Yes yes yes yes yes! And yes you should write that list of advantages! :)

But, and with this sentence I possible disagree with myself. While the get a PI MP, tick that box approach to inclusion is completely bogus, so is ignoring sectors of the population.

When a party’s caucus is not roughly in proportion with the population it tells us something. When a large caucus is only 25% women, or has no PI MPs, or contains only wealthy people, or no parents, or all Christians, or only environmentalists, it tells us something about that party and which parts of NZ they choose to represent. That’s not good or bad, it’s simply tells us something about the party.

If parties were truly concerned with being representative they would take every opportunity to consult with, listen to, and implement the wishes of the electorate throughout their term. But of course they spend a great deal of their time and our money avoiding precisely that while maintaining a pretence of “consultation”.

The parties are understandably terrified of this – they pursue government to gain themselves three years of rule by virtual fiat. When I was Director of the NZ Electronic Electoral Trial in 1999 all the parties then in Parliament gave cautious support to the idea of a trial of e-voting. That was until I was naive enough to publicly point out that such technology, if robust and accurate enough to run elections, would permit low-cost, easily accessible referenda and move NZ closer to the direct democracy model of, say Switzerland. Support vanished overnight.

But a move toward a more direct form of democracy (however it’s achieved) would relieve someone like Anae of the impossible burden of supposedly representing every person of similar ethnicity – a expectation which is surely a recipe for failure – as well as other advantages, many obvious, some not so, too numerous to enumerate here.