‘Gerrymander not reason for Labour’s defeat’

Press, 19 June 1979, Page 19

‘Gerrymander not reason for Labour’s defeat’

By

ALAN McROBIE,

a Christchurch

political scientist, who has written extensively on the New Zealand electoral system.

The Labour Party held a public rally at the Otara “flea-market” recently to protest its displeasure at the Supreme Court’s decision on the Hunua Election Petition.

Mr Richard Prebble, M.P. for Auckland Central, argued that the Hunua electorate should never have been created. “It is a monster gerrymander,” he was reported as saying, “created for one reason only — so that the National Party could hold the seat against the wishes of the working people in Otara.”

Now “gerrymander” is a strong word to use. It is a term which describes an electorate which has been drawn deliberately to give the maximum electoral advantage to one party and to minimise the chances of its opponents. The basis of Mr Prebble’s claim lies in his assertion that the National Party’s representative on the Representation Commission (Mr Barrie Leay,

the party’s general director) had instructions to include rural Clevedon with Otara in order to swamp the Labour stronghold with rural votes. But he went even further: “This sort of seatrigging,” he said, “has gone on throughout the whole of New Zealand so

that although National received fewer votes than Labour, it is the Government.” These statements raise serious questions about the independence and impartiality of the Representation Commission, a body which was set up in its present form in 1956 with the unanimous agreement of both Labour and National. This came after 10 years of inter-party wrangling over the question of how electoral boundaries should be determined: The solution was to set up a commission on which both Government and Opposition had equal representation. In the words of the late Sir Walter Nash, these two appointees were to act “almost like scrutineers.”

In addition to these unofficial commissioners, there are five official members. Four of them Government departments (the Government Statistician, the Surveyor-Gen-

eral, the Director-General of the Post Office and the Chief Electoral Officer) all of whom are members by virtue of the positions they hold. New Zealand’s Public Service prides itself on its political neutrality. Public .servants faithfully serve all Governments regardless of their political persuasion, and this acts as an important guarantee of the impartiality of the Representation Commission. The fifth official member is the chairman of the Local Government Commission. Unlike the four permanent departmental heads, he is appointed to his position by the Government of the day (witness the changed composition of the local Government Commission after National was returned to power in 1975). He does not have a vote. The Representation Commission is chaired by are permanent heads of a person who is appointed on the nomination of the

other commissioners. The rule over the last 22 years has been to nominate a magistrate because this is seen as yet a further guarantee of its independence and impartiality. From this it can be seen that the party representatives comprise only one-

quarter of the commission’s total membership so that, in order to secure a decision favourable to his party, one unofficial commissioner has to persuade at least four other members to support his argument. We can be sure that whenever any overt or covert political strategy is proposed by the unofficial commissioner from one party, the other unofficial commissioner will marshall all the arguments he can in

support of a contrary view. It is obvious, therefore, that the influence of the party representatives can only be minimal. It should be noted, also, that both unofficial commissioners must be present at meetings of the

commission before a decision can be made. What is not widely known is that the commission does not draw up the electoral boundaries. These are done by the SurveyorGeneral behind closed doors before the commission meets for the first time. Boundaries are based on population distribution as revealed by the fiveyearly census, and are determined by the application of four rigid cri-

teria which have been laid down by Parliament. The Representation Commission’s role is to examine the proposals drafted by the Surveyor-General, to act as critic, and to insist that the Sur-veyor-General justify the boundaries he puts forward. As a general rule the original draft is changed only where the full commission is convinced that there is a better solution than the one proposed.

During the last redistribution, in 1977, only two small changes were made to the Surveyor-General’s original draft, and neither involved the Hunua electorate.

It is clear, therefore, that Mr Prebble’s allegations are without any real foundation. There was no massive “gerrymander” in 1977; there was no “seat rigging . .. throughout the whole of New Zealand,” and even if Mr Leay did have riding instructions to include rural Clevedon and

urban Otara in a single electorate, there was no way he could have achieved this goal without first having gained the support of a majority of the non-party commissioners — and Sir Terence McCombs, Labour’s representative on the Commission, would not have allowed such a bid to proceed without putting up the strongest possible opposition.

If Mr Prebble really wants to explain why Labour secured more votes over all than National and yet failed to win sufficient seats to become the Government, he should look at the huge majorities many Labour candidates piled up in its traditionally safe electorates in 1978. In three of its Christchurch strongholds — Avon, Christchurch Central and Sydenham Labour amassed over 21,000 more votes than National could manage. Even by itself, this is more than twice

the over-all Labour advantage in terms of total votes.

Majorities of this magnitude go a long way towards explaining why Labour secured more votes in total than National, but still did not win sufficient parliamentary seats to form a Government.

Labout did not become the Government primarily because it failed to capture a number of National marginals where the swing required to unseat the sitting M.P. was less than that which the party achieved over all. To win office with an absolute parliamentary majority, Labour needed take a further seven seats. The seven National seats which are currently most at risk (i.e. those that Labour just failed to win in the election) are Kapiti, New Plymouth, Hunua, Gisborne, Invercargill, Miramar and Marlborough. Interestingly, apart from Hunua. none of these

seats experienced major boundary changes in 1977 and for most of them minor changes were the order of the day. Of the remaining six, the boundary changes slightly benefited Labour in Kapiti, Invercargill and Marlborough; National gained slightly in Gisborne and Miramar; while in New Plymough the preexisting party balance did not change at all. This analysis clearly demonstrates the random nature of the effects of redistributions and gives the lie to Mr Pre Wile’s allegations of gerrymandering.

While Mr Prebble’s rhetoric might sound sweet to partisan ears the danger is that is could well seriously undermine New Zealanders’ confidence that the country’s electoral rules are fair to all participants. And, when public confidence is undermined the legitimacy of the Government as a whole is open to question.