While the Christian parties had 1996 to give them hope, most knew they had no chance.  While the Libertarianz and the Workers’ Party would be happy just to stand by their ideals, you have to wonder why the Alliance doesn’t just join Labour or the Greens or why the Marxists of RAM are so coy about their politics.

With the real campaign having kicked off, the efforts of two minnow parties stood out for me.  

RAM’s anti-GST on food petition, which leveraged their membership, is great grass roots organisation.  This issue could have been picked up by any of the populist parties but only RAM put runs on the board with it.  They should crack four figures voting results – a significant minnow achievement.

The Family Party clearly took on board the lessons of Destiny’s 2005 campaign.  Their coherent, persistent and active campaign to win South Auckland seats has far exceeded minnows’ normal low standards.

The Family Party is counting on South Auckland voters being stupid or ambivalent about economic policy.   The party has rather right-wing economic policy.  The voters it is pursuing have always voted  Labour (economically left wing). 

The Family Party must be assuming stupidity or ambivalence if they expect to win seats in South Auckland voters.  This is, of course, not even considering that these voters might not want to create another coalition partner for National in Parliament.   

I’m guessing people in Mangere, Manukau East and Manurewa aren’t that unsophisticated.

100 Word Blog set out on its first deliberate attempt at photo journalism today.  I thought I’d have a look at the Republic of New Zealand Party’s flag burning on my way to get lunch at Chilli Jam.

Unfortunately there were no flags burnt or otherwise outside Government House.  Perhaps, they meant the other Government House in Auckland.   Surely you wouldn’t go to all the trouble of putting out a press release and then not following through.

The other part of my outing was much more successful.  The rice burger with pork with a side of pan-fried dumplings were great! 

The Democrats have released their party list. It’s surprisingly similar to the 2005 list, with twenty candidates out of thirty one standing again.

This shows they have a stable core membership but they’re not attracting new blood.  While a stable core helps long-term survival, without growing membership they can’t hope for any future success or influence.

What should really concern them is that during a global financial crisis their brand of fundamental financial reform isn’t attracting attention.  They’ve the most fertile ground for their ideas since they left the Alliance.  If they can’t become popular today they never will.

Today’s press release on Cadbury’s redundancies highlights why the Alliance will never return to Parliament.  The Alliance of today offers nothing more than the two Marxist minnows, RAM and the Workers Party, demanding nothing more than economic central planning and income redistribution.  

They claim redundancies at Cadbury area trend to low wage and casualised work force.  Unfortunately for them and their openly Marxist compatriots trending upward median wages suggest the revolution’s further away than ever.    Likewise, their claim about casualisation doesn’t match the statistics on full-time vs. part-time employment.

Source: Labour Market Statistics: 2007, Statistics NZ.

Even increasing inequality isn’t a revolution inducing trend.

It’s somewhat unsurprising the serial controversy courter David Rankin intends to contest the coming election.  Standing against Hone Harawira is is comparatively unambitious given some of Mr Rankin’s previous activities.  Wanting to withdraw his hapu from Treaty obligations, seeking British pensions for Maori and claiming the Treaty grounds make seeking office relatively tame.  

While unlikely to make much of an impact on the election, the Hapu Party should add a bit of colour to the contest for the Te Tai Tokerau seat at least.

The Kiwi Party gained some decent publicity from their weekend conference; they certainly need it. 

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.

I was surprised to note that the Direct Democracy Party has a new secretary, this got me thinking.   As it’s still registered it must have made its annual declaration that it has 500 members. 

Googling found that when first registered it had a three year term for membership.  Those original memberships will have expired this month.  Having been inactive for some time, I’d be very surprised if it still has 500 financial members.   

Given that the party is unlikely to contest the election, without the driver of former leader Kelvyn Alp’s delusions of credibility, it’s all a bit irrelevant anyway.