• · The Beehive in Wellington has 121 Members of Parliament, 27 Cabinet and Support positions running a country 104,733 square miles with less than 4,000,000 people.

• Queens Park in Toronto has 110 Members of Parliament and 30 Cabinet Ministers running a province of more than 1,000,000 square miles with more than 7,000,000 people.

If you want to create a political rat’s nest, bring in PR or Proportional Representation.  It has all the combined fine qualities of bingo, a crap shoot and musical chairs.

It’s a generic term describing voting systems that try to reproduce into a body the proportions of the different parts of the constituents - generally in an assembly election. They are meant to solve the inequalities of party representation that happen with plurality voting systems.

Is it really such a great idea?

I’m about to visit my native land and my native city – Toronto – and that’s got me thinking.

New Zealand has about as many people as live in Toronto.

It’s fascinating to take a look at what’s happened here in Godzone. The now not-so-new system, called Mixed Member Proportional became law and was the voting system used first in the 1996 election.

As a result, National and Labour lost their dominance in the House. Neither has yet been able to hold a majority within the House under MMP. Instead, electoral results have required them to form coalitions to govern. Indeed, since 1998, there have been minority coalition governments relying on supply and confidence from parties outside of government.

Prior to the switch to MMP, New Zealand largely had a two-party system, with government interchanging between the Labour party and the National party since 1935. With the introduction of MMP, particularly with New Zealand's unique provision for parties to win list seats despite getting less than the 5% threshold if they win one local seat, there has been a widening of new and sometimes crackpot political parties represented within Parliament.

After the 1996 election, there were six political parties represented in Parliament, The Greens separated from the Alliance for the 1999 election, and with the creation of the Maori Party in 2004, there became eight parties. The number of political parties was expected to fall as happened in Germany after they adopted MMP but it has, in fact, increased.

What has resulted in New Zealand is evidenced by the Prime Minister having to negotiate agreements with the ACT party, the United Future party and the Maori party to enable him to form a working government - by giving the leaders of each of these parties high-paying Ministerial posts.

As I mentioned, New Zealand has about the same number of people as reside in my home city of Toronto. Yet there are 27 Cabinet and Support Ministers filling 68 Cabinet Positions. Cabinet meetings must be a real hoot. If each Minister speaks for ten minutes, the whole day is shot.

I counted from the official records the number of political parties to field candidate over past years and I quit when I got to 100. Some of the more interesting names were...The Patriot Party, The Equal Values Party, The World Peace Party, The Phoenix Party, The Fascist Union Party, The Ethnic Minority Party, The New World Order Party....and yes, they even had a Tea Party. My personal favourite?  The Bill and Ben Party.