Those worried about the prospect of electoral reform in Britain could do worse than cast a glance in our direction, where governments elected through a proportional representation system continue to throw up counterintuitive results, writes Simon Cunliffe.
If there is a sense of deja vu over the horse-wrangling and policy trading in the United Kingdom as the three major parties attempt to come to a governing arrangement, it is because we have, indeed, seen it all before.
On a regular basis.
And despite the prophecies of doom and predictions of chaos that have preceded or accompanied the process, the sky has not fallen in.
In fact, the horizons have widened.
It used to be said politics is the art of the possible.
Events in our own recent history might indicate that politics is fast becoming the art of the impossible.
Old saws, prejudices, analyses no longer hold in the way they once did.
Trends and political tendencies have made nonsense of their dictionary definitions.
This "unravelling" of hard-and-fast party political positions grounded in ideology and tradition goes back a few decades now.
Take Sir Robert Muldoon, National Party prime minister and finance minister, social conservative of the highest order, but whose centralised economic policies would have been right at home in a socialist state; or the 1984 Labour government which gave us Rogernomics and ushered in some of the most right-wing economic policies in decades.
As the United Kingdom grapples with its hung Parliament and the possible permutations of government, some of the old guard within the confines of the two main tribal parties - Labour and Conservative - initially seemed to be having difficulty looking beyond the so-called certainties provided by the first-past-the-post model.
Political realities may now have helped them over the hump, but what certainties?
Surely, those old Labour stalwarts, in particular, have not already forgotten it was their centre-left government that joined with an overtly right-wing American president in an ill-conceived and unjustified war in Iraq; and which presided over the expansion and deregulation of "the City" - a den of capitalist iniquity if ever there was one, and whose role in the global meltdown is still being measured.
Proportional representation, or in our case MMP, has simply accelerated this corrosion of ancient enmities and automatic axioms.
Arguably, democracy is healthier as a result.
I caught on the radio the other day the tail end of a few rank and file National Party members interviewed following a party conference.
One chap said he had been quite disturbed over the party's position on the foreshore and seabed, but once it had been explained to him, in the context of the MMP environment, it began to make sense.
Another was full of praise for the Whanau Ora initiative.
Now, it may well be that they were being more publicly supportive of the party then they perhaps felt, but it may well be, too, that MMP genuinely has changed the ways in which people think - or, more importantly, are prepared to think - about the issues of the day.
Compromise, a bit of give and take, has become integral to the political process to an extent that it never has before, with the result that the unthinkable begins to be thought, and the counterintuitive occurs.
Are we any worse off for it?
The seabed and foreshore is a case in point.
A centre-left government in 2004, doubtless spooked by the racial angst raised within the population by the centre-right opposition (Don Brash's 2003 Orewa speech?), and subsequently exacerbated by the Iwi-Kiwi billboard series, responded by introducing the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
This sought to eliminate uncertainty by vesting foreshore and seabed in the Crown and setting up processes by which customary rights could then be established.
It led to the formation of the Maori Party and a culturally driven political upheaval.
A few years down the track, a supposedly centre-right party forms an alliance with the Maori Party, promising to get rid of the hated Act - which it duly does.
Cultural politics may have muddied the waters somewhat, but using the old "vocabulary", in essence a purportedly centre-right government has delivered what could be construed as a centre-left result.
The same thing might be said of Whanau Ora.
In 1999, Labour promoted a similar comprehensive welfare scheme, calling it "Closing the Gaps".
It was howled down on the basis of privileged treatment for Maori.
A decade later, an even more specifically "Maori" policy is introduced by the National Party with barely a whimper of protest.
Old terms and the entrenched ideologies often associated with them have passed their sell-by dates.
They are of limited use.
Politicians and commentators in the UK could do worse than to cast a glance in this direction before they get too downcast over the prospect of electoral reform.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
