ABSTRACT
Many governments around the Commonwealth are facing public cynicism as they form a majority in Parliament without having the support of the majority of the voters. With the ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system, governments are often formed without the support of over 50 per cent of the votes cast. Expressed another way, more than half of the people who voted expressed a preference for another party and, therefore, voted against the party that formed the government. New Zealand has adopted a new system which they hope will ensure that governments represent more than half of the votes cast. This new option is called the Mixed-Member Proportional system (MMP) which is a combination of ‘first-past-the-post’ and proportional representation which was adopted for a trial period by the people in a referendum in 1993. In its short history, no one party has been able to win a majority and thus it has been necessary to form a coalition of parties to govern. The Parliament has experienced some problems in implementing the new system where the government has tried to continue to manage the House by the old rules used in the first-past-the-post system. MMP is answering the complaint of governments not having the support of the majority of the people but there will have to be adjustments made to the parliamentary procedures.
