MP Seeks To Make Her Compatriots Redundant
Scoop Audio: This week Barbara Stewart's Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill will go before the
House for its first reading. The Bill would reduce the number of MPs to 100 at the next election by amending s191 of the
Electoral Act 1993.
Scoop caught up with Ms Stewart today for a short natter about why she wants to potentially guillotine some of her
parliamentary chums. Over the course of the conversation it was discovered that Ms Stewart was getting some good
feedback from talkback callers regarding her Bill.
However, when Scoop sought to get down to the nuts and bolts of how Ms Stewart's Bill would work, and whether or not it
had the potential to greatly advantage parties whose MPs are predominantly electorate MPs, things became somewhat
murkier.
According to Ms Stewart's Bill the number of electorate and Maori seats would remain the same whilst list MPs would
shrink dramatically. In this situation a party - for example the Maori Party - that received a small amount of the party
vote and a large amount of electorate seats would end up in a stronger position than they currently hold.
Barbara Stewart explains how making 20 MPs redundant is going to assist NZ democracy:
here to download file(mp3)
ENDS