By Felix Walton of rnz.co.nz and is republished with permission
New Zealanders may vote on whether to extend political terms to four years at the next election.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
At the Bloomberg Address in Auckland Friday, Christopher Luxon said the coalition government planned to propose a referendum for 2026.
Luxon said the idea had cross-party support.
“All three parties in government are fans of the four-year term and actually I think the other opposition parties are as well,” he said.
“We haven’t kicked off that piece of work yet… But that will come onto our radar I imagine fairly shortly.”
Luxon was critical of the current three-year term and said it pushed governments into short-term decision-making.
“New Zealand is a bit of an outlier with Australia for three-year terms… I think if a government isn’t performing after four years you’d kick them out whereas with a three-year term you’re often just getting going and then you’re into an election year again.
“I think we need to think about some of the scaffolding for longer term bipartisan decisions… So that irrespective of which government is in power that work is still carrying on.”
He said it was common for successive governments to scrap their predecessors’ plans and start anew.
“What you’ve seen is simple road extensions get on, off, on, off based on who’s in power, and that’s just dumb.”
Luxon said any decisions about extending political terms would be through a referendum, which could come at the next election.
“That’s in our commitments to each other in our coalition agreement… To actually have a proposal on the table that we can take to the New Zealand people at the next election.”
Coalition partners NZ First and ACT have both called for four-year political terms in the past.
In January, National said it has no position on a four-year term, despite committing to introduce legislation on it and such a move having broad support in Parliament.
Under the coalition agreements, ACT leader David Seymour’s Constitution (Enabling a 4-Year Term) Amendment Bill is set to pass its first reading within the government’s first 15 months.
“I think a lot of people agree that having three years is too short,” Seymour told RNZ then. “We’d get careful, considered lawmaking more often if we had a four-year term.”
Of about 180 countries in the world that had some sort of Parliament, only nine of them worked on a three-year term, Seymour said.
