New Zealand First party leader Winston Peters has slammed the Independent Electoral Review's recommended changes to the country's electoral system, saying they'd lead to "instability".
The expert panel detailed sweeping changes today that they believe would enhance access to democracy under the principles of the Bill of Rights.
These changes include:
- Reducing the MMP vote threshold for parties to enter Parliament from 5% to 3.5%.
- Lowering the minimum voting age to 16.
- Capping political donations to a maximum of $30,000 to any given party over the course of an electoral cycle and requiring all donations to only come from registered individual voters.
- And conducting a referendum on increasing the parliamentary term from three to four years.
"I'm against their findings because it doesn’t make sense," Peters said.
"This is no expert panel you’re quoting this morning on the matter of electoral law, some of the things they’re saying are disastrous."
The NZ First leader said he was against the findings as "it doesn't make sense". (Source: Breakfast)
He said a lower threshold for parties to enter Parliament would also be "disastrous".
"You'll have far more parties in Parliament and then things will be going haywire, now we’ve got enough now. It's a fair system at 5%.
"A high threshold means stability — if you can’t crack it at 5% you don't deserve to be there. We know something about that," he said.
NZ First has been out of Parliament since receiving only 2.6% of the party vote in the 2020 election.
Major changes to how political campaigns are financed were recommended because "Kiwis have told us very clearly that they want a contest of ideas, not a contest of cash," panel chair Deborah Hart said.
These changes would also disallow donations from businesses, trusts, and unions, among other groups.
However, Peters believes "they're against actually democracy being funded — in the same way people have privacy of the vote — privacy of donations. This is something on which the Government said there was a flaw in the law when there wasn't at all."
He believes the panel was really trying to move the country towards having election campaigns being funded by the tax payer, although it wasn't a recommendation put forward in the report.
On reducing the voting age, Peters asked: "Have you been to the criminal courts lately?"
He said if young people's minds not yet being fully developed can be argued as a defence of young offenders, it should also be an argument against them voting.
"Why not [reduce it to] 12 years of age?" he said.
"As for 4 years [election terms], that was the only decent idea they had," Peters said. But he believes there's not enough trust at the moment between the major parties for a referendum to take place.
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