Kate Hawkesby: Two Ws might ruin our weekend

Two Ws are potentially going to ruin our weekend: Winston and Wayne.  

Winston could kill all the fun Saturday night by holding the whole country to ransom and not forming a government. Wayne Barnes could ruin Sunday morning with his calls against the AB’s... we are potentially in for a rocky weekend of woe and misery leaving us all with a collective hangover Monday. The country could sink into a deep depression. More so than it already is. Yikes. 

I’m still aghast at how many people don’t understand MMP. I know someone who went to vote yesterday, the person next to them said to the volunteer at the polling station – ‘so wait a minute have we got two votes?’ The volunteer said, ‘yes one is party vote one is electorate vote.’ He replied, “what’s electorate vote?”  

I know of another person who wants to change the government, hates the way the country’s going, wants change, but in the booth decided they were fed up with all the politicians and so did a “protest vote” and voted Green. Now Green doesn’t change the government. Protest votes don’t work, there’s no such thing. It’s just a vote. Your party vote is the most important one. Where you put it matters. It changes the government or it doesn’t. We still as a country do not seem to understand this. After all these years of MMP, we still don’t know what we’re doing which worries me no end.  

I’m also worried about the polls, the lack of enthusiasm and engagement, and the difficulties I’m hearing about with overseas voting —links not working, papers not uploading or downloading— because when it’s too hard people give up.  

If I had a magic wand, I would change the voting system. MMP doesn’t work, I regret voting for it. In my defence, I had no idea what I was voting for. It seems now 25 years on, many of us still don’t get it.  

That’s a shame. Because if you think about it, why don’t we educate ourselves on this stuff? We can cite exactly the machinations of how the World Cup works, who's in what draw playing what side and where they’ll end up after pool games, who gets who in the quarters and what that means for the semis and whose refereeing, we can tell you everything about that and educate ourselves happily on that. But on one of the single most important things we will ever do, every 3 years, we can’t be bothered working out how it works.  

Is it that we don’t fully understand how important government is? Is it a slow boil lobster in a pot situation? We don’t wake up to how bad it is until it’s too late and then we get all mad and hate what’s happened but when we get our chance to have our say, we don’t understand it, so we just tick any box. Or worse, don’t vote at all.  

The people who don’t vote and see that as a protest, again, it’s not, it’s just a wasted vote and a missed opportunity to participate in democracy. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about what New Zealand chooses for you. But is politics so boring that we just switch off, and then when it comes to voting we can’t really be bothered finding out how it works? So we just moan a lot but don’t make any effort to fix anything.  

I know well educated people who still don’t know how it works and haven’t bothered trying to find out. Last night’s polls —if we believe the polls— tells us Winston is likely kingmaker. And then if Wayne Barnes buggers it up for us at the quarter final, don’t be surprised if I sound depressed Monday.

Kate Hawkesby is a journalist and broadcaster who hosts the Early Edition show on Newstalk ZB.