It’s safe to say that Deborah Coddington hasn’t been ACT’s greatest cheerleader in recent years. Even when she was an MP, she wasn’t one to mince words, calling Richard Prebble’s stunt-like suggestion in 2004 that ACT merge with National in the wake of Don Brash’s Orewa speech “disastrous”. In 2007, Coddington criticised Hide for being “rapt in his own dancing, flash suits, swimming and catwalk modelling”, instead of promoting policies such as “radical personal tax cuts”. If the criticism from Coddington has in the past been blunt, it is now razor-sharp. In her Sunday newspaper column published during ACT’s conference...
Since the election, one of the more talked-about ACT MPs has been its lowest ranked one: David Garrett, formerly a lawyer for the right-wing lobby group the Sentencing Sensible Trust. In the lead-up to ACT’s annual conference this weekend, I look at the debate over ACT and its views on crime. Much of this has its roots in the age-old debate over ACT and the concept of “liberal”. Firstly, thank you to Not PC for the linking through to this blog on this liberal debate. I examine the differing meanings of liberal most fully in my dissertation, but for a...
After a hectic campaign year in the blogosphere, your correspondent has been busy with other things and is still on a break from regular blogging. In the meantime, I urge you to enjoy the excellent series of posts on ACT’s early history by Dr. Bryce Edwards and indeed other posts on his academically-focused blog, Liberation. I have particularly enjoyed his work on New Zealand First. In a recent post, Dr. Edwards takes a look at the party’s future with the help of a Herald on Sunday article, for which he was interviewed. While this may seem beyond the scope of...
ACT will not be going into formal coalition with National. This is because ACT does not want to risk losing its independence from National and wants to be able to vote against the many aspects of National policy with which it disagrees. Instead, it will gain one or ministers outside Cabinet and negotiate some policy compromises with the National Party. The near-absence of formal coalition agreements from New Zealand politics now seems to have become cemented. The 2005-2008 Progressive Party-Labour coalition may have been the last we will see. But why not have a formal coalition agreement? Germany, on whose...
In just four days we gained a US President-elect and an NZ Prime Minister-elect. If Phil Goff succeeds Helen Clark as Labour leader as expected, for the first time since 1993 both of New Zealand’s main parties will be headed by men. And Sir Roger Douglas is back in Parliament. Welcome to the new world. First, let me offer congratulations to ACT for an impressive comeback. And congratulations to the 10 people who correctly predicted in this site’s poll about a month ago that the party would gain a result in the 3-4% band. While ACT’s number of MPs not...
Clearly, the new strategy has at least as many pitfalls as strengths. But as a party which recorded just 1.5 per cent of the party vote at the last election, ACT New Zealand has little to lose. Moreover, it is difficult to find fault with the party for attempting to address in a serious way the very problems I found to be causes of its past lack of success. Since the 2005 election, Hide has made comprehensive attempts to change ACT’s policies, brand and to make the party matter to voters. Ultimately, only ACT’s performance in the 2008 election will...
ACT can be well satisfied with itself this Easter, having caused not one but two attacks on it before the break. To me it sounds like a return to the old days, when ACT caused loathing from both the left and the so-called centre right. During the 1999 election campaign, Bill English called ACT’s policies “unrealistic”. On Thursday he was forced to do much the same, while John Key was scrambling to find a coherent answer to the idea of Douglas becoming a Cabinet minister. The kerfuffle started when Douglas outlined policies he wants to implement should he get the...
I joined ACT for research purposes in February 2007, at the outset of my research, but on Thursday this week finally received my first piece of conventional mail from the party. Of course, like most parties these days, ACT prefers to save money and use e-mail. Accordingly, it sends out the weekly ACTion! e-mail newsletter to members every Friday. The problem with ACTion! is that there’s not a lot in it and most of it is the same each week, having been copied and pasted from the previous edition. It’s also not very personalised and I’m sure for many people...
The latest Roy Morgan poll finds that New Zealand First has increased its support from 3.5% to 5.5%. ACT, however, continues to be down in the cellar at 1%, where it has been pretty much for the last two years. Now, I’m no fan of the Duncan Garner-style breathless commentary (“will come as a massive blow to the…”) on individual polls, but I think it might be useful to look at the differences in ACT and NZ First behaviour in recent weeks. First and foremost, New Zealand First found itself a winning issue for its potential constituents. The support of...