My first reaction when I saw David Seymour resurrecting the idea of a four year parliamentary term was Dear God, please no!

I don’t think now is the right time to be raising this topic again.

I mean another two and a half years to go under this lot is quite enough without us adding another year. 

So far I think the best response to Seymour’s proposal was one tweet from former Reserve Bank economist Michael Reddell, saying for governments with “ideas and commitment three years is ample before checking back with the electorate”

I totally agree. Primarily my objection to a four year term is that in New Zealand, there is very little stopping a majority government doing anything it wants.

We don’t have an upper house like Australia or like the UK or US that can say no to stupid ideas.

MMP sort of helps us there because coalition partners can act as handbrakes, but then we now have a majority government without coalition partners and there is very little stopping them from what they want.

And so they have abused it a wee bit doing things like springing the Māori wards on us without telling us at the last election that that was the plan.

And I suspect that by the end of this term we are going to be very tired of them implementing some pretty kooky ideas like bringing back 1970s style collective agreements and threatening to ban migrant workers.

But there’s not a lot we can do. 

Credit to David Seymour for at least trying to address that by suggesting that to balance out the extra year for the government by giving the opposition more power through control of all select committees,

But frankly, that’s too easy to game and only works if the media’s strong, which it isn’t.  

And also, the idea that NZ governments don’t get long enough is wrong. Our governments pass laws very fast. Former PM Geoffrey palmer once described NZ as the fastest lawmaker in the west.

The only real check on that largely unrestrained power is us, the public being able to vote every three years.

I’m not keen to lose that, especially right now, no matter how well considered David Seymour’s proposal is.