After gerrymandering enrolment timeframe to steal next election, Luxon just wants to replace entire MMP system to retain power?
WOW.
You gotta hand it to Luxon, rich men will do ANYTHING to hold onto power…
PM Christopher Luxon says he’d hold referendum on MMP if re-elected
Christopher Luxon says he supports having another referendum on the MMP voting system if he’s re-elected as he encourages greater support for National so the party can avoid working with “some yahoo and numpty” in Cabinet.
Act leader David Seymour says he’s not opposed to another referendum but suggests Luxon “may not have thought through what he’s saying” regarding ministers from other parties, noting the number of National ministers who had been dismissed this term.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the referendum proposal is “inexplicable” and a “power grab” as he claims Labour and National are “losing their grip on power”.
The Herald understands Luxon’s announcement came as a surprise to National MPs. The Herald has approached the National Party for comment.
NZME
…this is insane!
After gerrymandering the enrolment timeframe to steal the next election, Luxon just wants to replace the entire MMP system to retain power?
That’s pretty impressive.
We have MMP because it is representative of the people who live here!
FPP, which is the system Luxon wants, results in vast swathes of voters whose vote count for nothing.
The way the Right move to disenfranchise the vote so that they rig the system should be a nation wide shame.
It feels like we have gone right off the rails now.
That the Prime Minister would throw in an MMP referendum without even telling his own Caucus is a wild ride.
He says he wants a referendum on MMP, his Caucus claim he was just spit balling.
Who knows what the bloody hell is going on.
Winston has Luxon held hostage until the election where the MMP referendum will now be the talking point!
How on earth can National, ACT and NZF work together now?
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We need more democracy not less.
The opposite of capitalism is not communism, it is not even socialism.
The opposite of capitalism is democracy.
As well as gerrymandering the electoral enrollment system to their advantage.
As well as holding a referendum to try and get rid of MMP.
The National government want to hold another referendum to increase the electoral term from three years to four years.
The vast majority of New Zealand governments endure for two terms.
Strange how the government thinks 6 years is not long enough time to push through all the hard right pro-market legislation their backers want. But think that one year is enough time for a Children’s Commissioner to do their work, before an incoming government replaces them.
The National government has passed legislation to cut a Children’s Commissioner term of office from 5 years to one year and gave the current Commissioner 5 weeks to clear out her office.
Jack Tame asks the Children’s Commissioner if her sacking was due to her criticism of the government’s policies towards children. Dr Claire Achmad diplomatically replies, “You will have to ask them that”.
YouTube:
Outgoing Children’s Commissioner: Govt policies “an affront to children’s rights”
Q+A with Jack Tame
37.4K subscribers
12k views Aug 2, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZHp3dmbCHE
Dr Claire Achmad was given around five weeks’ notice that she would be exiting her role of Children’s Commissioner. First appointed to a five-year term to advocate for young people in New Zealand, that became a one-year term in 2025, and when she signed off on Friday July 31st, she left office two years earlier than she’d expected.
She says that she has been a “fair and balanced critic” of Government policy when it comes to child poverty, and that she has not been told by the Minister for Social Development, Louise Upston, why she wasn’t brought back.
Dr Achmad sat down with Jack Tame in her final week in the role.
To truely understand the vileness of this administration, this is a must watch interview.
I think Luxon has totally misread the political winds here.
His apparent wish to go back to the good old days of FPP, and lets be honest, he wouldn’t be asking for a referendum if he was satisfied with MMP, will not go down well with his allies who have often only got into parliament because of MMP.
The problem is not the “numpties” as Luxon has arrogantly described them, although one could have some sympathy with a person forced to work with arrogant clods like Seymour and Peters.
The problem is the two main parties themselves, both of them.
National is so obviously leaking votes both to the centre and the right that even caucus members are commenting on it and Labour appears not to be picking up many of them, which it really needs to get into power. Labour itself just doesn’t seem to be getting much traction, it isn’t pulling in the voters who are sick and tired of being flogged for the last three years and being told the floggings will cease when morale improves.
It is the smaller parties who are reaping the rewards of the two main parties being total dufusses and it is about as certain as the sun will come up tomorrow that National will be calling on ANY party after election day if it will keep them in power, despite what Luxon is saying now.
If Luxon still manages to win the most seats this November, his negotiations for a new government will make the previous ones look like childsplay.
No Mike the problem is Luxon, he is the numpty.
But can National, ACT and TOP work together? Then there is the intriguing possibility that this may be a “David Cameron BREXIT moment”
I think it’s cool to have a referendum every fifteen years but it should be in an election year when turn out will be high not in an off year when noone votes
Honestly nz does need electoral and constitutional reform, we have a dangerously centralized unicameral parliament with no formal constitution beyond precedence and some Westminster statutes
We should ideally have 150 mps (Christchurchs population alone has nearly doubled in 30 years, yet not a single new electorate is insane), 100 of them being electorate mps, keep MMP but lower the threshold and elect electorate mps via STV so electorate mps, this means even safe seat mps have to represent the electorate not their party or they’ll be voted out, it also makes it easier for independent community led Candi which mmp has killed.
We should have an upper house that slows down govt reforms, ends laws passed under urgency and sends bad laws back to parliament to be rewritten
We should also be a federation of 15 provinces that act like Australian states to push back against Wellington reforms
Four year terms, electing the Senate and provincial govts and local govts halfway through parliamentary terms which would improve local turn out.
A formal written constitution.
All referendums have to be asked twice once in mid terms and once in a general election
The answer is more democracy.
We could have a pm shut down parliament and rule by cabinet for extended periods of time and we have in the past, there is too much power in one place.