New Zealanders have until next Wednesday to make submissions to the Constitution Conversation on questions like whether New Zealand's parliamentary term should be longer than three years.
After much research and consideration, Maxim Institute is submitting the time is right for a four-year term.
Though Sir Geoffrey Palmer once denounced our three-year parliamentary term as the ''greatest enemy of good policy development and good law making'', many New Zealanders may not be as convinced.
While many still acutely feel the sting of legislative excesses inflicted by ''unbridled'' governments in the days of first-past-the-post, it is no surprise one of the major themes raised in submissions so far has been ''the checks and balances on the institutions that hold public power in New Zealand''.
Going back further, two failed referendums in 1967 and 1990 seeking to extend the term by a year demonstrate Kiwis' historical hesitance to relinquish - if only a little - our democratic ability to regularly ''throw the rascals out'' at an election.
Hesitation is an understandable response.
An election is the most tangible way we the people hold our elected representatives to account, so the more frequent the better, right?
More democracy, right?
Not necessarily.
A sound constitution should not merely limit public power at all costs, but afford good government, too.
As Oxford legal academic Dr Richard Ekins outlines, a constitution is a ''framework for the exercise of public power'' for securing the common good by ''realising good government; limiting the prospect of the misuse of public power; enabling democratic self-rule; and maintaining the stability and unity of the political community.''
You don't want a system with all check and no balance.
While it may seem natural to focus solely on checks to limit the bad, giving space to government to realise the good is important, too.
A balance must be struck between accountability and governmental effectiveness. Getting this balance right is tricky, though, particularly with the parliamentary term.
The political, institutional and cultural contexts the reform sits in need to be considered.
Like our natural environment, New Zealand's constitutional landscape is a unique one with no upper house, entrenched Bill of Rights or federal system, just to name a few exceptional features.
Simply glancing overseas to find reforms that worked well there and plonking them into the New Zealand context would be short-sighted.
That's why adopting a four-year or longer term simply because many other countries have longer terms wouldn't be a good idea.
Most of these countries, for example, have layers of other safeguards, which we have managed to strip away in a process University of Otago graduate and New York University professor Jeremy Waldron calls ''parliamentary recklessness''.
If we're going to extend our parliamentary term, we'd need to be sure there are at least some safeguards in place to ensure governmental accountability.
And there is - our solid proportional voting system, MMP.
This turns out to be the clincher. Under MMP, more often than not we have seen minority coalition governments take power, thus dispersing once rampant executive power, shoring up a shaky legislative process, and making a four-year term a reasonable way forward for New Zealand.
The distribution of public power has changed significantly since first-past-the-post.
Parliament is now more diverse; seats gained more closely reflect votes; and a wider range of groups and interests are represented in Parliament.
Parliament has regained the centrality it once held, too, no longer simply acting as a ''rubber stamp'' for the Government.
Coalition arrangements mean parties not only have to negotiate and consult with one another to form a government, but also to pass Bills into law. The legislative process has changed considerably as well.
Problems with the use of urgency notwithstanding, law-making is now slower and more complicated than before, with more groups and individuals involved in deliberations.
This means Bills are more likely to receive the rigorous scrutiny they deserve.
Committees have been beefed up, too, with subject select committees no longer always headed up by a government MP or the Government necessarily holding a majority of the committee seats.
More parties also means more space for dialogue, disagreement, and compromise in the public sphere, energising national politics.
As University of Canterbury professor Phillip Joseph writes, MMP has ''transformed the dynamics of New Zealand politics'' thanks to ''coalition arrangements, support agreements on confidence and supply, cross-party negotiations and shifting voting blocs, issue by issue.''
All this amounts to a favourable environment to introduce an additional year for better policy and lawmaking, likely affording good government without unduly reducing accountability.
The time is right for a four-year term.
