General Election

Two weeks from today is the general election (September 20). This is the day we vote for new MPs. If you are 18 years old or older, a New Zealand citizen or have PR (Permanent Residence), have lived here one year continuously, you can vote. In fact you should vote if you believe in a democracy.

New Zealand is a small country so every vote is important. Three years ago, Paula Bennett won her seat in Parliament by only 9 votes. It is easy to vote. You will find a polling booth nearby – a local school, church hall or library.

Our MMP Parliament is hard to understand. You have two votes: the first voting paper is for the party and the other one is for the person in your electorate. However, if you don’t want to vote for the person, you can vote just for the party.

The three main parties are National (the present government with John Key as Prime Minister), Labour (David Cunnliffe is the leader) and Green (Metiria Turei and Russel Norman are co-leaders.) There are a number of smaller parties also.

There are 120 MPs in Parliament. In 2011, National won 59 seats so needed the support of the Maori Party which had 3 MPs. This is called a coalition government, where two parties join together.

If a small party gets 5% of the party vote, that party has 6 MPs. These MPs come from the party list. There are only 71 electorates and 120 MPs so each party gives a list of people they would like to be MPs if they don’t have an electorate. The Green Party did not win any electorate seats in 2011 but has 14 MPs from the party list.

Vocabulary

• general election – for the whole country (not a local election)
• continuously – all the time
• polling booth – place where you vote (a poll is a vote)
• MMP – Mixed Member Proportional (percentage e.g. if one party gets 30% of the vote, it gets 30% MPs)
• electorate – an area, for example Auckland Central is one electorate
• co-leader – together (coalition – join together)