What do you think of this call today for Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon to both stand down before any coalition talks begin?

It’s coming from former ACT leader Richard Prebble who says, regardless of the election result, it’s clear that New Zealanders don’t want either of these two to be the next Prime Minister.

And he’s spot on, isn’t he?

Even before voting started, people were saying, “Do we really have to choose between these two?”

And, as the results so far show, a lot of people didn’t choose either of them. So, of course, they should both read the room and stand down.

Or their MPs should read the room and tell their leaders that their time is up.

Richard Prebble reckons that Labour’s Kieran McAnulty could replace Hipkins and Erica Stanford could replace Christopher Luxon. How refreshing would those two be, aye?

Because I don’t see how either Luxon or Hipkins can claim victory or claim to have a mandate to lead the country for the next three years. They don’t.

Yes, National has more seats than Labour.

But, considering the party vote count at this stage is neck-and-neck, there’s only 0.2 percent between them. Labour is on 29.4 percent and National is on 29.2 percent.

That’s a split vote on their leadership. That’s essentially what the party vote is, a popularity contest between the leaders.

And neither of them have won.

So, I agree with Richard Prebble. They’ve both been rejected and they should both stand down.

The second part of what he’s saying makes a lot of sense to me too. The timing. He thinks both parties should have new leaders before coalition talks begin.

Because, as much as a coalition deal is a deal between the parties, it’s also a deal between the leaders of each party. Because they’re the ones who have to work together and make the coalition work.

So, it makes perfect sense to me to have the leader who is going to be there for the full term in place right from the get-go.

Richard Prebble says it could be tempting for either party to give their leader a bit longer. Because neither of them are completely hopeless. But they’re not quite good enough, either.

As he says in the NZ Herald: “What do you do with someone who is nearly good enough? A decent person trying their hardest.”

Which I think we can say applies to both Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins.

Prebble adds: “The temptation is to give them more time. Sometimes it works. Often, it does not.”

“It is the not quite good enough, (people) who lead organisations, businesses, political parties and countries to ruin.”

He says there is never an easy time to replace a leader. But there is no better time than straight after an election.

Noting how, after elections, there’s always a lot of finger-pointing. Which we’re seeing already. The other day Vanessa Weenink was saying people in Banks Peninsula hate National because they think the party’s gone too far to the right.

Chris Bishop is another MP who has lost his job who has been publicly criticising his own party’s negative campaign.

But, as Richard Prebble says, instead of blaming the campaign and the campaign manager, or the advertising agency or whatever, it is the party leader who is ultimately responsible for the outcome.

And with neither Christopher Luxon nor Chris Hipkins getting a ringing endorsement from voters, he says they should both go as soon as possible, before any coalition talks start.

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Do we need to go back to the drawing board with MMP?

Since the election outcome at the weekend, I’ve become more and more convinced that we need to do more than just shrug our shoulders and accept that we’re going to have 11 extra MPs.

And I’m with this politics professor who is saying today that we definitely need to do something. After the manufactured overhangs on both sides of the House.

Victoria University’s Jack Vowles’ concern is that, with 11 extra seats, Parliament won’t accurately reflect the proportion of party votes cast.

That’s where my thinking has landed too.

I know some people aren’t happy about it because of the extra cost to taxpayers of having more MPs.

I’m not too fussed about that. But I am fussed about the proportional being taken out of MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) by the gaming of the system that’s been done on both the left and the right.

So, if we decided to do something about it, what could we do?

Professor Vowles is saying today that one option could be to do what they did in Germany and exclude candidates in overhang seats.

Which I like the sound of.

When they started getting overhangs, they created more seats in Parliament to maintain the proportional representation.

But that went a bit nuts and they ended up with truckloads of MPs. So that’s when they came up with this idea of capping the number of seats.

What that means, though, and this is probably the only bit about Germany’s solution that I’m a bit wary of, what it means is if there’s an overhang and the numbers are capped some electorate MPs miss out.

And what that means is that everyone tries to avoid creating an overhang at all costs. Because it can mean electorates ending up with no local MP.

Professor Vowles has thought about that and has his own idea of how we could do it slightly differently here.

He’s saying today that if numbers were capped but there was still an overhang, we could let those electorate MPs into Parliament, meaning they could still represent their area, but when there was a vote in Parliament, they wouldn’t be able to take part.

I think that would be overcooking it. I think a straight-out cap on the number of MPs would be the way to go. Because, then, no one would bother trying to get an overhang. And the mix of MPs in the House would be proportional to their share of the party vote.

I’m not the only one concerned at how this has played out.

Former Prime Minister and Labour leader Helen Clark is saying that it could well be seen by observers that this year’s election has been flawed.

She says: “This outcome is not what MMP was designed to deliver, which was a proportional result.”

The current Labour leader isn’t happy about it, either.

But my challenge to Chris Hipkins and Helen Clark is to do something about it, instead of just complaining on the sidelines.

Because I agree that it’s wrong that the make-up of Parliament isn’t going to represent the way people voted. But nothing’s going to happen if nothing’s done about it.

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How do you feel about a million people not voting in this year’s election?

I’m not talking here about people not getting themselves sorted and registering early because of the changes brought in by the Government.

The early cut-off. No more registering on the day.

These a million people with every right to vote, who didn’t. Couldn’t be bothered.

I think it’s a shocker and something needs to be done about it.

Because, if you look at the records over the years, there’s a very clear pattern of more and more people not bothering to vote.

So what do we do about it? I’ve got a solution.

But first, here are the numbers. The Electoral Commission is telling us that, in the election we’ve just had, 74.6 percent of eligible voters took part.

And it’s looking like being the second-lowest turnout ever in New Zealand.

There are about 3.8 million people eligible to vote. About 2.8 million of them voted. Leaving 1 million who didn’t.

Not that this is totally new. A similar amount of people couldn’t be bothered last election, either.

Some people might say, oh so what?

They might think that it just means we have a million people who don’t have the right to complain about the way the country’s being run over the next three years. Because they didn’t vote.

But it’s more than that. Because the more people voting, the more representative our Parliament is.

The more of a mandate the Government of the day has.

So we need to take it seriously. And I think we need to do what they do in Australia and make voting compulsory.

It works and here’s the proof. Since making voting in federal elections compulsory in 1924, voter turnout has never fallen below 90 percent.

Two years before making it compulsory, just 60 percent of people voted in the 1922 election.

In 1924, voting was made compulsory and straight away there was an increase in voter turnout, with 91 percent voting a year later in the 1925 election.

And, as I say, it hasn‘t been any lower than 90 percent since.

Fun fact: The fine for not voting is $20 Australian. Which you would think wouldn't be enough of a stick to get people voting. But it is.

Although, voting is probably so ingrained - or the obligation to vote is probably so ingrained in Australia - the threat of a fine doesn’t really come into it.

Not that everyone in Australia likes being told they're breaking the law if they don’t vote. There have been campaigns over the years to change the rules. But most people are fine with it.

I’d be more than fine with compulsory voting here in New Zealand. It very clearly works in Australia. So why not do the same thing here?

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