Kate Hawkesby: Are we having to wait too long to form a government?

Peter Dunne is someone I really respect because he’s emerged from a life inside politics to remain an engaged and informed observer on the outside.

He makes a lot of sense, which is why I love having him on this show. He recently gave an interview where he talked about the fact we shouldn’t have to wait this long for election results.

I agree.

I’m sure most of us do. I mean we voted for a system like MMP which is not that clear cut so that parts on us, but surely the mechanism for counting special votes can be sped up. As it stands, special votes have to be sent back to their electorates. That’s your first hold up. Secondly they’re counted manually. They’re also taking all this time to scrutinize the roll, check for any duplication of votes, recount votes... and bear in mind there are around 567 thousand special votes apparently this year.

But Peter Dunne says we need to speed it up.

He said, “the votes need to be transmitted back to the electorates, they should be counted much more quickly and then those results declared within days.” So days, not weeks, and I agree.

Could they do it? An overhaul of how the electoral commission operates would be needed, and I actually think that’s not a bad thing. I mean on the face of it, the electoral commission seems an antiquated cumbersome old system. Too much paperwork, easy vote cards and voting packs having to be sent out to every letterbox, which were in many cases too slow to get out anyway, and as it turns out you don’t even really need them. A wacky rule around when a candidate dies in terms of adding a seat to create a potential overhang and having to go through a costly by election. Crazy.

But all of this dilly dallying and waiting three weeks means we wait almost a month after voting to get a government formed. All that time of limbo and nothing happening. All that time of a new government ready to get going and sink their teeth in and make some changes but can’t until it knows what shape it’s taking, and crucially, who’s in it.

It actually puts us all back if you think about it. If you factor in that three quarters of the country wanted a change of direction, then that’s three quarters of us stuck going nowhere. Which means the country is going nowhere.

I guess the alternatives would have to be soundly tested though – I mean automatic vote counting machines like in the US could be considered dodgy by some, so however the system changed it would have to get buy in. But surely not sending votes back to their electorates would be one easy fix to speed things up. That seems OTT.

Because it’s not just getting on with it to appease our curiosity as to what formation the next government will take – ie, with or without Winston, but also what decisions need to be made, what changes are coming. Whether the new government has time to enact much before Christmas. Can they get a new mini budget up? Can they get going on their first 100 days list? Can they push through the reforms they want to push through?

Starting a new government about 8 weeks out from Christmas doesn’t leave much time to kick into gear, and as far as I can gather, we’re all pretty keen for change to kick into gear, sooner rather than later.

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