Johnny Givens Glbti people should vote for a continuance of the current MMP voting system to retain significant representation in Parliament, a high-profile gay TV producer and stalwart of the Gay Auckland Business Association says. "One of the great problems before MMP for lgbt people was First Past the Post (FPP)... and that post tied up political power and kept it away from us," says the producer of the much-lauded, though no longer screened, glbti current affairs show Queer Nation, Johnny Givens. "FPP said that only if you had a majority could you get through. So anybody with a slightly different opinion or a slightly different lifestyle was actually taken out of the political system," says Givens, who has chaired the GABA Election Forum held before each General Election in recent times. "MMP on the other hand has allowed more gays and more women into Parliament... it has allowed diversity in the way that we have voted. And therefore we have had people who have passed legislation under MMP which it would have been impossible to get prior." Givens says a return to FPP would lead to a "downgrading of the glbt community" in the political world. "First Past the Post requires a majority of one party so they don't need to listen to anyone else. But MMP means that people listen to other people, that they have got to get other people to suppport them to get their legislation through... that's why MMP works for us. If we lose that we lose the ability to influence." Of the other options to be voted on in the referendum, to be held alongside the November 26 general election, Givens says the transferable voting system "works fine in some areas of the world but I feel that you can't really identify with that kind of voting... it's complicated. MMP is much more direct and it works much better for us. We've gained so much from MMP, why give it away?" You can discuss this New Zealand glbti community news story in the GayNZ.com Forum.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 26th October 2011 - 7:53pm