There was a sequence. New Zealand adopted in the early mid-1990s the German MMP. That ended overnight, if you will, the conventional very stable, very solid two party system that had been in place, and you had a multi-party parliament in which coalition governments had to be formed. This is where my argument for electoral integrity legislation came in. Floor crossing fundamentally prevented the functioning of the first New Zealand government, precisely because the dynamics of the system and the new parties that were formed and the new parties that entered weren't habituated to the new style of functioning.
The first institutional attempt to regulate the system was through electoral integrity legislation, with a sunset clause: let's see whether this is going to be enough; let's keep it on the books for five years, and if the problem of floor crossing is not going to continue to remain a problem, we'll let it expire. That's exactly what happened.
But it's not clear. Your colleague, Mr. DeCourcey, quoted the numbers very correctly. There was still support for the current system, convincing support—58% is not unreasonable—but there's a reason that electoral reform is being thought of in New Zealand. It's not at all clear that the two party mentality is really a matter of the past. Here it's important to remember what Professor Breslaw mentioned about heritage.