In Search of Consensus: New Zealand’s Electoral Act 1956 and its Constitutional Legacy.

Abstract

New Zealand’s Electoral Act 1956, and in particular the entrenched (or “reserved”) provisions it introduced into the country’s legal framework, has long represented something of a constitutional oddity. In reserving certain key aspects of our electoral process, the 1956 Act purported to stop future Parliaments from altering these except by following a particular, and more demanding, process of enactment.