In terms of election strategy, playing on the anti-anti-smacking petitions makes a lot of sense for them by seeking to carve out a niche largely unoccupied by incumbent parties. Interestingly, for a Christian party, their press releases make no mention of their faith. Their policies on marriage, however, have conservative Christianity written all over them.
While their other policies are generally populist it’s hard to go past replacing fuel taxes with GST as a new high point for economically illiterate populism.
The increasing likelihood, and growing threats, that many in the Mugabe regime may be candidates for war crimes may actually make it more difficult to remove them from power. The less likely it is that Mugabe and his cronies can walk away without ending up dead or in prison, the more likely it is they’ll cling to power with the consequent increase in brutality.
Regrettably, a resolution to the situation in Zimbabwe seems further away than it did than it did before the last round of elections.
One hopes this release has been buried as a quality control measure. Calling Kiwis forelock jerkers and snoozers isn’t the best way to win friends and influence people. Their proposal to have a referendum on setting up a committee to draft a new constitution seems an odd process, would people vote for a sight-unseen republic?
The Electoral Commission’s publication of submissions for broadcasting funding provide a rare look into basic organisational capabilities of political parties; whether they know how to use a word processor even.
For the minnow parties, three didn’t pass this basic test. Most embarrassingly the Kiwi and Pacific parties, with sitting MPs, have missed out on broadcasting allocations – thesepeople have taxpayer funded staff to run their diaries and one has an ex-MP as party secretary. The Republic Party, which misses chances to debate republicanism, forgot to submit as well.
The process appears to confirm Kelvyn Alp has exited national politics.
With Che about to make a tidy profit out of Muldoon, I thought I’d at least get a post out of the him.
With an election on the way what better piece of Muldoon nostalgia is there than the announcement of the 1984 election. Whatever damage he did to New Zealand, you have to admire being able to come up with such a quick (ish) comeback while clearly three sheets to the winds.
Field states it will be a party, “…that represents Christian values and stands for what our people really believe in.” According to Field, there’s strong support amongst Christian Pacific Islanders.
This is good news for Labour. It now has two minnows fighting for an identical constituency in Mangere, splitting any potential anti-Labour Pacific Island vote.
It’ll be interesting to see how much personal support the disgraced Field will maintain amongst Pacific Island voters.
Where the Listener article gets it wrong is that while it takes very large amounts of spending to make small differences – halving your spend costing you 1% or doubling it only gaining 1% of the vote – a 2% difference could be the difference between winning and losing.
After the fiasco of the Destiny’s Child party non-launch, Future New Zealand created a credibility deficit they desperately needed to address. They’re not off to a good start with their relaunch as the Kiwi Party.
First, their new website is very shabby. One page, that no one bothered to proof read.
Then, the main news in the first twopress releases, related to the launch, focus on Gordon Copeland’s resignation as co-leader rather than what makes the party worth voting for.
Lastly, Copeland is remaining an ‘independent’ MP. Not identifying as a ‘Kiwi Party’ MP is just mystifying.
The Family Party officially launched on Saturday with a rally in Mangere and its new website complete.
Unfortunately for them, the major media outlets almost totally ignored the launch. I think I saw one news ticker item on the TVNZ website saying they were going to launch, but no coverage of the event itself. They must be a bit disappointed.
Of the parties that won’t succeed in the 2008 general election, the Family Party will probably get the most attention. Their strong positions on moral issues will make for great TV during the campaign. Their enthusiastic campaigners will inevitably have words with those living life-styles that Bishop Brian and leader Richard Lewis disapprove of.
Its mission to win electorates in South Auckland is hugely ambitious. In 2005 its predecessor, Destiny, came 18-20,000 votes behind Labour in Mangere, Manukau East and Manurewa. Unless it’s much less divisive and less hard-right economically than Destiny, it can’t win these electorates.
