New Zealand Parliament

The New Zealand Parliament is the legislative body of the New Zealand government.

Technically, the term "Parliament" encompasses both the monarch and the 120-member House of Representatives, but to most people, "Parliament" refers to the House of Representatives alone. Under the Constitution Act 1986, this usage became formal.

Originally, as specified in the British Parliament's New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, the New Zealand Parliament was bicameral, with the House of Represenatives acting as the lower house and the Legislative Council acting as the upper house. The Legislative Council was abolished in 1951, however, and has not been replaced.

New Zealand follows the Westminster System of Government.

House of Representatives

Politics of New Zealand

Monarchy Governor-General

Parliament Cabinet

Prime Minister Deputy Prime Minister Ministers Speaker of the House Leader of the Opposition

Politicians Political parties

Supreme Court State sector Regional authorities

Elections

The House of Representatives (often called the 'debating chamber', or simply 'Parliament') is modelled on the British House of Commons, with a Speaker as its presiding officer, chosen from within its membership, and the mace as the symbol of parliamentary authority. Members are known as 'Members of Parliament' or MPs. Until 1951, they were known as 'Members of the House of Representatives' or MHRs. Members of the governing party or coalition and the opposition parties sit on opposite sides.

The Prime Minister is the leader of the government and is appointed by the Governor-General once it is clear which party or coalition has enough support in the house to govern. This support is immediately tested through a Motion of Confidence. The current government is a coalition between Labour and the Progressive Party; the Prime Minister is Helen Clark.

The Leader of the Opposition is the leader of the largest opposition party. Currently the Leader of the Opposition is Don Brash of the National Party.

After many years of operating under the so-called First Past the Post or "pluralitarian" electoral system, a system of proportional representation known as MMP (an acronym for Mixed Member Proportional) was authorised by the voters in a 1993 referendum and introduced at the 1996 election.

Following the first MMP election, National, formed a coalition with New Zealand First. When this later collapsed, National governed with the support of ACT New Zealand until 1999, when it was defeated by a coalition between Labour and the Alliance. After the 2002 election, the Alliance was replaced as the junior coalition partner by the Progressive Coalition (now the Progressive Party), a group that had broken away from the Alliance.

Parliament Under MMP

Under MMP, the size of Parliament is capped at 120 MPs. Slightly more than half of these (referred to as 'electorate MPs') are chosen from geographical constituencies on a first-past-the-post basis; the remainder are chosen from closed party lists and are known as 'list MPs'. A candidate may contest an electorate and appear on the party list, only contest an electorate, or only appear on the list; candidates who have won electorate seats are eliminated from party lists before the list MPs are named.

The number of MPs is calculated in three steps. The less populated of New Zealand's two principal islands, the South Island, has a fixed quota of sixteen seats. The number of seats for the North Island and the number of special reserved seats for Maori are then calculated in proportion to these. (The Maori seats have their own special electoral roll; people of Maori descent may opt to enroll either on this roll or on the general roll, and the number of Maori seats is determined with reference to the proportion of adult Maori who opt for the Maori roll.)

The number of electorates is recalculated, and the boundaries of each redrawn so as to make them approximately equal in population within a tolerance of plus or minus 5%, after each quinquennial census. After the 2001 census, there were 7 Maori electorates and 62 general electorates, or 69 electorates in total. There were therefore 51 list MPs. By a quirk of timing, the 2005 election will be the first election since 1990 at which the electorates have not been redrawn since the last election. The next census will be in 2006 and will apply to the 2008 election.

A party is not entitled to any list MPs unless it either wins 5% of the "party vote" (the more important of the two votes in MMP, which determines the overall proportionality of Parliament) or wins at least one electorate seat. The electorate-seat escape clause has twice saved parties from Parliamentary oblivion: New Zealand First in 1999 gained 4.26% of the party vote and five MPs thanks to its leader's razor-thin 63-vote margin in his home electorate of Tauranga, and Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition (since renamed the less ponderous "Progressive Party") gained two MPs from 1.7% of the vote after its leader comfortably held his electorate of Wigram. In addition, in both 1996 and 1999 the United Party won an electorate, but not enough party votes to entitle it to any additional list MPs.

In the event that a party wins an electorate seat, but not enough party votes to entitle it to a seat in Parliament (less than 0.5% of the party vote), the size of Parliament is increased by the number of these so-called "overhang MPs" until the next election. As of the 2002 election, this has not occurred.

With the proliferation of parties under MMP, the prospect of MPs defecting from the party under whose banner they were elected (known colloquially as "waka-jumping") has become a heightened concern. In 1997, the list MP Alamein Kopu quit the left-wing Alliance Party, from whose list she had been elected, despite having signed a pledge to resign from Parliament if she quit the Alliance. In 1998, the right-wing National-New Zealand First coalition government collapsed; a substial number of New Zealand First MPs quit their party to sit as Independents and continue supporting the National Party, which soldiered on as a minority government, and which also obtained Kopu's proxy vote, prompting further outcry against her.

After its victory in the 1999 election, the new Labour- Alliance government (with the support of New Zealand First) enacted legislation, the "Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act", or "Electoral Integrity Act", to prevent such defections happening again. Under its provisions, the leader of a party, with the support of two-thirds of his or her remaining MPs, can force a member who is "distorting the proportionality of Parliament" to vacate their seat -- in the case of electorate MPs, a by-election is held, while in the case of list MPs, the seat is filled by the highest-ranked unsuccessful candidate on that party's party list from the last election. Any MP who resigns of their own free will vacates their seat in a similar fashion. However, this has not proved particularly successful.

When the Alliance schismed into two factions in early 2002, with one faction centred around the party's organizational leadership and the other around its parliamentary leader, Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton, neither faction commanded the requisite two-thirds of the Alliance caucus to invoke the Act, nor did the anti-Anderton faction have the votes to replace him as leader; Anderton, meanwhile, was not willing to force the by-election he would have been obliged to contest had he left the Alliance and formed a new party (which would have taken several weeks, and returned him to Parliament only a couple of months before the term expired), and his supporters, all list MPs, would have been replaced by loyalists of the other faction had they resigned. After substantial pressure from the Opposition and the media charging Anderton with hypocrisy -- he had been a vocal opponent of waka-jumping -- Prime Minister Helen Clark called the 2002 election some months early, in part to resolve this issue. Anderton was returned to Parliament for his new party, while the rump Alliance failed to cross the 5% threshold or win an electorate seat.

On 11 February 2003, the ACT Party expelled one of its list MPs, Donna Awatere Huata, from its caucus after she failed to satisfactorily explain corruption allegations against her. The ACT leader, Richard Prebble, subsequently invoked the Electoral Integrity Act against her. Awatere Huata sued, claiming (with some justice) that she was not deliberately "distorting the proportionality of Parliament" as she had not voted against the ACT party line, and still sought to retain membership of the party. She obtained an injunction against the transmission of the letter necessary to invoke the Electoral Integrity Act while her case was litigated; the High Court initially ruled for ACT, but on 16 July 2004, the Court of Appeal ruled 4-1 that her actions did not meet the 'distorting the proportionality of Parliament' test, and that she could remain an MP. ACT were given 20 working days to decide if they would seek to appeal to the new Supreme Court.

Committees

Legislation is scrutinised by Select Committees. The Committees call for submissions from the public, thereby meaning that there is a degree of public consultation before a parliamentary bill proceeds into law. The strengthening of the Committee system was in response to concerns that legislation was being forced through, without receiving due examination and revision. Each Select Committee has a Chairperson and a Deputy Chairperson. MPs may be members of more than one Select Committee. There are 18 Select Committees in the House of Representatives, as follows:

• Business
• Commerce
• Education and Science
• Finance and Expenditure
• Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
• Health
• Justice and Electoral Reform
• Law and Order
• Local Government and Environment
• Government Administration
• Maori Affairs
• Officers of Parliament
• Primary Production
• Privileges
• Regulations
• Social Services
• Standing Orders
• Transport and Industrial Relations

Legislative Council (abolished 1951)

Main article: New Zealand Legislative Council.

The Legislative Council was intended to scrutinize and amend bills passed by the House of Representatives, although it could not initiate legislation or amend money bills. Despite occasional proposals for an elected Council, Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs) were appointed by the Governor, generally on the recommendation of the Prime Minister. At first, MLCs were appointed for life, but a term of seven years was introduced in 1891. It was eventually decided that the Council was having no significant impact on New Zealand's legislative process, and it ceased to exist at the beginning of 1951. At the time of its abolition, it had 54 members, including its own Speaker.

Senate proposal, 1990

The National government of Jim Bolger proposed the establishment of an elected Senate when it came to power in 1990, thereby reinstating a bicameral system, and a Senate Bill was drafted. Senators would be elected by STV, with a number of seats being reserved for Maori, and would have powers similar to those of the old Legislative Council. The House of Representatives would continue to be elected by FPP. The intention was to include a question on a Senate in the second referendum on electoral reform. Voters would be asked, if they did not want a new voting system, whether or not they wanted a Senate. However, following objections from the Labour opposition, and supporters of MMP, the Senate question was removed by the Select Committee on Electoral Reform, and the issue has not been pursued since.

Terms of Parliament

Parliament is currently in its forty-seventh term.

External links

• Parliament of New Zealand (http://www.parliament.govt.nz)
• Debating Chamber (http://www.ps.parliament.govt.nz/chamber.htm)
• Legislative Council Chamber (http://www.ps.parliament.govt.nz/legcham.htm)

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