Conference 2008: ACT gets high-tech

Note: this post originally appeared on ‘Douglas to Dancing’, a blog I maintained from 2007-9 on the ACT New Zealand political party. The blog was an extension of the thesis I wrote about the Act Party in 2007, From Douglas to Dancing: explaining the lack of success of ACT New Zealand and evaluating its future prospects (PDF).

The front page of the ACT website has recently been updated for the conference this weekend, with two videos on display. Both are slickly produced (mostly) and are welcome additions to the site – let’s hope we see plenty more multimedia during the year. The right-hand video is an invitation from Hide to attend the conference, short but to the point.

On the left, the first video features a conversation between Sir Roger Douglas and Rodney Hide about why he’s coming back to the party. Douglas believes that ACT can get 6-8% of the party vote this election. Obviously we’ve come a way from the days when he thought ACT could get 30-50%!

I think the video speaks for itself, but one thing I did notice was that Douglas talks about ACT going into coalition with National led by John Key as a fait accompli, instead of being open to working with Labour, as Hide has been stressing since the 2005 election. He says that ACT could get two or three Cabinet ministers in a National government. It’s hardly surprising that Douglas is expressing this view – but what did interest me was that Hide didn’t seek to clarify this at any stage.

Does this means he agrees – or just doesn’t want to disagree?!