{"id":105535,"date":"2025-10-28T17:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/105535\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T17:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:12:07","slug":"new-zealand-think-tank-backs-four-year-parliamentary-term-and-suggests-adding-50-mps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/105535\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand think tank backs four-year parliamentary term and suggests adding 50 MPs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen a Government comes in, it spends a fair bit of time getting its feet under the desk and advancing its initial programme,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it has a bit of time in the middle when it goes about the business of Government. Towards the end, it\u2019s campaign mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark said it doesn\u2019t make for good lawmaking when Governments have their eyes on the clock for the upcoming election.<\/p>\n

New Zealand has held two previous referendums on the subject, in 1967 and 1990, and both were rejected.<\/p>\n

In February this year, the Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament.<\/p>\n

It passed its first reading in March and successfully went through the Justice Select Committee and is now due for a second reading.<\/p>\n

In August, the coalition Government allocated $25 million<\/a> for a referendum on the subject, to potentially go ahead alongside next year\u2019s election. <\/p>\n

\"NewNew Zealand Initiative Senior Fellow Nick Clark. Photo \/ New Zealand Initiative<\/p>\n

Last month, former Act Party leader Richard Prebble called the initiative \u201csimply wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf politicians knew they would not face voters for four years, they would feel freer to make bad decisions as well as good ones,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Government, a way to kill a bad policy proposal is to remind voters how many days there are to the election and to ask, \u2018How can this be defended on the hustings?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe closer to the election, the more effective it is at killing bad ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another suggestion from the New Zealand Initiative\u2019s report was to increase the number of MPs from 120 to 170.<\/p>\n

Clark said New Zealand has a very small Parliament compared to countries against which we like to compare ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits of a larger Parliament would make those electorates, which have become very large over the past 30 years, more manageable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the average electorate has grown in size from 35,000 in 1993 to 70,000 now, creating more people each electorate MP has to serve.<\/p>\n

Clark also said more MPs would provide greater oversight and better scrutiny of the \u201cbloated\u201d executive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t enough backbench MPs to hold that executive to account.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report also suggested abolishing overhang seats and lowering the party vote threshold to 3.5-4%.<\/p>\n

Clark said the 2023 election exposed serious problems in the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 600,000 special votes took three weeks to count, delaying government formation and undermining public confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese reforms aren\u2019t about radical redesign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re about updating a system that has served us well but now needs modernising for 21st-century realities. After 30 years, we know what works and what doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen a Government comes in, it spends a fair bit of time getting its feet under the desk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13212,16745,95,32319,16232,11785,15221,1362,17318,117,111,43,139,69,76331,17317,18154,76332,30947,14931,1335,39545,5662,80],"class_list":["post-105535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-13212","tag-adding","tag-and","tag-backs","tag-efficiency","tag-fouryear","tag-improve","tag-made","tag-mps","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parliamentary","tag-parliaments","tag-political","tag-suggestions","tag-suggests","tag-tank","tag-term","tag-terms","tag-think","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}