By Ted Johnston

The removal of the Ministers of Police and Justice, and the speaker of the House point to a need to return to democracy.

A need to review who should be eligible to be a Minister, and the Speaker of the House.

A need for real meaningful debate in parliament, obtainable only by a lower MMP threshold.

Only fear of the polls has finally made Labour remove the Speaker of the House and some of the most incompetent and unpopular Ministers ever. Poto Williams and Chris Fa’afoi showed they didn’t have a clue about how to do their job. And that worked well for a while for Labour. They can’t make great gaffes and mistakes, if they can’t be taken seriously.

And the sheer arrogance and bias of the last Speaker of the House Mallard show good reasons why we need to change who should be in these roles.

S 6 of the Constitution Act 1986 states that only MPs can be Ministers of the Crown. That leaves such a tiny pool of people that it is not surprising that Labour cannot find competent people to do the job. But you have to ask, why isn’t Little in those roles of Minister of Police and Minster of Justice when he is one of the few competent to do so? Politics.

It is the best argument to show that maybe we should have Ministers of the Crown, chosen from competent non-MPs, like in the US. We would then have competent Ministers.

Also a Speaker of the House should not be a partisan chosen by the government, as they can abuse their power to help prevent the government from facing hard questions and being held to account. A retired judge should be used to create a referee that is unbiassed and fair.

But even then, parliament’s debating chamber is not about debate. It is about point scoring, as the govt has the numbers to push its agenda, and will already have decided the outcome in the backrooms.

It is time for a third large party under MMP, to actually grow. Instead of a bipolar parliament with two gangs of parties doing a pointless political dance, we will have real debate in parliament which will have real meaning again.

When one of the two sides Labour / National no longer have complete majority control over votes, but have to seek agreement from smaller middle parties then democracy will return to parliament and debate will have real meaning again. This is how MMP is supposed to work.

We will have democracy and the voice of the public will be heard. To do that we need to lower the MMP threshold that was set so high by Labour and National to prevent the growth of smaller parties. Due to the high MMP threshold, no new party has entered parliament since MMP was imposed in 1996.

It is currently at 5%, but even at 3 -4 % we would see real change for the better.

It is time for change.

New Conservative hears the voice of the people and will make the changes required when in parliament to bring real democracy back.

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