The Balance of Power
Every three years New Zealanders go to the polls to vote. With thier
ballot they express thier support for a politcal party and local
representative. But how many people know how thier votes translate into
authority.
Topics
How MMP Works
Under the MMP system every voter get two votes. One vote is for the person they want to represent thier electorate and one for the party they wish to govern the country.
The party vote determines the proportion of seats each political party gets in parliment and the MPs for each party who wins an electoral seat fills up one of these seats. If a party has extra seat that have not been filled by electoral MP's then the seats are filled by candidates from the respective parties list. Which is a list published before the election consiting of ranked candidates to fill in extra seats until there are no more party seats avaliable.
A party must win a minimum of 5% of party votes to get any seats or atleast one electoral vote to get any seats in parliment
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Hierachy
New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy which means at the top of the Hierachy of power the Sovereign (currently Queen Elizabeth II) But in constitutional monarchies the Sovereign may reign but the executive rules.
The executive are MP's which are granted special responsibilities and oversea the running of government departments. The execitive are selected by he Primeminister and the ruling polical party or coalition. They meet in a special meeting called a caucus where our public policy is debated and decided.
Below the ministers are a range of polictal actors whos role is to support and/or restrain the actions of the goverment. The most important of these are the opposition MP's who are all those MP's who are not part of the ruling party or coalition who participate in deabate in parliment or select commities.
Next are the Chief executives who run goverment departments, thier job is to enact the policy handed down by thier governing ministers.
Judges are here also, used to translate New Zealands laws into the everyday world creating what is called common law.
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Confidence and Supply
Confidence and Supply quit simply is the ability for a goverment to pass a vote pertaining to it spending money. If the goverment wants to do something it must first pass a budget which is its financial plan for spending our taxes. It needs a majority of votes do this and if it cannot pass its budget then in essence the government has lost authority to govern (atleast in the way it likes) the government must either renigotiate the terms of its budget successfully or an election must be held.