By the late 1980s, New Zealand’s political system had entered a crisis. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral system, the NZ Labour Party and the center-right National Party shared a duopoly on power. In the words of Geoffrey Palmer, Labour prime minister from 1989 to 1990, the country had spent decades under “elected dictatorships.”

It was an apt description. Since 1951, no government had won a majority of the popular vote — including those which held an absolute majority in the House of Representatives, New Zealand’s unicameral legislature. This was caused by a combination of geographical electorates, each of which elected a single member, and an orthodox first-past-the-post (FPP) electoral system. The only notable feature of New Zealand’s democracy was that it reserved four seats for Māori representatives, to be elected by a separate electoral roll, established in 1867.

This system regularly resulted in obviously undemocratic outcomes. In both the 1978 and 1981 elections, Robert Muldoon’s deeply unpopular National government held power, even though the Labour opposition won a larger share of the popular vote. Lacking any popular mandate, the Muldoon government used its majority to push through austerity policies, such as the 1982 general wage freeze.