dunne has referred to them as "Destiny cult". They are noted for holding protest marches and for church leader Brian Tamaki's somwhat ostentatious self-presentation and blunt morality crusading. Although he is not the leader of Destiny NZ, it's impossible not to asociate him with it since it springs from his denomination. No-one expects them to win any seats. The Greens are expected to win some seats and Nandor will probably be back in again. I won't go into all the other smaller parties except to say that I won't be voting for them.

So there's my choices. Tomorrow I make two ticks and hope I've done the right thing. On both of the last two occasions when I voted I met people standing in line at the polling centre who said they still didn't know who to vote for. I confess I thought they were silly. Now I'm possibly going to be in the same position. Or maybe not.