The NZ voting system looks very much like the German system to me. And while that system certainly has its flaws (e.g. when a party has more directly voted members than seats from the overall proportion of votes), it does respect a higher number of cast votes than FPTP. Any vote in FPTP that wasn't cast for the winning local candidate is lost. In MMP, every vote for a party influences the result in every case.
As a german I can tell you that not being able to get rid of certain people because they will always re-enter parliament via party list is annoying as hell.
The intended way to do that is to join a party and try to work towards that from within. Parties are required to have democratic internal processes including voting on the candidate lists. But let's face it - only people with political ambitions of their own will even think about that.
