2020 is the year of games - the Tokyo Olympics, and the lesser-known game of picking New Zealand’s general election date. We are unfortunately in for a lot of politics and athletic metaphors as a result of both. While the game playing over the election date is hardly the 100-metre sprint, but it does highlight something the New Zealand electorate has not had to worry about for the past few elections: the Prime Minister’s power to effectively set the election date. Fortunately for us, the games were put on hold due to the welcome development of a new convention. But, to stretch this metaphor even further, the problem remains that the Prime Minister is the one holding the starting gun.

So, will Jacinda Ardern follow the convention John Key and Bill English established and announce the election date in early February? This may seem like an asinine question, but the setting of election dates is something that varies greatly across parliamentary democracies like ours around the world. That power gives the holder of our highest political office a huge advantage over her or his opponents, one that we really ought to address to make our elections fairer, and election dates more certain. Fortunately, we have a clear example of what not to do when it comes to taking the power out of the Prime Minister’s hands, oddly thanks to the Brexit mess of 2019.

Starting with John Key, the 2011 and 2014 election dates were announced in February and March respectively. This tradition was carried over by Key’s successor, Bill English. He announced the 2017 election, held 23 September, on the 1st of February that year. This contrasts with the 2008 general election, held 8 November, was announced by Helen Clark on 13 September 2008. There was considerable speculation as to when the election would be held, and predictions that the government was desperate to stretch their time in office as far as possible.

But thanks to John Key’s early election announcements, it is almost like a constitutional convention was established. And like most of our constitutional conventions, it is entirely up to the Prime Minister of the day to keep, discard or change it. This might give us greater flexibility, and ensure constitutional conventions can adapt to changing circumstances, but this is the election date.

Local government elections are on a fixed date: by law, they are always held on the second Saturday of October. Passing an Act of parliament with a similar formula for general elections is a possibility to put the convention of holding general elections in September or October in stone. Parliament is a different beast to local government since it is the body from which our executive (the capital-G Government) is drawn from. Mid-term changes in Government or the breakdown of governing coalitions - a particular problem that is possible for New Zealand with MMP - mean that elections may have to be held at times well before a parliament has served its three years to break an impasse.

The need for elections to break impasses is exactly why the Fixed-Term Parliament Act of the United Kingdom’s parliament created such havoc in 2019. Boris Johnson, the newly elected (albeit by Conservative party members only) prime minister was caught with a zombie parliament: he could not get his Brexit deal passed by the British parliament, and also could not go to a general election. The British parliament kept conveying its confidence in Johnson to remain Britain’s prime minister while expressing its distrust in his Brexit plans. This is clearly an unsatisfactory result and an unexpected consequence of reducing the prime minister’s powers. We would be well advised to not legislate a specific fixed date for our elections.

There is perhaps a middle ground though between the grey areas of convention and rigidity of law. The prime minister might have the right to advise the governor-general to dissolve parliament, but the ability to set the actual date could be handed to the Representation Commission, the body that currently decides electoral boundaries and includes representatives from both sides of the aisle. The starting gun would then be in the hands of a group of officials. Because, after all, that’s how the Olympics do things.

Lewis Holden is a former National Party candidate