Well there goes my desire to vote for a major party ever again

Clark and Key refuse televised debate with other leaders

Via No Right Turn, who categorizes this as nothing less than a conspiracy against democracy.

We have been working under MMP for a very long time now.  Certainly, there’s been a fairly stalwart denial on the part of National, Labour, and the mainstream media to pretend that it isn’t so, and that The Major Parties are still the most important part of NZ politics, the ones that matter, the ones that get to make the real decisions about where our country goes.

And this is probably a big part of Major-Party-Supporter Conspiracy Alpha, “MMP gives minor parties (read: whackjobs and extremists) too much power“.  Because when you’re living in total denial about the fact that MMP will almost never deliver a clear majority for a single party, being hit with the fact that actually, you do have to work with minor parties, and that will entail doing some things they want you to do, is probably a bit of a shock.  And given that the minor parties are most likely going to want things that aren’t exactly core Major Party policy, but the media will continue to pretend they don’t exist, the perception builds up that Major Governing Party is doing totally out-of-left (or right)-field things, with Minor Party X as the demonic imp on their shoulder.

But here’s the problem:  neither National nor Labour are likely to get clear majorities, even if they do intend to spend the entire campaign pretend the Greens, the Maori Party, ACT, New Zealand First, and United Future don’t exist.  What they will do is look a bit fucking stupid when the day after the election they have to go cap-in-hand to a group of smaller parties who have the power to make or break the next Government and no particular reason to like either of their options.

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