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Kiwis stand at the crossroads

May Chan

WHEN New Zealand voters go to the polls tomorrow, each one will have two votes. Although it is the vote for their Member of Parliament that will decide which party governs for the next three years, it is the second vote which will determine the long-term political make-up of their nation.

In addition to voting for the members of the 99-seat one-house Parliament, New Zealand voters will decide the outcome of a referendum on whether the country needs a new system of choosing who rules - a choice between the existing first-past-the-post system that brings clear winners but can also give a minority party a high vote yet no seats, or a complex German system known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), with the winning system to be used at the 1996 election.

Under MMP, the New Zealand Parliament would be expanded to 120 seats and each voter would have two votes - one to elect 64 of the MPs under the current system, the other to elect the rest of the MPs by voting for a party. The winners of those seats wouldbe chosen from lists drawn up by the parties.

The choice was narrowed to those two options by an initial referendum last year, which gave voters four choices. The 49.2 per cent who took part opted strongly for MMP, the choice of a Royal Commission which reported on the issue in 1986.

At first it seemed this second recommendation would be a fait accompli, with voters endorsing MMP again. But the extent to which that choice would change New Zealand's political landscape has made it at least as big an issue as the election itself.

The new system would mean unprecedented power to minority parties. It would almost certainly end the stranglehold on power by the country's two main parties, Labour and National, and lead to coalition governments.

Opponents, including Prime Minister Jim Bolger who sees the writing on the wall for his government if MMP is introduced, say coalition governments are weak and point to the example of Italy, where political crises are a regular feature. Supporters say giving the smaller parties a real voice would mean giving New Zealand the government its people actually wants.

To illustrate just how dramatic the change would be: in 1990 Mr Bolger's Nationals won power with the biggest majority in New Zealand history. But a study has shown Parliament could still have been deadlocked if MMP had been in use then.

The minority parties, which have little chance of winning many seats and whose significance lies in splitting the Labour vote to allow the Nationals back in, would have a significantly different role under MMP.

For instance, the Alliance, an amalgamation of five groups ranging from the Greens to the Labour left, led by former Labour Party president and MP Jim Anderton, is polling 17 per cent support, but is expected to win only one seat - that of Mr Anderton. But under MMP it could expect 20 seats, Cabinet jobs and probably the balance of power.

That is a fact that has not escaped the major New Zealand business groups which support the drastic labour market reforms, privatisation programme and dismantling of the welfare system undertaken by Mr Bolger's government.

Ranged against MMP is a high cost campaign being run by the Campaign For Better Government, a lobby headed by the chairman of NZ Telecom, Peter Shirtcliffe. It has its own pollster, has used the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency, has a high profile television advertising campaign and has been accused by the pro-MMP Electoral Reform Coalition of having a corporate-funded NZ$800,000 (about HK$3.4 billion) budget.

Ironically, New Zealand law does not prevent the CBG's television advertising campaign, although it does prevent political parties buying television advertisements with their own money. That means the other key minority party in the election, the New Zealand First party of charismatic ex-National Winston Peters, cannot buy advertising, yet is not eligible for government-funding slots because it has not been formed for a full year, even though it is polling 10 per cent support.

Yet the McGillicuddy Serious Party, whose election slogan is ''The Great Leap Backwards'' and which advocates demolishing cities and returning to ''the good old'' mediaeval days, has about NZ$77,000 of taxpayers' money to fund its advertisements because it has been around more than a year.

Its candidates include a clarinet-playing juggler and a man called Very Impressive, its plans to run a dog fell through when the pooch could not raise the deposit, and its use of the public purse includes a tartan television test pattern and an instruction to viewers to turn off their sets until told to turn them back on.

But the New Zealand election is no laughing matter. For many voters, it is the object of bitterness and suspicion. Angered by attacks by Nationals on unions, health education and welfare systems, by high unemployment and high crime rates, voters look to Labour and remember Rogernomics, the economic policies and programme of privatisation of the previous Labour government, named after former Finance Minister Roger Douglas, that led to Labour's ignominious 1990 defeat.

The two parties began the month-long election campaign neck-and-neck, but the latest polls show National has pulled ahead and is set to be returned.

The Nationals hold 63 seats in the 97-seat Parliament (population changes have taken that up to 99 for this election), Labour 29, the Alliance two, NZ First two and there is one independent. To win, Labour must win 22 seats and the Nationals lose 12.

Even with unemployment at 10 per cent and 25 per cent for young people, despite father-of-nine Mr Bolger's promise to halve it in three years - it has actually gone up by 24 per cent in that time - that looks unlikely.

As recently as April, Labour's lead in the polls was up to 20 per cent, but Mr Bolger's International diplomacy, including his successful tour of Asia, his emphasis on New Zealand's ''heartland'' series of visits to rural areas, falls in home loan interest rates (one on the day the election was announced) and doubts about Labour's tax policies paid quick dividends.

Analysts say voters perceive little difference between the two major parties on economic issues. Inflation is at 1.5 per cent and both are committed to a target of up to two per cent, to little new spending and more government-subsidised employment projects.

Labour promises to repeal the Nationals' controversial Employment Contracts Act which broke down the award-based workplace, to bring back a minimum youth wage, halt privatisation and commercialisation of public health, and reduce education means testing.

It wants every unemployed person aged under 20 in a training scheme within three years, with the Labour Leader, Mike Moore - Prime Minister for just eight weeks at the end of Labour's last term in office - accusing the Nationals of abandoning the unemployed.

In a typically strongly worded and mildly eccentric speech he has said this election is about whether New Zealand becomes ''a dog-eat-dog society where some people can't afford dogs and other people have to hire them to look after their homes and shops at night''.

Labour's theme is ''Jobs, Growth, Health'', while the Nationals are pushing ''The Spirit of Recovery'' as Mr Bolger and his entourage tour the country in a chartered Fokker Friendship.

The kind of statistics business loves but which working Kiwis say do not mean much to them are aiding Mr Bolger in emphasising recovery.

Numbers on the unemployment benefit dropped about 4,000 for the year ending September, retail spending and housing starts are up and the latest business confidence survey shows the most sustained period of rising confidence since the survey began 25 years ago.

Adding to the Nationals' ammunition, The Economist magazine has attacked Labour for its higher spending plans and says Labour will increase taxes. That is a step Labour was forced to deny it would take within the first week of its campaign, after planning an extra NZ$1.4 billion spending by 2,000 on the assumption its policies would lift growth one per cent above current forecasts to four per cent in three years.

But while the New Zealand election is mostly about money and jobs, there are other important factors.

Labour has been undermined by attacks from its high profile leader, David Lange, whose political return is predicted if MMP goes ahead - and perhaps even if it does not, although such a move would split the Labour Party again, perhaps beyond repair.

Mr Lange has warned Labour against becoming a centrist party which stands for nothing, called on the party not to forget the poor, and says he wants to be leader again, although not of ''a miscellaneous collection of pedigrees and mongrels''.

Law and order is also an issue, even more so since an Indian shopkeeper was beaten to death by teenage robbers for NZ$100 and a few packets of cigarettes during the campaign.

In the past three years, violent crime is up 13.2 per cent, sex crimes by 20.7 per cent and burglary by 14.3 per cent. In one north island seat a man who shot dead a Rastafarian waging a campaign of terror on a small town has, after being acquitted of murder, launched his own political party with himself as candidate.

The acting Chief Justice, Ian Barker, has criticised Mr Moore for judge-bashing in his statements on law and order and warned that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the Western world.

The chances of Mr Moore being in a position to act on his views are slim. His party is likely to lose and a challenge to his leadership is expected to follow soon afterwards. When New Zealanders go to the polls tomorrow the result will be, if not a foregone conclusion, hardly a surprise.

But with polls showing support for MMP falling, the outcome of the referendum is far less sure. There is only one certainly: if MMP is approved, New Zealand voters are unlikely to be bored and bitter next time, when even the McGillicuddy Serious Party crackpots could end up helping to run the country.

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