Andrew Bayly

The other one, and it's a bit of a quirk, Port Waikato.

Andrew Bailey, of course, won a seat after the election because one of the constituency candidates died shortly before the election.

So the election couldn't be held on election day, but a few weeks later.

And so in the current parliament, therefore, we've got 123 MPs, where we usually have 120 MPs.

deal?Well, no, I think, I think what's caused the current controversy is that because they've articulated it, instead of being seen as the kind of overs and unders that happen through the vagaries of the MMP mixed member proportional system, and because, you know, we currently have an overhang, like you said.

We have an overhang caused by the Māori seats, uh, and also by the death of a candidate in the Port Waikato electorate during, um, uh, the election, um, which led to Andrew Bayly coming in on the list, uh, then [laughs] resigning his list seat to contest the, the by-election that was held to fill the empty seat of Port Waikato, and then a new list MP coming in.

So, you know, there are all these sort of little quirks with MMP, and it does result in bigger and smaller parliaments, you know.

I think it's just the outlining of the, es- explicitly of using it as a strategy, which has really raised hackles this time in the same way as when, I think it was Murray McCully who initially suggested it way back in 1996 or so, that you could have National Party A and National Party B to get list seats and electorate seats.