Before the change was made, Mr Hunt was opposed to it. He believed that it would lead to ungovernable situations, where the government was unable to get its agenda through and that would lead to all sorts of trouble.

Having now witnessed and served under four MMP Parliaments, governed by both sides of the political spectrum, he's changed his mind. MMP, he says, is "a far superior system".

The main advantage that came through from Mr Hunt's speech was that, through the increased stature and importance of Select Committees, MMP has greatly empowered ordinary MPs, both from the government's backbenches and those of the opposition. There is thus much more discussion and consultation attached to every Bill. It has also done a vastly superior job of representing the different sections of New Zealand's society.

This extra search for agreement has not, however, hampered the business of the government as Mr Hunt feared would happen before MMP was adopted. No decision of any importance has been rejected by Parliament, as the process a Bill has to pass through before it is voted on means that unpopular or poorly thought through Bills don't get as far as the voting stage.

Bills introduced into the New Zealand House must, except under exceptional circumstances, be referred to a Select Committee, which must reflect the membership of the House. Select Committees usually contain eight members, and thus usually comprise four government members and four non-government members. A tie on any issue counts as a defeat.

The Select Committees are, therefore, rather powerful. Furthermore, Cabinet must pay attention to these Select Committees, as they need the support of backbenchers, both their own and the opposition's, to get their ideas through.

The current Labour government has not had much problem getting its agenda through, thanks to the support of New Zealand First and the United Party being generally supportive. These smaller parties thus have some influence, and can restrain the government from going off on one, from becoming, in the words of Mr Hunt, "semi-dictatorial", but they are not kingmakers. They do not have the influence to shape Bills in their image, only to ensure that Bills are not completely crazy. Push it too far and they lose even that ability.

So that's the working of Parliament. What about the relationship between Parliament and the people? It is Mr Hunt's view that the current Parliament "reflects New Zealand in a much better way than it used to".

This is reflected, claimed Mr Hunt, in a rise in turnout at the latest election to 82 per cent, although turnout has been jumping around a bit over the last few elections. However, Mr Hunt believes that this high turnout is here to stay, for one fundamental reason: New Zealanders, both politicians and people, have figured out how this MMP lark works.

New Zealand has a very strong party-political culture. As such, the second vote under MMP (the party list vote as opposed to the FPTP constituency vote) is "by far the most important" of the two votes. Until the latest election, politicians weren't too aware of this, and still tended to target their resources at the marginal constituencies.

Mr Hunt has a very safe seat. Previous election campaigns have cost him a pittance, as he's sent his staff to go and campaign in more marginal seats. However, more recently, and especially within the Labour party, the majority of the campaigning has actually been done in the safer seats, as this is where there is more scope for getting people out to vote for the party where before they didn't think it mattered whether they bothered or not. Now that this has been understood, expect politicians to keep mobilising their troops more effectively and turnout to stay high.

Which is more or less it. There were other small points: he voted against STV because he couldn't understand it; they used to have a bit of Scottish-style animosity between list and constituency members, but they've grown up a bit since then (incidentally, after Mr Hunt's discussions with his Scottish MSP friends, he has concluded that all animosity is entirely party-political); he can't see New Zealand ever switching back, because the only motivation to reinstate FPTP would be a government that wanted to have loads more power, and the voters would never stand for such avariciousness; and there's no reason to ban dual candidacy, it's "just the way it goes".

Lessons from all this for the UK are a little hard to eek out. Not only does Mr Hunt have every reason to think that everything is rather marvellous right now (even if he opposed the original change), but New Zealand's political culture is rather different. For a start, it's a unicameral system, thus the need for proper scrutiny from the Select Committees is greatly increased. Think of all the extra nonsense that would have made it onto the statute books were it not for the House of Lords. Also, their Parliament is much smaller, with only 120 members. This means that all MPs must be members of one or two Select Committees, and thus have a much higher relative status than MPs over here.

But all in all, the switch to MMP seems not only to be better representing the people, but also to have provided a much more sensible process for enacting the business of Parliament. So, in the circumstances, well done them.