Douglas to Dancing - ACT Watch

German election hoardings

2009-05-11T07:16:00.010+12:00

In just over a month, on June 9, German voters will go to the polls for European Parliament elections. In some states, local elections will be run concurrently. This means a lot of election hoardings along roadsides and on lampposts. Today, an illustrated tour of some of these billboards with photos taken by myself of billboards down by the Rhine river here.

(I've always kept this blog for posts related in some way to ACT. I'm almost going to break this rule, but have found myself a get-out clause. On the tour of German election hoardings is the Free Democratic Party (FDP) - a party which ACT has in the past seen as "like minded".)

Let's start then with the FDP billboard. The caption reads "For Germany in Europe". It's the only European election billboard I've seen with a photograph of the leading candidate. I'll let you make your own decision as to why. Interestingly, at the bottom left is a number to which you text to receive an MMS picture of the billboard! And if you're on the Vodafone network, it's even free of charge!

The next billboard, also from the FDP, is for the council elections. A vandal has helpfully turned Mr. Strutz with a sticker which reflects the FDP's own image problem. It's been partially torn off, but the words "a****holes everywhere" are still clearly visible. This billboard also shows the FDP's latest slogan - translated liberally "You can rely on us". This doesn't seem that dissimilar from ACT's 2008 slogan, "The guts to do what's right".
The next two billboards are my favourites and one of the first examples of outright negative campaign advertising in Germany. The first is from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) - the main centre-left party here. The caption reads: "Financial sharks would vote for the FDP: for a Europe in which there are clear rules are for everyone."

There are two further negative billboards, one against the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and one against the Left Party. The caption for the latter reads: "Hot air would vote for the Left Party: for a Europe in which responsibility counts."

Political scientist Darren Lilleker has also posted on these billboards in the last week - at his site you can also view a YouTube clip. I suspect the SPD is using the European elections in June as a dry run for the main federal elections in September to see whether this sort of negative advertising is effective. Interest in the European elections is very low, so it's quite safe to try this sort of thing out now to see what works. It's definitely a more Anglo-American approach than has traditionally been the case here. While it's not surprising that this sort of thing will be attempted, it is surprising that the SPD is the one trying it. You might more readily expect this tactic from one of the smaller issue-driven parties, such as the FDP or the Greens.

On the other hand, while it's fine to attack the Left Party (which is regarded as untouchable by all the other main parties due to its extremist views), the FDP is part of the only constellation which could return the SPD back to power (along with the Greens - from the party colours it's called a "traffic light" coalition) other than continuing the unpopular Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats. So despite the good humour there is the potential to backfire. Indeed, as political scientist Bonnie Meguid has proven, small parties tend to only benefit when big parties attack them. What you won't find is an SPD attack billboard against the Greens!

The final billboard on our tour is from the "Republicans" - a very distasteful micro-party with neo-Nazi views. The billboard reads "It's enough! Mainz can't be allowed to become Istanbul!". (Mainz in particular has a large minority population of Turkish origin). These small placards are mounted high up on lamp-posts - obviously targets for vandals. Earlier this week there were some up on the way to my work but these have already disappeared - I assume removed by some voters who, unsurprisingly, disagreed with their views. While the Republicans aren't electorally successful these days (they attracted 1.7% support in this state, Rhineland-Palatinate, in the last state elections in 2006) , they have been elsewhere in Germany in the past and the NPD - a party with similar views - is represented in several state parliaments in eastern Germany. However, in Mainz, a May Day neo-Nazi march attracted about 70 supporters, while thousands marched against them in a counter-demonstration.

I'll leave you with the Rhine river on a beautiful spring day...

The guts to do what's right?

2009-05-11T06:21:00.005+12:00

ACT party stalwart Trevor Loudon, who runs the New Zeal blog, reports on the fate of the "anti-gang patches" bill. Amidst a busy news week I had initially overlooked the Herald's coverage of the fate of the bill, which saw it passed 62-59. For ACT, Rodney Hide, John Boscawen and David Garrett both voted in favour of the bill, while Heather Roy and Roger Douglas voted against it. In March, Hide had made the bill a conscience vote after divisions amongst the caucus had become apparent.

On hearing that Rodney Hide had reversed his original opposition to the bill, Loudon wrote: "I was shocked. Why would Rodney do it? Rodney's a libertarian who cares about individual liberty more than anything else. I'm still stunned."

And yes, it is a little surprising. Gang patches, Hide had argued in the past, were a question of freedom of speech. But if you read Hide's speech for the third reading of the bill, which Loudon helpfully reproduces at his post, his argument is that gang patches represent intimidation:

Interestingly, the arrival of a gang member without the patch will not cause that intimidation. It is not the look that is causing the intimidation; it is the patch. I say that it is a tough line to draw, but clearly, in this example, the wearing of a patch on a jacket is intimidation of law-abiding citizens, and I am prepared to give the good people of Wanganui the opportunity to make a law so that they can choose how they want to live, and so that the police can enforce that, for people to live free of the intimidation and fear they have been suffering.

Initially my response to this was to suspect that Hide had found a convenient get-out clause to support the bill. Was this really part of the "guts to do what's right" - the 2008 campaign slogan? Loudon's surprise is justified: most supporters would align Hide with the libertarian, rather than the conservative wing of the party. Nobody would be surprised about Garrett's support for the bill. Even John Boscawen's vote in favour is somewhat understandable. But Rodney Hide? Surely he can't really mean what he said in his speech?

Or perhaps he can. There are two possible motives which have led Hide to his decision. The first is that having studied the potential consequences, he now truly believes in the bill. I'm fairly sure Hide wouldn't agree with his economics, but he probably would agree with the famous quotation by John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" And indeed, Hide and ACT have been researching the effects of the bill. According to Hide, he "despatched Mr David Garrett to Wanganui to talk to people, and in particular to ask some very basic questions". Perhaps after some long chats with Garrett, Hide has been convinced that the good of the bill outweighs the bad.

The second option is that Hide's support is pure Realpolitik. ACT is supporting National in government. National supports the bill. The bill does not need Hide's support - it would have passed even without John Boscawen - but as party leader, his vote is a powerful symbol. Small parties in government need to win friends and influence people. Sure, Hide could have voted against the bill. But why should National feel dispositioned to supporting ACT's own tough-on-crime bill - Garrett's "three strikes" legislation? There is nothing wrong with compromise in a unofficial coalition government - in fact it is a requirement. Hide may have realised that the point of difference was so small enough that it was not worth worrying about. It is a local law which affects Wanganui only. Surely, three-strikes is worth a lot more to the party as a whole?

If the former option is what happened, fine. Some supporters such as Trevor Loudon will of course be disappointed at first, this time. But having a party leader who's prepared to change his mind where necessary is probably a good thing to have.

If the latter is what happened, then I'm not so sure. If it really was Realpolitik at work, why not try and explain this compromise to members? "Look, we're in government now, sometimes we're not always going to get our own way. For a majority of members, three-strikes is important and we really need to do everything to get that passed". Wouldn't this be the more honest course of action to take, rather than looking for a detail which would let you off the hook? Is this really "the guts to do what's right"?

Trevor Loudon asked his readers for what they thought of Hide's decision. So will I. What do ACT supporters think?

Update: ACT and the Dunedin stadium

2009-04-05T19:03:00.002+12:00

An update on opposition to the proposed new waterfront stadium in Dunedin, focusing on the connections with ACT.

The prospects for action by Local Government Minister and ACT leader Rodney Hide seem to be diminishing. Earlier this week, Hide said he would be pleased to come to Dunedin at the invitation of Stop the Stadium, but also warned that it would take gross recklessness by local councils, which have thus far approved the proposal, for the project to be reviewed, according to the Otago Daily Times. On Saturday, the ODT reported a Hide spokesman as saying that a visit would not be "quick", given that the minister has a busy schedule.

To me, this sounds as if Hide is keen to stay out of Dunedin's deliberations - some would say washing his hands of it. All government ministers have full diaries. That is a given. But if something high-priority comes up, they can alter, postpone or cancel less-pressing appointments. By signalling his unwillingness to do so, Hide may be vetoing any prospect of a review for the stadium project.

The deadline in this case is April 20, when DCC councillors meet to consider a building contract from Hawkins Construction. Of course, Hide could delay or halt the stadium even after this, but this would require the contract to be broken, with associated penalties. If Hide's decision whether to review the project or not does not come speedily, it will soon be too late.

On the ground, local ACT-linked people have been busy. Last week I wrote about former ACT MP and now Otago Regional Councillor Gerry Eckhoff's fury at the proposal and decision-making processes. Following the public meeting, enduring local ACT organiser and lawyer Hilary Calvert told the Fairfax-owned Dunedin community paper D-Scene (1 April 2009, p. 5, not online) that she believed legal advice to the Dunedin City Council from the Anderson Lloyd law firm was suspect.

According to the DCC, no further consultation in the form of submissions to the 2009 Annual Plan is required, because no material change has taken place to the project since last year. (Since 2008, the stadium project has failed to gain the required private-sector funding by a long way and the costs have ballooned by $10m to $198m. An opinion poll run by stadium opponents in the spring found almost 80% were against the project).

Calvert believes this advice was given only on the basis of an opinion from DCC chief executive Jim Harland that the project had not changed, rather than on an actual scrutiny by Anderson Lloyd. "No one has yet seen the construction contract to know what significant changes may or may not have been made. I want councillors to know they're likely to be sued. They're responsible for getting proper legal advice", Calvert told the paper.

The opinions of local ACT supporters - or anyone else for that matter - will be unlikely to stop the signing of the building contract for the stadium, which is likely to happen on or shortly after April 20, the date of a DCC council meeting. The local authorities propelling the stadium project, including the DCC and ORC, have shown little regard for public sentiment and indeed outrage against the proposal. Only intervention by Hide before or on that date would be able to delay the project.

ACT and the Dunedin stadium

2009-03-31T01:31:00.007+13:00

Former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff delivers a speech at the Dunedin Town Hall, 29 March 2009. (Photo by the author).

Local body politics constitutes something of a paradox. In election years, interest is low and apathy high, with voting turnout under 50% (compared with still a 70%+ rate in national elections). Coverage of councils' activities in the national media is accordingly minimal, unless there is some particular interest point such as an entertaining mayor along the lines of Tim Shadbolt or Michael Laws. Even in most local newspapers (with some exceptions), coverage of local body politics takes a decided back-seat to the minutiae of central government's activities. To the best of my knowledge, there is not yet a New Zealand blog dedicated to local body politics, despite the dozens created in recent years (including this one) which are devoted to national politics. This is perfectly understandable: for the most part, local councils perform a function akin to wallpaper. As long as the rubbish is being collected and everything is working as it should do, voters can afford to let their eyes glaze over at the mention of local body issues.

But when a big local issue comes along, interest can arise in a town or region to an extent unthinkable for anything but the most divisive of national issues. On Sunday evening, the Dunedin Town Hall was filled with over 1800 people, including myself, who came to hear six speakers explain why they opposed the building of a new sports stadium beside Otago Harbour, at a meeting sponsored by the Stop the Stadium Trust. The last time I recall the Town Hall being filled for any sort of political event was for the visit to Dunedin by the Dalai Lama in 1995. It certainly outshone the "meet the candidates" forums held in local body election year, which on a good day attract a couple of hundred at the very most.

What is at stake is $155m of money which is set to be collected from Otago ratepayers for the building of the new stadium. But the word "Otago" could just as well be "Auckland" (which saw off the construction of a waterfront stadium in 2006) as it could be the name of any other province in the country. $155m is perhaps not a lot of money spent nationally, but with a population base of only around 200,000 people, this is a project similar in scale to one costing a couple of billion dollars if implemented on a nationwide basis. It is a tremendous sum.

Reasons to oppose "the stadium" are numerous and too many in number to explain in detail here. Speakers at the meeting raised issues on everything from the stadium design (the planned roof would prevent grass growth) and the site (which sits on reclaimed, marsh-like land difficult to build a large structure on) to the fact that the economic benefits of the stadium have been oversold (planned "international concerts" would never eventuate and the building would sit idle for most of the year). Then there is the fact that private investors have hardly been forthcoming with capital for the project, which will leave the local authorities shouldering all the risk and facing a mountain of debt to pay off over the next 20 years (or longer).

As the meeting heard, Dunedin is not a rich city and thanks in large part to the closure of Fisher and Paykel's Mosgiel factory and the downsizing of Cadbury Confectionery, it has lost a staggering 1,000+ jobs in the last 12 months. Added to the large number of people not "working" in Dunedin (the many elderly, children and students take up a sizeable chunk of the 120,000 population), this gives some idea why the project looks unaffordable.

The ACT connection lies with two of the six speakers at Sunday's meeting: Alistair Broad and Gerry Eckhoff. Broad is a local real estate agent and is the partner of Hilary Calvert, ACT's long-time party organiser and stalwart in Dunedin. Eckhoff was an ACT MP from 1999-2005 and in 2007 was elected to the Otago Regional Council. (He also likes to be known simply as a "Roxburgh farmer"). Of the remaining speakers, marketing lecturer Dr. Robert Hamlin, Natural History New Zealand CEO Michael Stedman, former Dunedin mayor Sukhi Turner and DCC councillor Dave Cull, I am only aware of the political leanings of Mrs. Turner, who is left-leaning and as I recall a Green supporter. For the others, I have no idea. But to have at least one-third of the speakers being ACT supporters is a sterling effort in a city like Dunedin, which holds two of Labour's safest seats.

What was in keeping with ACT in the approach of Broad and Eckhoff was their attention to the decision-making processes behind the building of the stadium. For the past three years, ratepayers who read the Otago Daily Times have become accustomed to reading major decisions only after they were made and without consultation, under the guise of "commercial sensitivity". (This is despite the small fact that the ratepayers' money is what is being used). To give but one example, earlier this year ODT readers discovered that they were buying Carisbrook for some $10m and were paying off the Otago Rugby Football Union's debt (both to the city and other investors) of over half that amount again.

Alistair Broad told attendees at Sunday's meeting that he had applied under the Local Government Official Information Act to see a copy of the building contract about to be signed with a building firm, which has supposedly a "Guaranteed Maximum Price". Expecting to be thrown the commercial sensitivity line, Broad had said in his request that he would be happy for the exact figures to be blacked out; it was the wording of the maximum price clauses in which he was interested. His request was denied. Given that the contract to build the stadium is essentially one between the ratepayers of Otago (and especially Dunedin, from where the bulk of the funding is being sourced) and the builders, it seems outrageous that one party to the contract has been blindfolded from seeing the very contract it will be responsible for fulfilling (and paying).

Gerry Eckhoff was clearly very annoyed over the fact that so many of the hearings on the stadium had been held in closed committee. He told the audience that he knew the terms of reference for central government's $15m underwriting guarantee, but was unable to reveal this because he learnt it in a closed meeting of the Otago Regional Council (ORC). Eckhoff also read portions of the Local Government Act 2002, for which he sat on a select committee as an ACT MP. In his speech, Eckhoff also enumerated the major projects that the ORC was now funding - a $28m new headquarters, its contribution to the stadium and the Leith-Lindsay river flood protection scheme - and concluded that only the latter amounted to anything like core business of the council (regional councils are chief lyresponsible for environmental issues). Ironically, the ORC's new headquarters are also planned for the Dunedin waterfront and in any other year would be a very controversial issue in itself (as it stands, it is being quietly pushed through while the stadium occupies the ODT headlines).

The meeting concluded with the reading of a letter from ACT leader Rodney Hide, in his capacity as Minister for Local Government. Hide was mostly sympathetic to the meeting's agenda. It was not up to him as Minister to micro-manage every last decision made by councils, but he was in favour of councils focusing on core business. Big projects were usually bad, but not if there was an exceptional reason. But if there was such a reason, ratepayers should be asked and listened to. If this was not happening, Hide asked to be informed.

Responding to this, the meeting then passed a resolution to invite Hide to Dunedin to scrutinise the decision-making process. I see three possible outcomes of this:

Hide comes and listens but takes no further action. He does not want to undermine the decision of a National minister who granted $15m for the stadium.
Hide orders the suspension of the project, by putting it under central government control (as he is entitled to do under the Local Government Act 2002).
Hide orders a review of some kind of the project, focusing on the decision-making processes and whether ratepayers have been properly consulted.

The third option seems the most likely to me. In 2006, Hide led opposition - along with Keith Locke - to the proposed waterfront stadium which was to be built in Auckland, a project which would have brought a similar financial burden to northern ratepayers. To do nothing in Dunedin's situation would seem at best inconsistent; at worst, hypocritical. Yet to order the cancellation the project outright would be a bridge too far - Hide supports the autonomy of councils and will not want to become or be seen as an autocrat, especially as his knowledge of the specific situation in Dunedin will be understandably limited.

A suspension of the project pending a review would be the most logical and painless way to deal with a situation which cannot be ignored. Luckily for the stadium opponents, the fact that Hide, an ACT MP who has long campaigned against rates increases, is Local Government Minister means that the prospect of action is infinitely higher than it would be under a National MP who would be content to rubber-stamp the approval for the stadium made by a colleague.

Dunedin's exact future hangs on whether the stadium proceeds or is halted. A minister from ACT now has the power to decide that future.

Conference 2009: the broad church?

2009-03-17T20:36:00.004+13:00

If you work in a large organisation, I'm sure you'll be familiar with the "general reminder" e-mail or memo sent out to all staff. "Could all staff please remember that in future....?" or "Just a friendly note that...." and so on. In my experience, these messages are usually directed at just one or two colleagues, but are sent out in a cloaked fashion to all employees in order to avoid broaching the specific issue with the person in question.

Like the not-so-subtle reminders to employees, ACT's decision to adopt a conscience-vote model for all bills is a general one, but is squarely directed at the party's division over the three-strikes and gang patches bills. As Rodney Hide announced in his speech to the conference, caucus members will have a genuinely "free vote" on all bills not part of the confidence and supply agreement with National. Essentially, this makes most bills into a conscience vote for ACT MPs. It differs from the traditional whip approach used by most parties in Westminster democracies, which in case of disagreement requires a party's caucus to go away and reach a unified compromise between themselves.

Because confidence and supply bills are financial and taxation ones, the free vote provision will have its greatest impact on bills of a non-economic nature. Indeed, it is clear that the new system is directed at the current circumstances in which the party finds itself, namely that two socially conservative bills (the "three strikes" and the anti-gang insignia legislation) have clearly led to differing opinions from the five MPs.

This is perhaps unsurprising, given the socially conservative/socially liberal "fault line" in ACT. But Hide's decision to allow his caucus members to vote according to their own views does provide some evidence that the liberal/conservative divide exists within the caucus as well as within the party as a whole. Evidently, the differences must have been so great that the caucus has been unable to come to a compromise behind closed doors.

In his speech and media coverage of the decision, Hide has pointed out the disastrous fate of other small parties which have whipped their caucuses into shape against their MPs' wills. Foremost of these examples is the Alliance, which crumbled over a failure to compromise over the party's support for the involvement of New Zealand troops in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001/2. Hide stated: "we have seen what happens to third parties with leaders who just dictate their party's vote. Those leaders end up thinking they are the party, and those parties don't last".

With history in mind, the free vote decision could be seen as an adept solution to a unpalatable problem. Perhaps the traditional whipping system is unrealistic for a party with strong personalities and even stronger opinions. Why risk possible division over relatively small issues? Why not let MPs decide for themselves? Indeed, is ACT not a party based upon freedom of the individual?

Yes, it is a possible solution and at least in the short-term could work well. On some pieces of legislation, socially conservative MPs will line up behind the likes of David Garrett; the socially liberal MPs will vote in another block, perhaps led by Sir Roger Douglas. Douglas was very non-committal in Friday's "Focus on Politics" programme to the three strikes bill, saying that while he accepted ACT was a broad church, he would not himself becoming involved in advocating for the bill. Yet even so, it is difficult to tell with Douglas: traditional disinterest in ACT's crime policies does not necessarily mean he does not support them.

I'm undecided as to which "group' the remaining three MPs - Rodney Hide, Heather Roy and John Boscawen - belong. Hide seems supportive of Garrett, has been well aware of his hardline stance on criminals and would have had a good deal of influence over his high list-ranking. So he could well be voting with Garrett. On the other hand, Hide described himself to me in 2007 as belonging to the "liberal end of the caucus", suggesting that he might be uncomfortable with such an authoritarian stance. But it would be tough for a leader to not support a first-term MP and indeed one of ACT's chief campaign policies. I therefore expect Hide to vote for the three strikes bill and for the anti gang-insignia bill. I have no firm evidence for Roy and Boscawen but suspect they could well fall into the socially liberal camp. (EDIT: it has been suggested to me that Hide, Douglas and Roy form the liberal wing, with Boscawen and Garrett heading the more socially conservative grouping. This gives a 3-2 ratio and seems quite plausible to me. For reasons of leadership, however, Hide may well side with the conservative grouping on issues such as three-strikes, as noted above.)

But whether the ratio is 4-1, 3-2 or some other proportion is really immaterial. ACT would not have decided to follow a conscience model for all bills had there been no schism, however mild. Whether the decision is effective or not depends on whether it will help the party to avoid the very division it fears. In this, I think ACT is misguided: in seeking to avoid replicating the fate of the Alliance, it may be creating just a different style of division, whether real or imagined (i.e. media-driven). If ACT MPs end up voting against each other on a regular basis, voters may well and truly lose any concept of what ACT stands for, a situation which is as it stands hardly crystal clear. If certain MPs become nerve centres for different factions of the caucus, will this not set the party up for an easy division later on?

This is clearly, for ACT, the worst-case scenario and reality is probably not nearly as dark. The conscience-style model has the best chance of success if incoherence is employed only when absolutely necessary. If ACT MPs vote together 90% of the time, the party is probably still ACT. If that became 50%, perhaps this assumption becomes questionable. I suspect the former outcome is more likely, taking the heat out of only the most firey of debates between socially liberal and socially conservative ACT supporters as to the party's final position. A split vote in these 10% of cases will be better for ACT than a split party.

But the move is still a risky one. It is all very well to call ACT a "broad church", but actually, why should it be? The very point of small political parties is that they can fill certain niches; members are frequently attracted to join because they disagree with the one-size-fits-all approach of the mass parties. Never was this truer than in the case of ACT, a party jointly established by the disaffected supporters of the broad churches of Labour and National, symbolised by co-founders Sir Roger Douglas, a former Labour minister, and Derek Quigley, once a National cabinet minister. Admitting that ACT is a broad church is one thing; embracing it is quite another. Accordingly, ACT will need to be wary of following in the footsteps of its political parents - undergoing permanent division, which unlike the structurally much stronger Labour and National, could ultimately prove to be fatal.

Conference 2009: Deborah Coddington

2009-03-17T20:08:00.003+13:00

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 this week, she gave ACT a pen-lashing that even her fellow Herald on Sunday columnist, unionist Matt McCarten, might be proud of:

I received many emails and calls this week, in the lead-up to Act's annual conference, from past and present Act supporters dismayed at their party's increasing tendency to jettison principles, not only over the so-called "iwi tax" but also the U-turn to support the ban on wearing gang patches.

But why are they surprised? Gradually, Act has morphed from a political party which stood for issues - small government, property rights, choice in education - to a negative and angry party, opposing anything to get a headline. Oh, and posing on the D-list celebrity pages.

There are many good people in Act with enough clout to halt the party's slide into a replacement for NZ First.

Coddington's complaint is that ACT's criticism of a Maori tribe's ability to charge for the use of its land goes against the party's supposed defence of private property rights. This is actually a good point and I'm sure a majority of ACT members would actually agree with Coddington's argument. But you can see why ACT has gone for the opposition of a so-called "iwi tax" - it's much easier to explain this stance to conservative voters than to explain what property rights are, why they matter and why they apply to Lake Ellesmere. Yet the simple and more populist path contradicts ACT's ideology. This gets to the heart of ACT's age-old dilemma: ideology attracts members, but repels voters.

Coddington is of course from the disenchanted libetarian end of ACT; her fit with the party was never a tight one and her shift from Libertarianz to ACT never really worked out. Her comments may be cutting, but they are not surprising.

But Coddington's comments give another illustration of the depth of feeling felt by supporters of the party's socially liberal wing - activists who do not hold a lot of formal power but who can certainly make a lot of noise.

Conference 2009: coverage guide

2009-03-17T19:26:00.006+13:00

Not attending ACT's conference myself, I've spent the last couple of days digesting the reportage on it, which has actually been very good. For an excellent background to the conference, I suggest listening to last Friday's Focus on Politics programme from Radio New Zealand, which examined the state of ACT. ACT MPs Rodney Hide, Roger Douglas and David Garrett were interviewed for the programme, along with University of Otago Politics lecturer Dr. Bryce Edwards.

All of the participants on the programme shared some interesting insights. Hide explained that his low profile since the election was driven by a desire to become involved with the "doing", rather than the talking. Garrett gave a surprisingly frank admission that he had learned not to "joke" with journalists, lest these comments be published (although he gave no indication that his most controversial comment to date - that we've become too hung-up on people's rights - was made in jest). Douglas made some guarded comments over Garrett's anti-crime agenda (see one of my later posts).

Edwards gave some excellent analysis on ACT's first 100 days, particularly with regard to the party's apparent de-emphasis of its traditional economic issues, despite the country being in the midst of a recession. If you prefer a written version of Dr. Edwards's insights, you can also read a detailed post he has placed on his personal blog.

For raw material on the conference itself, ACT's website has transcripts of several of the speeches given to the conference, although unfortunately not Dr. Lees-Marshment's presentation. Nevertheless, the speeches by Hide and Garrett in particular are worth reading. As might be expected, Garrett seemed somewhat defensive of his hardline crime stance: "Although some people – even within the Party and, perhaps, this audience – have accused me of being indifferent to human rights, it is a given that prisoners should be entitled to decent and humane treatment while in prison. I firmly believe that that is right". For John Key's speech, go to the National leader's own site . NZPA has a report on Key's speech to the conference and an in-depth report on the event as a whole.

In the remainder of the print media, John Armstrong appears to have attended the conference and produced two good write-ups both previewing and reviewing events, while Colin James has written two excellent pieces which perceptively examine ACT's present situation, one in Management magazine, the other in his column in the Otago Daily Times (not yet online, but probably on James's website in the coming days).

In the blogosphere, there is coverage from the usual sites: David Farrar considers John Armstrong's analysis, while The Standard has the usual counterpoint based on Colin Espiner's summation of events.

Conference 2009: David Garrett

2009-03-09T10:04:00.004+13:00

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 lighter introduction to or refresher on the subject I suggest reading Dr. Bryce Edwards's excellent recent post on the "Drinking Liberally" gatherings and the differing interpretations of the concept.

This time, the liberal debate has resurfaced over ACT's "three strikes" bill, which seeks to automatically imprison offenders who commit three violent offences from a defined list, and ACT's agreement to support a National bill to ban gang patches. Before reading my humble opinions, I recommend reading Lindsay Mitchell's various posts criticising and critiquing the bills and ACT's views on them. My commentary here will generally sidestep here the merits of the bills themselves. There are others better qualified to comment on the specifics - such as Graeme Edgeler's legal assessment of the three strikes bill at Public Address.

What is the debate about? Briefly, what I will simplify here as ACT's social liberals feel uneasy about David Garrett's gung-ho attitude to the three strikes bill. Taking Lindsay Mitchell and supportive commenters as a yard-stick, they have both concerns about the bill itself and particularly with Garrett's answer to the Attorney-General's evaluation that the bill could breach the Human Rights Act: "Alter the Bill of Rights Act. We've got too hung up on people's rights".

A related dispute is over a "deal" between ACT and National which will see the parties supporting each other's crime bills. National intends to ban gang patches and expects ACT's support for this in return for itself advancing the three strikes bill. Mitchell and supporters argue that the anti-gang patches bill goes against what they see as a core ACT tenet: freedom of expression.

Again taking Mitchell and the various commenters as a straw poll on the liberal debate, it seems that some have problems with both bills, just the gang patches bill or just Garrett's statement on the Human Rights Act. The issue here is whether the debate is vociferous enough to lead to a break up of ACT, in a way that support for the invasion of Afghanistan led to an implosion of the Alliance in 2002. I think not, for several reasons.

Although I don't have any formal evidence to prove this, my gut feeling is that a clear majority of ACT supporters are natural social conservatives. There are plenty in the party who agree whole-heartedly that criminals should be treated harshly. David Garrett is representative of more the rule than the exception. The acceptance of Garrett and the granting to him of such a high list position to a candidate so strongly connected to the Sensible Sentencing Trust emphasises this.
Even if list-ranking is something conducted at a party level (led by the party president), both Rodney Hide and Sir Roger Douglas must have approved of Garrett. Douglas's support is significant, as he became disgruntled over ACT's pursuit over more pragmatic issues in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly Hide's "perk-busting". However, while a hardline stance on crime might not be Douglas's first priority (that's the economy), that doesn't mean he disagrees with it. A hardline stance on crime is more substantial than perk-busting.

Moreover, Garrett's suggestion to change the Human Rights Act is not dissimilar to Douglas's traditional view that reforms should be pushed through on a large-scale and quickly, to prevent opposition from interest groups (giving little time for criticism and review). Both Garrett and Douglas are thus comfortable with (to put it mildly) accelerating the legislative process. The ACT caucus is clearly supportive of Garrett and the party's actions on the two bills. I would also put down ACT President Garry Mallett as a social conservative, if only for his negative comments (admittedly somewhat backpedalled later on) regarding homosexuals on assuming the ACT presidency. These are powerful supporters to have in a party which with a decline in regional organisation has been managed increasingly from the top down over the past decade.
The socially liberal grouping in ACT is by far the weaker one, both in numbers and in personalities. The social liberals in ACT include both younger supporters, often associated with the ACT on Campus group (which has vigorously campaigned against the raising of the drinking age, for example) and the traditionally principled supporters such as Mitchell. To Mitchell we could add the likes of Andrew Fulford, an ACT board member who resigned in 2006 to start his own party (which never eventuated), or perhaps Peter Cresswell of the Not PC blog.* (EDIT: Cresswell states at Not PC that he "for the record, has never been an ACT supporter". My apologies for this misinterpretation.) These figures might be prolific in the blogosphere, but they are not office-holders in ACT and lack the power to implement their ideas.

Even then, it is important to note that the social liberal "faction" (which is too strong a word, the group are united more in a vaguer intellectual fashion) is not a coherent beast (neither is the socially conservative grouping, for that matter). Mitchell's own blog promotes welfare reform, for example, something which would normally be seen as a socially conservative cause (and in ACT formerly under the patronage of Muriel Newman).

I would estimate the balance between generally social conservatives and generally social liberals at about 70-30 in favour of the former.
The liberal debate in ACT is nothing new! The three strikes bill is really the latest variation on a theme. ACT has advocated a tough stance on crime since at least 1999 and indeed in 2002 campaigned vociferously for "Zero Tolerance for Crime" (along with much more potent socially conservative causes, such as "One Law for All"). Essentially, ACT has zig-zagged along the political railway tracks for the past decade, emphasising and deemphasising socially conservative issues at will according to voters' moods. If you're a genuinely social liberal and you don't like ACT's position on these issues, you should and you would have left the party a long time ago, as many have done.
A hardline stance on crime is easily the least controversial socially conservative issue, because tougher sentences for criminals have become accepted across the political spectrum. ACT's position on the three strikes bill is hardly that shocking (indeed, it sent out a newsletter to members several weeks ago pointing out that it actually wasn't as punitive as it had been characterised). ACT has emphasised far more controversial socially conservative issues in the past, from a tough stance on social welfare (promoted especially by Muriel Newman), to anti-affirmative action views. The three-strikes bill is really pretty mild in comparison and while in new packaging, certainly nothing we haven't really heard of before.

ACT could pick up far more controversial socially conservative issues, but now deliberately chooses not to. For instance, a constituency for anti-immigration calls is clearly under-served with the absence of New Zealand First and in a recession the topic could be ripe for picking, but ACT has never protested immigration (the reasons for this are covered in my dissertation). If it ever did, a few more social liberals might come out of the woodwork in ACT.

Those are five specifc reasons why ACT won't be breaking apart over a debate over the word liberal. Inevitably, there will be a few disgruntled voices over Garrett's actions. But a party can never please everyone, whether members or voters, and it should not try to. Like Fulford, Newman, Deborah Coddington and others, some might split away.

But new supporters will find the tough crime stance appealing, not least the supporters of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. And others who are not so enthralled will tend to look past Garrett to the meat on the bones - ACT's economic policies - and see "three strikes" as the grist for the mill which ACT has to also provide to stay politically alive.

Conference 2009: preview

2009-03-06T21:43:00.004+13:00

ACT's Annual Conference takes place next weekend. I won't be attending this year, so would appreciate reports from anyone who is. ACT has always held its conference early in the year and in post-election years this gives it a good opportunity to report back to members on the election outcome. In 2009, I imagine the mood will be very much self-congratulatory, perhaps even surpassing the 1997 "Victory Conference" after ACT made it into Parliament for the first time. There is good cause for this: not only were the 5 MPs ACT gained at the 2008 election at the top end of expectations, but ACT is also in government for the first time.

But we know all that. There can only be so much time for self-congratulation. ACT now has to focus on the realities of day-to-day governing and implementing as many of its policies as possible to reward members, who in many cases have given the party 15 years of loyalty. In the past, ACT conferences were used for "big-picture" policies or slogans - last year Douglas wheeled out the "beat Australia by 2020" plan. And just last month - even after being elected - Douglas was peddling a reformed version of the Guaranteed Minimum Family Income tax programme, something which might be nirvana for ACT, but which in reality never would be implemented under ACT's current support arrangements.

ACT has never been short on long-term planning, but it needs to grind out of National more incremental changes towards that goal. The time for firey rhetoric, slogans and above all grand plans is over. ACT does not need to fight an election for another three years. But its best chance to push through its core economic policies will come over the next eighteen months. After 2010, National will be unwilling to risk anything seen as remotely non-centrist. Can ACT get the 39% top income tax rate removed, last year derided by Douglas as an "envy tax"? What about bulk funding in education - a plan central to ACT ideology but opposed by National under John Key's leadership because of its perceived unpopularity? These are just a couple of examples of small but achievable gains ACT could squeeze out of National early on.

What is the conference programme? Each MP is naturally allocated a time-slot, but they've clearly been asked to keep it short! In accordance with their list placings, John Boscawen gets 4 minutes; David Garrett has been given 5. Rodney Hide will give one of his no doubt entertaining speeches. Coffee breaks. Lunch break. Graham Scott, former Treasury Secretary and 2005 ACT list candidate, gets a slot later in the day, while former rugby league coach Graham Lowe has an hour early on. I'm sure all of these will be feel-good affairs: Scott will assure members that ACT's economic policy is the right one to pull New Zealand out of the recession; Lowe will give some "gutsy" motivation from a no doubt "ordinary Kiwi".

John Key turns up at 8.50 on Saturday morning for a 15 minute slot. I expect little of substance from his speech. Will thank ACT for working constructively. National pleased to have ACT's support and that even though they don't agree on everything. Both parties working to improve the future of New Zealand. Unique partnership with National, ACT and the Maori Party. Isn't it great that we all work together? From memory, John Key will be the second National leader to speak to an ACT conference: Don Brash was the first, with his speech to an ACT regional conference in 2003, shortly before his leadership coup, creating friction within National.

The real interest for me is the keynote speaker, Dr Jennifer Lees-Marshment. Lees-Marshment is a lecturer in Politics at the University of Auckland and formerly of the UK. Her theory of political marketing and particularly her typology of the various market/sales/niche orientations of political parties has become a seminal work for studies of modern party politics. In my dissertation I used her theory as the initial basis for my analysis, with the chapter on ACT's "image problem" stemming from what I saw as ACT's sales-oriented status (i.e. ACT does not change the policies it offers based on popularity, but tries to convince voters via political marketing to want them).

Lees-Marshment has been given access to ACT's internal files and research and presumably she will give the party an assessment of the success of its marketing in the election campaign. Given ACT's return to an emphasis on social conservatism (specifically, the "three-strikes" bill), I would be interested to hear what she makes of the role ACT's image now plays and whether this is something the party can or should change.

Incidentally, Lees-Marshment is not the first academic to speak to an ACT conference. If my memory serves me correctly, several years ago Dr. Raymond Miller (also from the University of Auckland) spoke to the annual conference, while Colin James has also been a keynote speaker. The traditional willingness of ACT to accept outside academics and critics at what is essentially a feel-good party affair is to be commended.

Sir Roger Douglas has been shunted to the Friday evening part of the conference weekend, ensuring that his speech will gain minimal media coverage. According to the ACT newsletter, he will give a "controversial" speech. The slight problem here is that with Douglas, nothing really surprises. The most controversial speeches are always given by the least controversial-seeming people. Douglas certainly does not fit into this category!

Did Douglas give the speech?

2009-02-13T08:35:00.004+13:00

It has a partisan interest in claiming this, but Labour-aligned blog The Standard says that Sir Roger Douglas didn't deliver the speech that was put out in his name, because it had been released early by mistake. According to the post, the Herald report on which I also based my own write-up was written only from Douglas's published remarks and a reporter did not attend the speech.

In the scheme of things, the slip-up doesn't really matter much. But if true, it does reflect somewhat poorly on the Herald as the report should have made this clear, especially since the report was accompanied by a photo of Douglas appearing to deliver a speech at the Rotary club. Was photographer Martin Sykes actually sent or was this a file picture? As for the speech itself, what did Douglas actually deliver and does his tax plan, as reported, stand?

UPDATE: I have found my own answers at the other end of the blogosphere.

Douglas's Orewa speech

2009-02-11T10:50:00.004+13:00

Having been selected by Don Brash as the "greatest living New Zealander", Sir Roger Douglas has made his way to the former's favoured speaker's corner: the Orewa Rotary Club. He brought with him a "new" tax plan - essentially yet another reworking of the ideas which have circulated since the publication of Unfinished Business in 1993. Reading the report in today's New Zealand Herald, under the new plan, the first $30,000 of income would be "tax free" in return for paying for one's own health insurance, retirement and welfare costs. Above the $30,000, a flat tax rate of 15% would apply. But the new catch is that this proposal would be optional - people would be free to stay with the default system of public provision.

First, some comments on the plan itself. Well, dropping the "compulsory" nature of the plan may look fair enough at first glance, but it makes little sense overall. As Brian Fallow - a commentator far better placed to analyse these issues than myself - notes, a flight by the rich to the new individual system would create a sizeable fiscal hole to the government's spending, because only 10% of taxpayers contribute 50% of tax revenue. Moreover, it was always my understanding that a compulsory, uniform insurance model was necessary to keep premium costs to a reasonable level. Insurance works on the basis of risk - as long as everyone, including the healthy types, is insured, the premiums from healthy people balance out the costs generated by the chronically ill.

A compulsory system is certainly how the German system operates - a model which in other respects has always been very similar to what Douglas has proposed. All residents in Germany are required to purchase health and unemployment insurance, pay into a pension fund AND pay taxes on top of this. Although the quality of care is very high (waiting lists do not exist as the nature of insurance means you have a right to care when necessary) this doesn't mean what you pay is much lower overall. This is despite a tax-free allowance of 7,664 Euros (about $20,000 NZD) per person. However you calculate it, health care in particular costs a lot of money.

Still, a compulsory insurance-based system such as Germany operates has definite merit over both public-provision systems (such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom) and mixed systems (such as the United States, where insurance is also not compulsory, leading to relatively high premiums). It is more transparent, you have a choice of health insurers (i.e. competition) and a compulsory pension scheme leads to a high level of national savings, the lack of which is a perennial New Zealand problem.

The problem with Douglas's ideas is that it is really a half-hearted solution. If implemented, I wouldn't expect either the public provision system (caring mostly for the less well-off) or the insurance-based model to work particularly well. Neither would have the numbers to bring costs down via economies of scale. Why not stick with the compulsory model? A radical idea does not become less radical by chipping at the edges.

But whatever the merits of Douglas's proposed scheme, I'm not sure whether this is the issue in 2009. For me, the real story is that Douglas, an ACT MP, is strolling around giving Opposition-style speeches to the Orewa Rotary Club. Hello?! ACT is in GOVERNMENT! While Opposiiton politicans do not have access to the corridors of power and can be expected to give speeches setting out what they "would do", ACT is not in this position anymore. Why doesn't Douglas just tell Rodney Hide about his ideas? As a minister, I'm sure Hide would be only too happy to take these to Prime Minister Key. If they are any good, they'll end up on an order paper.

Of course, Douglas's plans would never be seriously considered by National. A reinvention of the tax system is not about to be undertaken by a party of the status quo, especially not at the behest of a 4% co-operation (not even coalition) partner. A reminder: this is what is written in the National-ACT co-operation agreement:

National and ACT note that United Future favours reducing and aligning personal, trust and company taxes at a maximum rate of 30%. They agree that such a tax structure is a desirable medium-term goal.

If this is the medium-term goal, perhaps National would be happy to consider Douglas's ideas as a long-term goal - as in Never-never land. Frankly, Douglas is wasting his breath giving speeches like this in 2009. We know his philosophy and what he would implement if ACT won 50% of the vote. ACT does not have and will never have this opportunity. But now his party finally has a voice in government, Douglas could turn himself to "small-picture", achievable goals. There are plenty of reforms which National might contemplate. An optional insurance system with a flat tax is not one of them.

Are there tactical reasons for giving such a speech? It has been suggested to me that it is part of an attempt by ACT to retain its individual identity - previously a difficulty for small parties which have helped to form the government since MMP was introduced in New Zealand. I'm doubtful of this for three reasons - 1) the election is three years away and there is plenty of time for raising the party profile once some policy wins have been recorded, 2) it has been proven that Douglas's ideas have never really driven broader support for ACT anyway and 3) I simply don't believe Douglas thinks in this tactical fashion.

Indeed, recall that ACT was given its best dose of oxygen in a good while when National openly announced its intention to form a government with the smaller party in the last month of the election campaign in the spring. In this regard, a deepening of co-operation might not be helped by criticism by Douglas of National's "lack of vision" - also in his Orewa speech.

Perhaps. The other reading could be that Douglas is now irrelevant. He is free to spout off about what he likes, but without a ministerial warrant he has little real clout and National is free to ignore him. Instead, the Tories work with Hide and his more workable proposals.

And perhaps this sums up Douglas's role as an MP - some noise now and then to generate media coverage, some idealistic proposals - but little real impact on the legislative process.

I hate quoting myself but...

2009-02-10T09:53:00.004+13:00

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 this blog, as an (ex-)MMP party, there are many lessons ACT can learn from New Zealand First, including the role of the 5% threshold. While ACT's circumvention of the 5% mark is undoubtedly a short-term blessing for the party, it is unlikely to be a long-term saviour. I placed the following comment on Dr. Edwards's post:

Another excellent post Bryce. I'm somewhat surprised that of all papers the HoS is interested in investigating the future of an extra-parliamentary party - makes a change from house price and "drink drive mayhem" investigations. Well done to David Fisher on what seems to be a well-researched piece.

The future of the "MMP 1.0" parties like NZF, ACT and UF and the 5% threshold is something I've thought quite a bit about since the election. I'm not so sure the 5% threshold itself is the problem, but rather the gimmicks which exist to get around it. Currently we have UF, ACT and the Progressive (deliberately no plural!) trading off the gimmick which allows them to gain representation by winning one electorate seat. OK, UF and Progressive are just single MPs - de facto independents. But this was not more accidental than intentional - obviously they hoped for more votes on the day to gain another MP each. Then we have the Maori Party which trades off the reserved Maori seats.

I'm not criticising these parties for doing this - why wouldn't you go for the safe route to get into Parliament, especially when you see the precarious positions of parties which try the gimmick-free route, such as the Greens and NZF? But the problem is the system - by having these gimmicks, risk-taking and the targeting of genuine niches and the creation of new cleavages is discouraged.

For example, if ACT had to get to 5% to stay in Parliament, I suspect it would have changed its tactics markedly to generate "wider" appeal - not in the sense of becoming more moderate, but more radical (think anti-beneficiary and anti-affirmative action campaigns - even anti-immigration). Since Hide has held Epsom, ACT has shied away from anything too controversial as it needs to hold on to the "blue-rinse", more moderate elderly voters in Epsom - and not frighten the horses.

The only true 5% MMP party - in the sense it was intended - are the Greens. And well done to them - they've picked a niche which is substantive and sustainable (for want of a better word) enough to continuously attract enough voters election after election.

The case of the Maori Party is similar - because it can concentrate on winning just the Maori seats, it can afford to appeal to just a small percentage of Maori. Most Maori still give their party votes to Labour. If the Maori Party had to win 5% of the party vote - something which should be easily achievable when the Maori population in total is around 15% - it would also have to appeal to the many Maori who choose to be on the General roll. Again, this would probably mean more "extremist" views and a more defined position on the left-right spectrum, because the success of niche parties relies upon them being outliers to the mainstream parties.

Of course, the danger for parties like the Maori Party and ACT is that if they gave up their "safe but boring" campaigns based on quirks in the system, and only competed for a 5% share of the party vote, they could and probably would fail. Why? Because they are simply not popular enough and are children of their own time. Bryce is absolutely right that parties like ACT and NZF were offshoots of the neoliberalism debate of the 1980s and 1990s, just as the Maori Party was a product of the Seabed and Foreshore and Orewa speech debates of the early 2000s. Eventually the fervour and enthusiasm for the parties begin to fade and with it, the parties' niches on the political spectrum.

The challenge for political actors is to create a timeless political party, peddling issues which are so perennial that they can fuel a party indefinitely. The rights of the working class is one such issue - that's why Labour still exists after 90+ years, even though the working class has become today's middle class.

The environment is another, which explains why the Greens are still going strong (and they are, despite some snide comments from the right since the election about the Greens' "poor" performance of double ACT's party vote result).

Finding such a long-life issue is easier said than done - and it's almost certain that there isn't one at the present time sufficient enough to excite a significant proportion of voters.

But 200 years ago, no-one would have seriously considered that a party based on representing the interests of the working class could prosper, because the working class as a proportion of the population as a whole was still insignificant - and of course the working class was disenfranchised anyway. And 50 years ago, no-one would have seriously considered that a party could prosper simply based on environmental issues, anywhere in the world. Another issue will arise, not today, not this year, but certainly in the future.

In the short run, parties which trade off the gimmicks in the version of MMP which New Zealand adopted are successful. They are in Parliament. New Zealand First is not. But in the long run, parties like ACT are in my view preventing the creation of genuine and substantive niches, both because they are preventing themselves from transforming and because collectively they mop up the vote which could go towards a third-party with a genuinely significant niche.

Back in 2009...

2008-12-31T21:23:00.002+13:00

It may seem like this blog is dead, but no, it's just on holiday while politics takes its summer lull. I will be back next year with commentary in some form, albeit at probably a less frenetic pace than this campaign year.

A belated Merry Christmas and a punctual Happy New Year to all Douglas to Dancing readers.

~ Geoffrey

Ultimus inter pares* - part II

2008-11-17T07:38:00.010+13:00

Reviews, committees, discussions, aims, aspirations, considerations, concepts, Commissions, working groups, taskforces, briefings, advisory groups...

Perhaps you shouldn't expect too much from an agreement that was patched together in a week. Attention to detail was obviously not a priority for an agreement which thought the formal name for ACT was "The ACT Party" (to be fair, this is listed as an acceptable abbreviation by the Electoral Commission, but the full name is ACT New Zealand).

Well, we didn't get too much. The document reads more like a set of aims for students sitting an NCEA Level 1 exam than the list of quid pro quos one might reasonably expect. The apple-pie statements start with the preamble, with the agreement "[r]ecognising that National and ACT have shared goals for a more prosperous and cohesive New Zealand driven by the initiative and hard work of individual New Zealanders". Now, who would have thought that?!

Turning to the details, it doesn't get much more specific than that. To ACT's credit, the National Party recognises the smaller's party's (and specifically, Roger Douglas's) ambition to see New Zealand catch up to Australia in "income standards" - with the 2025 date being a minor difference to ACT's 2020 proposal. Yet this is the sort of lofty goal that most people would agree with - and is something that cannot be measured within the government's likely term of office. Note that this is a smarter aim than Helen Clark's desire to see New Zealand in the top half of the OECD, because it uses a far-off date as its judging post.

In concrete terms, the 2025 pledge will see the "establishment of a high quality advisory group to investigate the reasons for the recent decline in New Zealand's productivity performance, identify superior institutions and policies in Australia and other more successful countries, and make credible recommendations on the steps needed to fulfil National's and ACT's aspirations". Doesn't ACT and National already have the advice it needs - in the form of ACT's policy proposals, including the "biggest pledge card"? To me, an advisory group reporting once a year sounds remarkably similar to Helen Clark's habit of sending uncomfortable matters off for a "review". We have the advisory group already - they will be sitting in those green seats in the government's side of the debating chamber.

We move on - to the establishment of a "Leadership Council", which seems to be short-hand for a policy of "no surprises", enabling "consultation" between National and ACT. The Leadership Council seems to be the distinguishing feature between the National-ACT agreement and National's agreement with the Maori Party. While this sounds like a very good idea, did anyone really expect that John Key and Rodney Hide - the participants in the Leadership Council - wouldn't talk to each other?

Then there are the "seven policy areas in which ACT requires progress to be made in the current term of Parliament":

Law and order: ACT gets its "three strikes" bill introduced to Select Committee and a "fair hearing". But sorry, no guarantee of getting it passed.
Climate change: a delay to the implementation of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and a review in a select commmittee. Not only does this not give in to ACT's campaign demands to drop the scheme altogether, the clause even sets out a path for ACT to approve the scheme: "[i]f a rigorous select committee inquiry establishes a credible case that New Zealanders would benefit from action by New Zealand, in conjunction with other countries that are important to us, ACT would be prepared to support legislation giving effect to such action." And if ACT doesn't support it, National will pass it anyway with the Maori Party.

Hide pushed hard for an end to the ETS and the failure to have it removed shows ACT's reduced bargaining power with the involvement of the Maori Party. It's a question of language - it would have been a big win for ACT to say to its members that "we got the ETS dumped", even if something vaguely similar is eventually passed under a different name.
Controlling Government Expenditure: finally something concrete. Hide will be a member of the Expenditure Control Committee. But the rest of the detail centres merely on a "series of Task Forces" to "undertake fundamental reviews of all base government spending in identified sectors, and to report findings progressively to the cabinet control expenditure committee and relevant ministers". I'm sure the Task Forces will do their job well, but what action will they take? Staffing costs are one of the largest costs, yet Key has already ruled out any reduction in the public service, only a capping in numbers, going against ACT policy that non-core departments should be closed down altogether.
Tax: more apple pie time:
National and ACT both recognise the importance of a broad-based, low-rate tax system for productivity and income growth. ACT favours a much flatter income tax scale, ideally a single rate of tax. National and ACT note that United Future favours reducing and aligning personal, trust and company taxes at a maximum rate of 30%. They agree that such a tax structure is a desirable medium-term goal.
To clarify: ACT, a party which campaigned for a top rate of 15% by 2018/19, has signed up to a maximum 30% rate as a "medium-term goal" only. No policy wins here - and why is United Future used as a benchmark in this matter??!!!
Regulation: Hide's vetoed Regulatory Responsibility Bill will be revived and sent to another "Taskforce" (this time we spell it as all one word), but again there is no guarantee of final National support. And a "New Zealand Productivity Commission" will be established. Will this share resources with Peter Dunne's (retained) Families Commission?
Resource Management Act: obviously too serious to be left to a "Taskforce", this job is instead given to "high quality advisory group" which will advise on "short-term amendments". The RMA is probably the piece of legislation which National and ACT agree upon the most - but it's not clear what would happen with ACT's involvement that otherwise would not.
Education: this time we have an "inter-party working group" to "consider and report on policy options relating to the funding and regulation of schools that will increase parental choice and school autonomy". Reports, considerations - but no concrete proposals.

Then there are the many areas of policy not covered under the agreement. For one, ACT has long pledged to repeal the Employment Relations Act 2001 as part of reducing barriers to hiring and firing- yet there is no mention of this in the agreement. Similarly, there is nothing in the agreement about ACT's hardline policies on social welfare, including its proposals on work-for-the-dole and "mentoring", items which would not be anthema to the Maori Party and thus quite possibly implementable.

Of course, ACT could not expect to have every policy area on which it has a view to be covered. But in the seven areas seen important to be listed in the confidence and supply agreement, there is next to nothing in terms of concrete support from National for an ACT policy. Effectively, ACT has signed away its support on matters of confidence and supply in return for merely agreements to talk on ACT's policies. This is represented by the many taskforces, advisory groups and committees proposed by the agreement.

Government is not a simple process and ACT may yet well end up with some of its policies put into practice. Furthermore, John Armstrong has pointed out that the process of discussions will allow ACT to be more visible in Parliamentary process, rather than "soon-forgotten policy gains". This may help to maintain ACT's relevance over the parliamentary term. But there is no guarantee for any of ACT's policies to be adopted, undiluted or otherwise, even after all the reviews. Reviews are the modern-day equivalent of fudging on an issue - putting off decisions you do not want to make to another day. Meanwhile, ACT has signed away its support on confidence and supply for the National Party for comparatively little in return.

And meanwhile, fellow confidence and supply agreement signeee the Maori Party has already achieved a big policy win that it wanted - a defacto bipartisan agreement to retain the Maori seats .

ACT has spent the last 15 years discussing and reviewing its policy to death - now it needs to implement it. It already knows the specific points of what it wants. Driven by its ideology, ACT of all parties could have been expected to push for a few initial bottom lines to be adopted in return for its support. The details could have been sent to committee, by all means - but with ACT already having some achievements under its belt.

*"Last among equals"

Ultimus inter pares - part I

2008-11-17T05:57:00.006+13:00

Minister of Local Government
Minister of Regulatory Reform
Associate Minister of Commerce

+

Minister of Consumer Affairs
Associate Minister of Defence
Associate Minister of Education

+

Reviews, committees, discussions, aims, aspirations, considerations, concepts, Commissions, working groups, taskforces, briefings

-

Roger Douglas

=

A great deal for the National Party.

Over the past week ACT has been successfully cornered by a cunning John Key. Overtly, Key has told New Zealand that the reason he wanted to draw in the Maori Party and United Future - even though their participation is technically unnecessary - is to build an "inclusive" government. But the announcement of National's confidence and supply arrangement with ACT demonstrated to me that ACT has been manhandled into accepting far less than it would have otherwise achieved.

I'll examine the ministerial posts first and ACT's policy wins in my next post. There are really just three main roles - the three main ministerial posts. Associate ministers are entirely subordinate to the main ministers. This leaves us with the three posts: Regulatory Reform and Local Government (Rodney Hide) and Consumer Affairs (Heather Roy). In the outgoing Labour-led government, the Local Government post was held by Nanaia Mahuta and the Consumer Affairs portfolio by Judith Tizard. Regulatory Reform is obviously a new portfolio created for Hide.

First, congratulations to ACT. For the first time in its history it will have ministers in government (but not Cabinet!). For a party which had hitherto spent virtually its entire existence in opposition and without any semblance of power, Sunday represented ACT's finest hour. The difference will be most noticeable for Rodney Hide, the remaining original ACT MP, whom television news report captions will no longer call "Perk-buster" (1997), "ACT Leader" (2004) or "Mr. Nice Guy" (2007), but "Minister of Local Government" or "Minister of Regulatory Reform".

Hide's portfolios tap into areas of ACT policy which have been favoured by him since he took over the leadership role. For the Regulatory Reform portfolio, this will involve his Regulatory Responsibility Bill which seeks to eliminate what ACT sees as unnecessary regulation. Much of the success in this portfolio will depend on exactly what sort of bill ends up being passed. The confidence and supply agreement states:

To reduce the red tape and regulatory interventions that are reducing investment and depriving New Zealanders of jobs, National and ACT agree that the government will establish a task force to carry forward work on the Regulatory Responsibility Bill considered by the Commerce Committee of Parliament in 2008. The membership of the Taskforce to be jointly agreed by National and ACT.

I expect the Local Government post will centre on another of Hide's vetoed pieces of legislation: the Local Government (Rating Cap) Amendment Bill (2006), which sought to hold local rates increases to the rate of inflation + 2%. If ACT manages to get this bill passed it would have a marked effect on local councils around the country, although this depends on how often the dispensation provision in the bill is used by Hide to permit higher rates increases.

The other main aim I can imagine of the Local Government position would be to encourage mergers of councils in order to cut costs and "bureaucrats" - I'm sure creating a single mega-Auckland council would be at the top of Hide's agenda, something which could be made easier by the fact that the ACT-friendly John Banks is already mayor of Auckland. All of this is conditional on Hide taking and being given enough time to put such proposals through. I have to say that I can recall little of what Nanaia Mahuta achieved in past three years.

I discussed Heather Roy's impending appointment to Minister of Consumer Affairs earlier in the week, which generated some debate here and elsewhere. Roy will obviously be taking a very different stance to Consumer Affairs ministers in a Labour-led government and it still seems a strange choice. Certainly, the absence of a requirement for country-of-origin labelling is beneficial to manufacturers, but how does it benefit consumers making purchasing decisions? You're better off not knowing where that tin of Chinese baked beans comes from? For most consumers, country-of-origin labelling would be an example of transparency (one of ACT's ideals), but it will be unlikely that Roy will see it in such a way.

The output of these ministerial posts will be available for all to see in due course, but the story for now is what ACT has not been given. Here are some questions which came to my mind:

For a party founded on economics, why is there not a sniff of the Finance portfolio? Regulatory Reform and Local Government are all very well and good, but they are peripheral to the main agenda. While it would have been unlikely for National to give up the purse strings entirely entirely, at least an associate role could have been in store - in the previous Labour-led government there were no fewer than three of these positions available. Or there could have been a 1996-style division of the Finance role, with Hide becoming Treasurer.
Why was Heather Roy not given the full defence ministership, given that she has military experience and her weekly e-newsletter shows a dedication to the armed forces unusual for New Zealand Members of Parliament? Is there really anyone better qualified in National to take the job? And why did she not get the role amended to reflect ACT's incorporation into a "National Security" portfolio?
For a party which claimed crime was the biggest election issue, why is there nothing about law and order in ACT's ministerial line up? There are plenty of possibilities! Minister of Justice, Minister of Police, Minister of Corrections, Minister for Courts. Associates? Anyone? Anyone? Ferris Bueller? Is it because ACT knows taking on one of these jobs means taking all the flak and none of the credit?
Just how much of its point of view will ACT manage to convey on education through Heather Roy when we already have at least one other Associate Minister - Pita Sharples, from the Maori Party? Does the dilution of power make the introduction education vouchers ("scholarships" in ACT parlance) unlikely?

Perhaps the best way of analysing the success of ACT's negotiations with National is to look at the Maori Party, which has by far overshadowed ACT's own deal, even though on election night we thought that it would merely be an add-on. While receiving the same number of ministerial positions, it has received some priceless jewels. Firstly, Pita Sharples becomes Minister of Maori Affairs - the representation of which is surely as much the raison d'être for it as economics are for ACT. Secondly, and even more significantly, the Maori Party has received a guarantee for the retention of the Maori seats, a concrete policy concession far weightier than anything won by ACT (I discuss its policy outcomes in the next post).

A simple but stark illustration of the division of power came in 3 News on Sunday evening, which played clips of Peter Dunne and Pita Sharples long before Hide, who was only allowed to explain (in the headmaster's presence) why there was no room for Roger Douglas in the new government. The bulletin then played its only other report - on the Maori Party arrangement, with lengthy speaking time for the new partners. Minutage on the 6pm news is of course hardly a scientific guide (and the channel erroneously headed Sunday's deals as "Coalition Agreement"), but if ACT blends into the furniture too much over the next three years, it will find it difficult to claim credit for the very proposals it introduces, as other small parties have discovered. That may be electorally painful in 2011.

Consumer Affairs for Heather Roy

2008-11-13T09:53:00.003+13:00

Courtesy of the Dominion-Post, we learn that ACT's deputy leader Heather Roy will be made Minister of Consumer Affairs. The paper asked Consumers' Insitute head Sue Chetwin for comment and as she used to be a journalist and editor of both major Sunday papers, her insights are certainly worth noting:

ACT itself is not strong on consumer issues in terms of country-of-origin labelling and some of the things we're interested in. But regulations around financial advisers and a lot of that stuff that's happening now, I think she'd be very good.

Chetwin's view is a balanced one. To a certain extent, ministers do get to craft their portfolios according to their interests and perhaps Roy will tackle financial advisers, as Chetwin suggests. But given ACT's laissez-faire views, it seems more likely to me that she will be keen not to engage in any regulations on country-of-origin labelling or anything else. Left mouthpiece The Standard says as much, albeit in its more colourful way.

But then, neither would a National minister likely to regulate on anything he or she didn't have to. We're not talking about the Green Party, after all. The more interesting point to note about Roy's impending appointment is that ACT has been palmed off with something fairly "cheap". The fact that Judith Tizard was given the job for the last three years emphasises this.

A cheap portfolio for Heather Roy suggests that the pay-off for Hide may be fairly substantial, or that negotiated policy gains are large. We should know exactly what has happened by the end of the weekend.

Coalition agreements

2008-11-13T08:51:00.004+13:00

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 model New Zealand's form of MMP is based, is still going strong with formal coalition agreements after 60 years. Indeed, the coalition agreement for the 2005 "Grand Coalition" between the main SPD and CDU/CSU parties could be purchased at booksellers in a mass-produced version for a few Euros shortly after its signing. Coalition agreements have also been in place even when the parties are more like-minded, such as between the SPD and Green parties.

Moreover, despite claims by ACT to the contrary, National and ACT are cut from the same cloth. In the last Parliament, National and ACT voted in different ways on just 15 bills of 110 in total - and most of these were on comparatively minor issues (e.g. the New Zealand Sign Language Bill). These differences could easily be set out in a coalition agreement for all to see. (N.B. the figure listed at the above link is higher, but that is because ACT did not bother to vote on a few dozen bills, which is a different matter).

Coalition agreements can take time to draw up - but they offer certainty and stability of what will be carried out. They set out the policy tradeoffs and necessary prerequisites so that there are no surprises later on. But even then, they are hardly exhaustive - look at the National-New Zealand First agreement of 1996 and the fiscal parameters accompanying it. While this agreement has been sneered at for trying to pin down every last detail, it hardly tries to do so. What it does is set down each side's bottom lines and forms guidelines for the operation of the coalition government.

The NZF-National agreement is regarded as a failure, but that doesn't mean every agreement needs to be a failure. ACT and National are more like-minded than NZF and National were, which could surely mean a shorter and succincter agreement. Specifically, it could address what would happen on ACT's bottom lines on crime, the Emissions Trading Scheme and cutting government spending. Without a formal coalition agreement, the tradeoffs would happen anyway, but in a much less open fashion and behind closed doors. And by staying outside a formal coalition, ACT - and United Future and possibly the Maori Party - get to accept the power without taking the responsibility for supporting a National-led government, because at any stage they can shove the "blame" back on to the Nats.

Aha, but drawing up coalition agreements "takes too long". Well, so it might. But why should forming a government be a rushed process and why should voters accept so little written records of the closed-door meetings? The fact that APEC is taking place in a week is of little consequence. I don't see the United States rushing ahead with the inauguration of Barack Obama, just so that he can replace George Bush, a so-called "lame-duck" president, at the summit. What should happen is that both Helen Clark, as caretaker Prime Minister, and John Key, as Prime Minister-elect, travel to the summit, as Winston Churchill did with Clement Attlee to the Potsdam Conference at the end of World War II (this happened because the British election results were not clear - eventually, of course, it resulted in a Churchill-led Conservative defeat).

Hide talks about wanting "policy gains" more than ministerial posts. Well, let's see the horse-trading on paper - in a formal coalition agreement.

Commerce portfolio for Hide?

2008-11-10T10:51:00.003+13:00

Dene Mackenzie suggests in today's ODT that Rodney Hide may be made Minister of Commerce to conduct a review of legislation:

Mr Hide could become commerce minister, responsible for a review of regulation. He will not be given law and order or energy given Act's "three strikes and you are out" policy and his call to dump the "dopey emissions trading scam [scheme]".

This could also mean that ACT gets its Regulatory Responsibility Bill passed as one of its contributions to the new government.

The Herald reports that ACT is still keen to find a role for Douglas. But not at the price of stability - the newspaper quotes Hide as saying:

"The most important thing is to have a secure, stable government that provides security for New Zealand, and second, to have a good relationship between National and Act, as well as other parties."

Mackenzie also reports that ACT will be supportive rather than extractive of National, in the interests of providing stability. This is to be expected, but ACT will not want to blend into the furniture either.

The new world

2008-11-10T01:28:00.005+13:00

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 a party record, this time around it will be gaining the one thing it has never experienced - power.

I want to get straight into the discussion about ACT's position in government. Having done much reading and talking to some observers, there seem to be two camps on what ACT will end up getting in a coalition or co-operation deal with National. The first camp puts forward that as ACT is delivering National the 5 seats to get it over the 61-seat line needed, ACT should be able to extract a fair amount. The second group, however, points out that ACT has boxed itself in to the right of National. There is only one option - support National in some form. ACT is not going to abstain or side with Labour. The only question is exactly what form this co-operation will take.

There are points for and against both camps. I think there is genuinely considerable goodwill from National towards ACT and there will not be a move out to shaft them. ACT is National's natural coalition partner. It is not an unknown quantity, as New Zealand First was in the 1996 coalition deal. As long as ACT can be controlled and portfolios assigned carefully, National will not worry about ACT embarassing its much larger partner.

Perhaps the second camp will have its position represented in the fact that John Key has ruled out Sir Roger Douglas becoming a minister. ACT's price for giving National unconditional support could be having to accept a different composition of portfolios than it might ideally want, rather than a reduced number. Another argument in favour of a reduced ACT influence is the strong possibility that National will give itself some breathing room by inking some sort of deal with the Maori Party. This arrangement will probably be a loose one, but it will remind ACT that it is not the only possible source of support available.

So, what could this mean in terms of portfolios? I think it is plausible that Rodney Hide will become Minister of Education. He had already revealed some weeks ago that he would be interested in the Associate role, but ACT's extra spurt on election day should give it a little extra. ACT does not share identical ideas with National on education - one difference that comes to mind is National's opposition to bulk funding. ACT is of course in favour of a voucher scheme, which I also doubt would find favour in National. However, there will always be differences like these and I'm sure they could be worked through into a common policy position.

So, one important ministerial post - and something else? I think 5 MPs does get ACT at least one other bauble, perhaps even two. I wonder whether Douglas will get the Associate Minister of Finance role. As far as I can tell, Key has been fairly shrewd in his remarks in ruling Douglas out as a "Cabinet" minister. Of course, there can be ministers outside Cabinet. However it would be a drawing a long bow to say that Douglas would get the main finance job, as Key would look somewhat duplictious. But by giving him the Associate's job, Key could reasonably make the claim that Douglas is not in charge, but will assist Bill English in sorting out the economic crisis.

Another option could be to also make Hide Deputy Prime Minister. But this would not be pleasing for Bill English, who fell into line behind Key and earlier Don Brash. Furthermore, I'm not sure whether Hide would even want the job. It carries status, but not a lot of real power and I'm sure he would far rather ACT had a financial role of some description.

And what about law and order? Perhaps Hide could become Minister of Justice, leaving Heather Roy to take the Associate education role (or given the omission of a finance position, perhaps even the full ministerial post). David Garrett is unlikely to be given any sort of formal post, given that he is a first-term novice, but perhaps he will be found a committee role. National and ACT are not dissimilar on their stances on crime by any means, so a co-operation here could be easier than in, say, education, where ACT is driven more strongly by its neoliberal philosophy.

Or the combination could be something completely different. But as a party founded on economic reform, I think ACT will above all want to immerse itself in the books and Douglas is hardly going to be content doing nothing. I will watch with interest.

That's it - for now

2008-11-07T15:10:00.004+13:00

Unless there is an earth-shattering piece of news before midnight tonight, that concludes Douglas to Dancing's election campaign coverage. Of course I'll be back after election night to analyse and interpret ACT's fate.

My thanks to everyone who has offered constructive criticism and feedback on my posts.

LATEST - FINAL WORD ON THE POLLS: the Roy Morgan poll just out also puts ACT at 4% support of the party vote. ACT should be very disappointed if it gets anything less than 3%. Because newspaper polls today showed National at close to 50%, ACT could well prosper further, as National supporters decide that their party is in government and does not need their vote. While it should be noted that the Morgan poll put Labour up (at 34.5%) and National down (at 42%), minimal reporting of the poll will erode any galvanising effect on National support it could have. Five per cent for ACT now becomes a distinct possibility.

To finish, some ACT news links from this week for anyone who hasn't seen them:

Douglas has pet projects lined up
Sir Roger Douglas is promising to "do heaps" in Parliament even if it is from the back benches and has singled out primary school education as one of his first "projects".

Wang accuses opponent of dirty tactics
Former Act MP and Botany candidate Kenneth Wang is accusing his opponent, National MP Pansy Wong, of "dirty tactics" and having a "deliberate strategy to scare voters with the possibility of two Chinese MPs" - after the Electoral Commission decided on Monday not to uphold a complaint Mrs Wong had made against his campaign.

The difference a year makes...

2008-11-07T14:43:00.004+13:00

Some highlights from the transcript of my interview with Rodney Hide, August 2007:

"I mean my view of Roger Douglas is, he's a great guy, but he's always bagged his own team, he's done that his entire life in politics, and so he's continued, he bagged ACT and me and Richard from the time we got to Parliament, so there's nothing new in that."
"So we've got to make ourselves relevant and new and also position ourselves better in an MMP environment, as compared with a tactical appendage to National"
"I think we have changed ACT totally, no longer a tactical appendage to the National Party, no longer an Opposition party, working with all the political parties"
"What I've found since 2005, and this was in a response to what members wanted, is I've presented myself as a warm guy, never attacks people, positive, Dancing with the Stars-type guy, I've never said a critical thing about an MP since, for over 12 months."
"So it was pretty cool actually, just being yourself, and not sort of trying to be Richard Prebble, or trying to be Roger Douglas, because they were our mentors, models, and I went dancing and I was just me! And hey presto, people didn't mind that, and it's so much easier just to be yourself, so I actually couldn't go back to the old style of doing things, even if I thought it was a winner."
"The next success I need are 5,000 new members and supporters. So I'm starting a programme, a project to actually get 5,000 new members and supporters and I do that by March. I believe if I do that I'll actually get to 2 or 3 per cent in the polls, in March. If I get 5,000 new members and supporters, I've got a great story to tell the punters that come to our conference in March."[There was no mention of the 5,000 target at the conference in March and ACT had not reached 2 or 3 per cent in opinion polls by that stage, although as we know, it has subsequently done so]
"Well it seems to me that we need 8 per cent of the vote, 6 to 8 per cent of the vote at the next election. I also need at that point to have everyone understanding that we're the free market party, so behind us has to be a good manifesto, and also one or two bottom lines, so that everyone is clear about what ACT's position is heading into a coalition discussion. If I get 6 to 8 per cent, the ACT party is then in a position, it may have a new name, who knows, is then in a position to say well we campaigned on this, we sit down with John Key, we tell him, “you want to be Prime Minister, here's the deal, no surprise”. [Seen in the light of today's Fairfax poll, a scenario which is actually not as far-fetched as it seemed at the time]
"But here's the thing that I want, I want to be able to say “it's really nice, see you later John”, he'll say “where're you going”, I'll say “I'm off to talk to Helen Clark, because she wants to be Prime Minister too”". [In light of ACT's new slogan "Strengthen the Nats. Party vote ACT", a scenario which now sounds ridiculous - but until 2008 this was Hide's strategy!]
"So what I'm trying to do is get ACT into a position where we have options, choice and here we are way over here with our policies if you like, compared to the other parties, but actually in the centre talking to them all about how to advance our cause and work with them, and that's why the significance of talking with the other parties is, and not bashing them up. So that's where we want to get." [ACT "in the centre"?!]
"So you'd be, let's imagine that you campaigned on the health issue, transparency, I don't know what the case is, you know “Health Transparency for Kiwis” or “Kiwis..”, you know whatever, something sexy and the Taxpayer Rights Bill, which is sexy, and you'd say, Rodney Hide, his job is, he's minister outside Cabinet for Taxpayer Rights." [We're still waiting for the sexy bit. Note that Hide's stated aim is now to be Associate Minister of Education, not Minister for "Taxpayer Rights"]
"And my goal on that is to have a good Select Committee process and to pass it and have the Labour Party vote for us [?], to pass it, because I know I put so much pressure on them, somehow, haven't quite figured out, that they went “shit, to win the next election we need to pass this bill, because business is hounding our case”. So the pressure will go on them before the election I'm hoping, from business groups fed up with red tape. That's a big win. And you're standing there in the election campaign and people are saying, “oh well, you know Rodney Hide, can't do this”, so hang on buddy, I'm the prick that won Epsom and you said I couldn't do it. I'm the prick that got the Regulatory Responsibility Bill and you said I couldn't do it." [The Regulatory Responsibility Bill has not been passed and Labour later withdrew its support]
"You think this election's going to be hard? Nah!"

The Guts of a Decent Slogan

2008-11-07T13:55:00.004+13:00

TV3 has run a slogan competition via its election website. I've collated the ACT-related ones and grouped them into and anti- and pro-ACT categories (in some cases this is hard to tell!). The anti ones are first because there are more of them and they're much funnier.

Anti-ACT:

Personal favourite: Vote for ACT: Rodney needs something to do between reality TV gigs.
We're going to party like its still 1979
action against Winston Peters backfired! but Rodney Hide still thinks he is right...YEAH RIGHT!
Personal favourite (this was submitted as applying to all parties; the bad grammar just adds to its "message") DON NOT VOTE IT JUST ENCOURAGES US TO LIE CHEAT AND STEAL YOUR MONEY
Colour choices tells a lot. Green is always GO; Yellow caution; we can handle spilled red, but could call a Code Blue.
Let us roger you with rodney.
Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas - Digging up our past to force feed us our future...
Hide-Hi? Ho-de-Ho!

Pro-ACT:

Yellow is the new green
Act is the Key to the battle with Helengrad
I can dance, I can dance, if you give me a chance.
Vote for Rodney: ½ the violent criminals off the street ½ the tax ½ the leader he was ACT – Bringing us a healthier NZ.

The final chapter

2008-11-07T13:03:00.005+13:00

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 determine whether these attempts succeed in bringing the party out of the doldrums or will only mire it in further difficulty. Rodney Hide's ACT New Zealand is, after all, living dangerously.

The above (with emphasis added) was the concluding paragraph to my 2007 dissertation. Such is the danger of dealing with current events that much of my concluding chapter, which examined ACT's 2007 rebranding attempts, have since been superceded by a return by ACT to the hard-right. Gone is Rodney Hide, "Mr. Nice Guy". Gone is a refocusing on "positive" messages. Gone is a desire to work with all other parties, including Labour. Thinking of the dozens of hardline crime billboards currently dotting New Zealand, I can only chuckle at some of the commentary in the 2007 conclusion, despite being fully accurate at the time of writing:

...ACT appears to be more deemphasising its socially conservative stances. Buried deeper in publicity material published in 2007, one finds support from ACT for “law and order policies that protect our citizens and deal forcibly with thugs and bullies”. Hide may not be completely reversing ACT's socially conservative position, but he is certainly de-emphasising it in favour of a renewed economic focus.

I was always conscious that the hand-in date in October 2007 was never really going to be the end of the story and that one more election - at least - would be needed to see what would become of ACT. Would it remain the rump to which it had dwindled to by 2005? Or would it re-emerge in a phoenix-like rise from the ashes? We will have at least a preliminary answer to this tomorrow.

But this will still not be the end of the matter. If ACT does help to form the next government, it will begin to implement its personnel and its policy. How successful it is in this endeavour will be the next very real test. Both New Zealand First and the Alliance failed trying. United Future has not prospered electorally from being in government, neither has the Progressive Party.

"Success in opposition - failure in government" was the title of one academic paper I looked at last year. ACT has never really been successful in opposition - but it cannot afford not to be if it forms part of or cooperates with the next government.

Two, three, four or five?

2008-11-07T10:06:00.003+13:00

No doubt many ACT supporters will have a spring in their step as they walk through Newmarket this morning, with the party reaching an impressive 4.0% in the final Fairfax poll out this morning. (For all poll details see Curiablog's summary).

But the other polls all show different results, with ACT winning two, three or four seats. Taking the average, I think this gets ACT a highly likely three seats, with a 50% chance of winning a fourth seat. The two or five seat options would remain outliers.

So Douglas becomes a backbencher.

In October, we had two Roy Morgan polls which gave ACT 3.5% of the party vote. Morgan polls have jumped around during the year for ACT and it pronounced several other "false dawns" earlier which put ACT at a relatively high level of support. I think the early October poll was another example of this, as its results were uncorroborated by other pollsters. The late October poll, however, may have reflected the beginnings of ACT's apparent upturn.

The upturn was not inevitable. There appear to have been two main catalysts for the change.

Firstly, as I reported earlier, there has been a focus on strategical or tactical voting in the last couple of weeks. On the left, voters have come to the conclusion that Labour will not be leading another government (note to Fairfax: New Zealand has governments, not "administrations") and have taken the liberty of shifting their support to the Greens. On the right, hard-right National supporters have realised that National has plenty of supporters and that shifting their vote to the right and to ACT will not hurt the final outcome.

The surge in support for smaller parties such as the Greens and ACT (and even New Zealand First, although not enough to make it count) is to be expected in a unexciting campaign in which one party is so clearly in front. Small parties should also be benefiting from the Labour-National consensus, as voters look for something different. But as Dr. Bryce Edwards has pointed out, small parties are "killing us with boredom, consensus and sameness". While ACT does offer a different policy programme to National, the focus in the last month on a hardline stance on crime has been neither inspiring nor innovative.

The second catalyst has come only in the last week and I think is responsible for most of the increase in support. It consists of the direct overtures made by John Key to ACT and his pledge that Rodney Hide will be a minister in government. It consists of a joint National-ACT coffee meeting. It consists of a photo of a smiling Key and Hide in a tabloid newspaper. As I have previously written, this gives what the party has long lacked - relevance. Voters know that if National forms the next government, ACT will have a minister as part of it. This realization - and the fact that voters are paying attention - is what has changed in the latter stages of the campaign.

Does this make sense for National? Yes and no. The endorsement seemed to have been already implicit and "priced in" by voters. National could always count on ACT's two votes. Moreover, with ACT having run such a right-wing campaign, ACT's surge in support can only have come from National supporters.

This means that ACT's support has simply come from support shifting amongst the bloc. While this is always what has happened with ACT and should not come as a surprise, the difference is that this time the support drift from National to ACT has been supported by the former. Such an explicit endorsement has never happened in a previous campaign.

So bad news for National? Any increased support for ACT would presumably give it more leverage in getting across its own agenda, as opposed to National. With five MPs, ACT would have some bargaining power and perhaps begin to drag National away from its pragmatic, "centrist" policy programme.

Presumably. Or maybe not. As a National Party insider told me, "where are they [ACT] going to go?" Just as the Greens are captive to Labour on the left, ACT is hostage to National on the right. National will have to and will give ACT a bone, but there's no need to add some Tux biscuits alongside, unless it happens to be something National would do anyway or something arcane which would not overly bother voters (the Regulatory Responsibility Bill comes to mind).

But for any of this, the votes will have to be won first.

Oops...

2008-11-05T12:25:00.002+13:00

This just in from the Herald:

Act leader Rodney Hide's indignation at the Electoral Finance Act is nothing but a jacket jack-up.
The complaint to the Electoral Commission about Mr Hide's canary-yellow jacket was made by an Act supporter.
It has been revealed the complainant is 21-year-old Andy Moore, a University of Canterbury commerce student and "strong Act supporter"....
Mr Hide today said he was embarrassed and pissed off at Mr Moore.

Was "pissed off" a direct quote?

From the front line

2008-11-05T11:56:00.002+13:00

An Auckland-based contact e-mailed me the following thoughts on ACT:

On the ground, the feel for ACT is quite strange at the moment... ACT clearly gave the impression they are bigger than they are and are polling reasonably (well, around 3% was the ball park figure often given). What's amazing is how many ACT billboards there are around Auckland, particularly in Epsom. What's mental is that outside of Epsom, I think ACT has replaced every single former billboard they had a few weeks ago with new ones focusing on crime, etc....They've also been HEAVILY direct mailing and leafletting Epsom. This will be costing them a lot of money!

I get the impression that organisationally they're fucked. Apart from the obvious loss of a lot of their people to National (I guess their MPs must've been the tip of the iceberg), erstwhile radicals within the organisation like Blair Mulholland (a sometime critic of ACT and Hide and oft-switcher between ACT and the Nats) who is running Kenneth Wang's campaign in Botany. Mulholland, while a nice guy, is a total political loose cannon. I'm also told by friends of mine that the much vaunted return of Roger Douglas hasn't seen the influx of activists ACT would have liked.

Botany campaign

2008-11-05T04:28:00.003+13:00

Dene Mackenzie has a background piece for the ODT online on the Botany electorate, in which ACT candidate Kenneth Wang is hoping to win the seat. This follows an earlier piece in the New Zealand Herald. Both articles highlight some apparently racist traits of non-Asian voters in the electorate. From the Herald:

[A voter], who wanted to be known only as Sandy, 24, said: "It's ridiculous that I receive flyers in my mailbox from the candidates in Chinese or whatever, and I am made to feel like I'm a foreigner in my homeland's election."

She said she was "really sick" of the "Chinese-style campaigns" and would give her vote "to any other candidates ... except the Chinese ones".

It's sad to see this view in 2008 and in this case it's startling, given that the opinion is from a comparatively younger voter who has likely grown up in an increasingly multi-ethnic Auckland. But it's a reminder of how progressive the United States is in comparison: where campaign materials are frequently provided in Spanish - I think Barack Obama even spoke in Spanish at one event.

I'm not sure how all this affects Wang's chances of winning the seat - given that the three highest-profile candidates (Wang, National candidate Pansy Wong and Labour candidate Koro Tawa) are all of a non-white background. But remember: National is known as New Zealand's conservative party for a reason. From Mackenzie's piece:

At Jacob's Cafe, only the staff were Asian as I settled down next to Glad and Allan Jamieson. They are both in their 80s and have lived in the village for most of their married life.

They are committed National voters and will be voting for Mrs Wong and giving National their party vote.

But even they are starting to feel a bit peeved about the wave of new immigrants and new housing.

ACT out of cash and out of time?

2008-11-05T02:05:00.006+13:00

ACT has a reputation for being a party of the rich, a reputation which the party has often denied. There is some evidence for this, as I found out in my dissertation:

ACT's declared election spending decreased by over forty per cent over the elections from 1996 to 2005, although the decline was not uniform. In 1999, the figure dropped by sixty percent compared with 1996, to $657,889.14. Donations recovered to allow spending of $1,625,558.79 in 2002, but slumped again in 2005, when the party spent only $966,614.72 (Electoral Commission 2003). Furthermore, [then party president Catherine] Judd (2006) cited lack of financial and human resources as a reason for ACT's poor 2005 election performance.

The slump I wrote of then is relative: the million dollars spent still represent a very well funded campaign. But perhaps the 2008 situation is even more dire, with most high rolling donors continuing to throw their weight behind National with the hope of creating an outright majority. Of course, wealthy ACT loyalists have not disappeared: Alan Gibbs chipped in $100,000, likewise John Boscawen.

But are Gibbs and Boscawen the last men standing? Today, just 4 days out from the election, ACT sent out an urgent e-mail appeal to supporters begging for contributions. ACT itself admits that it is "strapped for cash". The appeal is pretty blunt:

And all these campaigning activities cost money. Money to pay for phone calls, paper, photocopy cartridges, rent, power and light….. you get the idea, and the message! So we are knocking on your door right now.

If you didn't know this came from ACT, you might think it was a message from the Green Party or RAM. If ACT is begging for money from its more modest contributors to pay for photocopy cartridges just days out from election day, things must be in a bad way.

This highlights the perennial dilemma of ACT's organisational structure, as I investigated in my research last year. At its inception in the mid-1990s, it started a network of electorate organisations and enjoyed some real grass roots fervour. But as the party tasted electoral success, it lost interest in cultivating the local organisations, finding it could finance itself very nicely out of a few wealthy corporate and private donors. As a analogy, ACT preferred to function as a private company, rather than a listed one beholden to thousands of small "shareholders". Not needed for their money, small supporters of ACT were displaced, with many drifting away.

Now, ACT seems to be in a fix, with the wealthy corporate and private donors having shifted their power behind National. ACT, never having built a durable grass-roots support base, is having to scramble to contact its small band of members and supporters for small change - not to cover anything exceptional, like the hire of an election jet, but just to cover basic office supplies.

Why crime no longer pays

2008-11-03T09:19:00.004+13:00

I watched last week's TVNZ's small party leaders' debate and a Rodney Hide interview with John Campbell and came away with some developed thoughts on ACT's hardline stance on crime. I had planned to do a blog post on it last week but it slipped my mind until I heard an account of a Dunedin North local candidates meeting. Let me elaborate:

In his interview with Campbell, Hide admitted that ACT had had problems with the economy in election campaigns in the past, with people "jogging past" economy-related billboards. Hide said that this had changed this election, but I doubt this is really the case. ACT has never had a more accommodating election in terms of theme - this is the first election year since its founding that NZ has been in a technical recession - yet its economic message has failed to sell. If voters had decided that ACT had all the answers for the crisis, the party would be polling closer to the 9% mark, not the 1.9% Curiablog's poll of polls currently has it on.

A month or two ago, ACT itself realised that its economic message alone was once again unsaleable to most voters and switched to its perennial Ersatz issue - a hardline stance on crime. Locking up individual offenders has always married well with ACT's doctrine of "personal responsibility". It worked particularly well for ACT in 2002, during the economic "good times", when it managed to increase its share of the party vote slightly to retain a 7% share. A pure economic stance in 2002 might have seen the party wiped out, or driven down to its 2005 rump level, three years early.

But the "Zero Tolerance for Crime", "three strikes and you're out (in)" message may have reached saturation point. Since ACT turned to the familiar drum, there has been no sudden surge in support for the party, as in 2002. I found it revealing that in the crime question on the TVNZ debate, ACT was the only one to advocate the familiar tough stance on criminals. In elections past, it could have expected to have been joined by National (especially in 2005) and New Zealand First. But in 2008, the rhetoric has shifted to tackling the "root causes" of the problem - as Jeanette Fitzsimons pointed out. Rodney Hide professed to agree with Tariana Turia when she said that the best way of stopping young offenders was to give them jobs - yet why didn't he say that himself?

As I said, this slipped my mind until I heard an account of a local candidates meeting in the Dunedin North electorate, which took place last night. When asked by the moderator what the solution to young people getting into trouble was, all the candidates agreed that root causes needed to be addressed. Except one - sixth-placed ACT list candidate Hilary Calvert, who took the simplistic ACT stance of taking a hard-line early on.

Perhaps there has been a shift in public opinion on crime. For years, right-wing politicians, including ACT ones, have advocated only tougher sentences as a way to deal with criminals. A bidding war of some sorts has already taken place. The result?

Criminals are already treated more harshly than before. 20+ year prison sentences for murder are now commonplace and judges have discretion over non-parole periods - in the 1990s, by contrast, a life-sentence was a fixed 15 years and judges had so little say that sentencing always took place immediately after the verdict was given.
Several new prisons have been built and we are locking up more people than ever before and in new ways such as home detention (which, by the way, is not primarily used as a "soft option" to real gaols but to give judges a real choice over non-custodial sentence which would normally have to be imposed for lesser offences). These are just some examples of the tougher stance on crime that I have to hand - I'm sure a legal observer would have many more.
Despite all these measures, violent crime is still increasing

New Zealand has tried locking more people up and has ended up with one of the highest imprisonment rates per capita in the world. Sentences are tougher than ever before. But this has not led to a reduction in the violent crime rate. This being the case, politicians - and voters - have turned against simplistic solutions with clever slogans. Locking up violent offenders is merely the cliched "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff". Voters are now looking for something more than chaining up the individual offenders.

As Fitzsimons and Turia realise, the only realistic way to solve crime is by tackling the original societal causes of crime - which I think most would agree would include poverty, lack of opportunity and lack of hope. And much of the preventable violent crime (gang and street offending) takes place in one area particularly afflicted by those scourges - South Auckland.

Strategic voting and ACT

2008-11-03T07:31:00.005+13:00

It's the final week of a fairly lacklustre election campaign by all parties concerned. But if ACT does manage to gain an extra MP or two, it may well be due to "strategic voting" taking place. I take strategic voting to mean voting for a party for a reason other than, or in healthy addition to, agreement with its policy. I've previously argued that ACT should give up trying to convince voters to become neo-liberals and gain supporters for pure tactical reasons. Earlier in the campaign, we saw ACT reintroduce the tired, but sometimes profitable tough-on-crime stance. Perhaps precisely because of its tiredness, this has failed to capture anyone's imagination (more on that in my next post).

In recent days we've seen some evidence of strategic voting entering the debate, which is to be expected in an election with one major party 10-15 points ahead of the other. As in 2002, some voters will see this as a sign that they have carte blanche to abandon the big two and choose something a little more interesting. Last week, we had an article in the Sunday Star-Times in which it was suggested that Labour voters should choose New Zealand First instead, so as to ensure NZF retains its representation in Parliament and remains a potential coalition partner. Then in yesterday's Herald on Sunday Matt McCarten, who I think writes one of the most astute political columns in the country, shrewdly makes very logical cases as to why Labour voters should vote Green and Progressive voters should vote Labour.

But more relevant have been the comments made to ACT-leaning voters by John Key in recent days. It's important to note that these are not off-the-cuff remarks, even if they may sound like them. Comments on coalition strategy is the gold dust of any election campaign under proportional representation, because without it voters are essentially blindfolded. Here is what Key said to the Herald on Sunday:

You don't live in Helensville. Your electorate vote is in Epsom - Richard Worth or Rodney Hide?
I'm voting two ticks for National.
So presumably you'll be advising all other National voters in Epsom to do the same? To give their electorate vote to Richard Worth?
We're running a party vote campaign around the country. It's no secret that we have a good relationship with Act. Obviously we'd encourage anybody to give two ticks to National, but we acknowledge that there will be people who split their vote in Epsom.

And previously, as pointed to at Kiwiblog, Key told TV3 last week that Hide would be a minister in a National-led government. Here are his exact words: There's been talks with us and ACT and I'm pretty confident that we can put together a government, Rodney Hide will be part of that government and be a minister in that government

So in the final throes of the campaign, National has clearly decided that it would be beneficial to throw ACT a bone. This is without precedent. There has not been a single previous election campaign in which National has treated ACT as anything like an absolute rival in a zero-sum game. Even when ACT was at severe risk of oblivion, in 2005, no lifeline was offered to the small party. (Remember the brush-off Hide received from Don Brash at his coffee-break with United Future's Peter Dunne?). The implications of this are three-fold:

Firstly, ACT has finally gained unquestionable relevance, used in a technical sense. Voters now know that ACT will be a part of a National-led government - perhaps even if National gains an outright majority (now only an outside possibility). Note that Key says "will", not "would" and that he even says that talks have gone on between National and ACT. I'd love to know on what level these talks have been conducted. Was it a personal discussion between Key and Hide? Or does "talks with ACT" imply that it was a wider discussion at a party level - both with Hide and other figures in the party hierarchy (such as ACT president Garry Mallett)? Either way, it shows ACT to be a "player", not the irrelevant spoiler it was in elections past. Voters should favour a party that matters to the final result.
Secondly, by only talking about Hide, Key would seem to have implicitly ruled out Sir Roger Douglas being in cabinet. This seems logical: with only 2 or 3 MPs, ACT could hardly expect to have more than one ministerial post. Having reentered Parliament on the back of Hide's electorate seat, Douglas would hardly be in a position to occupy this one post (nor would it interest him, unless it was the Finance Minister's role, which we know is safely out of ACT's reach and in the hands of Bill English). This may mute any assertions by Labour in final days that voters should fear Roger Douglas becoming Minister of Finance.
This last comment notwithstanding, with a definite National-ACT constellation in prospect, Labour has a real chance of putting forward a genuine fear campaign of a National-ACT government, much in the way Barack Obama has sought to link John McCain with George Bush in the US presidential election campaign. I can seriously imagine newspaper ads running on Friday with a reminder of Douglas's responsibility for asset sales in the 1980s with the question "Do you want this man back in government?". Labour would, of course, actually be fool to do this, because by drawing attention to ACT it would almost ensure an improved result on Saturday. But desperate times call for desperate measures - and Clark has already begun to link ACT with National, most notably last week in the "five-headed monster"

Key's confidence in Hide becoming a minister makes it sound almost as if a draft coalition agreement has already been agreed upon. Note that Hide has previously said he would like to be Associate Minister of Education, which as a non-finance post (and with associate ministers always being subordinate to ministers) would seem to be an easy price for Key to pay. So Hide will be a minister, which leaves voters with no doubt that ACT is in tune and has made reasonable demands of National. If Key's comfortable with it, why shouldn't voters on National's right be?

Hat tip: to Kiwiblog for as always leading me to the articles above

ACT media site

2008-10-30T10:40:00.003+13:00

Party enthusiasts have launched a new website for the presentation of ACT videos from the campaign trail. It has a refreshing home-crafted look! ACT has never been short of text policy and PDFs online, but a central repository for video clips (some have been drifting on YouTube and the main ACT website for a couple of years already) are a welcome addition. I hope the future will see videos, rather than just transcripts, of all party speeches being placed online. Well done to the site creators.

Ansell's new ad

2008-10-30T10:30:00.002+13:00

I've been alerted to the return of John Ansell to ACT's campaign, with a new ad promoting strategic voting and favouring ACT over National. To be honest I'm a little surprised that Ansell is behind the advertisement, which is classic ACT: far too many words per square centimetre. However, the overall thrust of the advertisement is sound and the slogan "Strengthen the Nats. Party vote ACT" is something the party has long needed.

The only question is why ACT did not switch to strategic campaigning months ago, when it found its efforts to convince voters to vote ACT based on the small party's policy alone futile. With a crisp and consistent message, I think strategic voting by people not necessarily enamoured with ACT policy could have brought ACT up to the 5% mark. Ansell's work could be too little, too late.

Emissions Trading Scheme

2008-10-30T09:07:00.003+13:00

One of ACT's centrepiece policies of this election pledges to repeal the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). As I understand it, the ETS will require businesses to purchase "credits" for carbon they wish to emit from other companies which have a surplus (e.g. foresters). There is an official diagram which explains this further. The ETS enjoys support from both Labour and National. But ACT opposes it.

My concern here is not so much the workings of the ETS, but the way ACT has promoted its opposition to it. There is no question that the party sees it as a key policy plank; last week it organised a stunt in Cornwall Park, located by One Tree Hill in Auckland. I watched the 3 News video on this and saw a "farmer" hauling an oversized $5bn cheque made out to Russia being whipped by a "witch". This was the second such stunt recently organised to exemplify ACT policy - the first was the display of 77 coffin lids outside Mt. Eden prison to supposedly represent victims who would be alive under ACT's crime policy.

Obviously I can see what ACT was getting at with its stunt at Cornwall Park. But I have some criticisms of it. Opposition to the ETS should be a policy aimed at farmers; the costs to them are what ACT points out the most. ACT should be interested in winning rural votes. So why launch the policy in an Auckland park? Why not, well, a farm? Come on - there are plenty not that far away from Auckland. By staging it in Cornwall Park, ACT keeps its slick urban look - which is not wanted here.

Even better would have been to take the policy on the road - why not the King Country, where a decade ago ACT had its best ever election showing (albeit a symbolic one), when it won 24% of the party vote in the Taranaki-King Country by-election? National has had the rural vote under lock and key for long enough, but just as formerly New Zealand First and latterly the Maori Party have managed to siphon off the Maori vote, a good chunk of the rural farming vote is winnable for ACT. Especially if farmers realise that National is going to cost them money!

Then there is the staging of the stunt itself, which I felt was alienating. To be frank, the witch whipping the farmer seemed to me more like something Brian Tamaki would come up with for a Good Friday procession. I don't think the connection to the ETS was at all clear.

But above all I question the whole packaging of the opposition to the ETS. The ETS still counts as a technical term; it needs to be explained before understanding what ACT is even opposing. Let's make it clearer: ACT sees the ETS as a form of rural "red tape". This is something easily understandable. So why not package it as such? ACT surely opposes other forms of regulations introduced which it sees as hindering other rural dwellers; its "beef" is surely not just the ETS alone, but regulation in general. So: stage a rural campaign in a genuinely rural setting, invite some real farmers along and package it as "cut rural red tape".

Or another option could have been to keep it under ACT's climate change policy. The "Smart Green" policy was something that Rodney Hide seemed genuinely interested in during 2007 and something on which he could claim credibility due to his academic background in environmental issues - something which I imagine would still surprise most voters. I doubt that this slogan would have won ACT that many votes, but "Smart Green" is still more saleable than "dump the ETS". Still, there are still plenty of climate change sceptics out there - John Key is/was one of them - so it would have been worth a try.

There is a reason why National was so successful in 2003 with its campaign against the "fart tax". The words "fart tax". And there's a reason why the opposition to the Child Discipline Bill did not disappear quickly - the pithy label "anti-smacking". A saleable label is what ACT needed with its opposition to the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Question Time

2008-10-25T06:52:00.010+13:00

1. Is the Stuart Wilson depicted above the same Mr. Wilson who recently commented on two posts on this blog, as the director of "Lysander Research"?

2. Is Mr. Wilson still employed by the "NZ Parliamenatry [sic] Service" as Director of Research in the ACT Parliamentary Unit?

3. If so, in what way is Lysander Research an "independent market research firm", as Mr. Wilson claims?

4. What Parliamentary Services resources have been used by Mr. Wilson for the purposes of Lysander Research?

5. Can Mr. Wilson give an assurance that he has never undertaken any work whatsover for Lysander Research, including dealing with Lysander Research correspondence (electronic or otherwise), from his Parliamentary Services office?

6. Can Mr. Wilson give an assurance that he has not employed any information gathered in the course of his work at Parliamentary Services for the benefit of Lysander Research?

7. Has Lysander Research ever been paid (directly or indirectly) by Parliamentary Services (and thus the New Zealand taxpayer) for any work undertaken by it for ACT or any other individual or organisation?

8. Has Lysander Research ever invoiced or attempted to invoice (directly or indirectly) Parliamentary Services (and thus the New Zealand taxpayer) for any work undertaken for ACT or any other individual or organisation?

9. How credible is Mr. Wilson's assertion that he "did not realise that the whois information [for http://www.lysanderresearch.com] was pointing at ACT’s Head Office address" and that the Lysander Research website has "not been a priority for us this year", when he himself is listed as the registrant and the information was and must have been updated at the latest in June 2008 - to reflect ACT's new offices at "Suite 5, Level 2, 309 Broadway[,] Newmarket"?

10. Is the "former business partner" in Lysander Research alluded to by Mr. Wilson in his comment a Willie Seabrook, who is listed in whois information as the "Administrative Contact" for the http://www.lysanderresearch.com domain?

11. Is it a coincidence that the whois information for a domain owned by Mr. Seabrook, http://www.molinari.co.nz, records his registration details as 305A Remuera Road - the same address as Rodney Hide's former Epsom office?

12. Is the Mr. Seabrook the same Mr. Seabrook who wrote a positive submission in favour of the Regulatory Responsibility Bill, a Private Member's Bill put forward by ACT leader Rodney Hide, in which Mr. Seabrook wrote "I am an IT Consultant who outsources lower value work to companies overseas. I dont [sic] do this because I want to but because for a one man outfit like myself I simply cant [sic] take the risk at [sic] employing a New Zealander due to all the red tape and regulations"?

13. What else do questions 9-12 suggest about the independence of Lysander Research?

14. Is Mr. Wilson a member of industry body the Market Research Society of New Zealand?

15. Is Lysander Research a member of industry body the Association of Market Research Organisations?

16. How ethical are Lysander Research's telephone interview methods and does it identify itself, when requested, as a polling company working on behalf of the ACT party?

17. To respond to a comment placed on the blog of RAM's Auckland Central candidate Oliver Woods on this topic, is the difference between this case and Curia Research, a polling company run by National Party supporter David Farrar, that Mr. Farrar is not employed by Parliamentary Services (and thus the New Zealand taxpayer) and is indeed completely open about his affiliations with National?

18. What is Mr. Wilson's response to the entirely reasonable suggestion by Oliver Woods, who also conducts academic research, that Lysander Research's activities could involve so-called "push polling"?

19. Was it a Freudian slip by Mr. Wilson when, in his latest comment on this blog, he began writing in a distanced tone befitting a supposed "independent market research firm" (e.g. "[w]hile ACT has contracted our services for this election campaign, we have a number of satisfied clients") but concluded in a manner befitting only an ACT insider (e.g. "ACT goes out of its way to provide access and data to researchers who are interested in studying our party because we are genuinely interested in the conclusions you will draw") [emphasis added]?

20. Is it really surprising that the newspaper article cited by Mr. Wilson and written by Ben Thomas, known to be an ACT supporter, and published in the National Business Review, known to be an ACT sympathiser, would claim that Lysander Research has "an impressive track record"?

21. If Lysander Research is really a legitimate polling company, why does it remain unnamed in the aforementioned article?

22. Does any of this remind readers of this week's revelation that the Electoral Commission has found ACT guilty for not declaring office space provided by Sir Robert Jones to the party, to the value of $20,000 annually for a number of years until 2005?

23. Does any of this remind readers of the 2003 scandal in which it was revealed that ACT had used some of its $500,000 of out-of-Parliament funding to actually pay for party research and marketing instead of servicing the electorate for which the money was intended?

24. If my work is "of a low quality and little more that an ill-informed rant", as Mr. Wilson claims, why have both the New Zealand Herald and the established academic journal Political Science seen my work fit to be published in their publications and why did the Electoral Commission award my dissertation a "highly commended" status in its 2008 Wallace Awards?

25. Why am I disappointed in Mr. Wilson's blanket criticism of my work and this blog, when other ACT supporters has been overwhelmingly appreciative of my free, objective coverage (to the point where I frequently praise ACT when warranted) and have brought criticisms only ever in a civil manner, which I am more than happy to accept and when appropriate learn from as well as - when warranted - make corrections to posts?

26. Is it a milestone to contemplate that on this Tuesday, October 28, my Douglas to Dancing blog will be one year old (meaning that coupled with the dissertation I will have completed some two years of research solely on ACT) and that unlike Mr. Wilson, I have not been paid a cent by either ACT or Parliamentary Services for my analysis?

Lysander Research

2008-10-21T12:17:00.002+13:00

Some correspondence available on my recent series (see Part 1 and Part 2) on ACT's poll ratings:

Hi Geoffrey

I know you prefaced you comments by saying that you are not a statistician, but I think you should leave the commentary on polling to people who are a little more informed.

Your statement:
"ACT supporters are perhaps actually overrepresented in opinion polls, due to the fact that they are likely to be older and thus more likely to be at home when rung by polling companies"
shows your complete ignorance of polling techniques. Polling firms use quotas to ensure that they obtain a representative sample - once we have enough old people in the sample we stop ringing them, while young people are more difficult to contact due to the prevalence of cell phone only households, we continue to ring until we reach quota, or weight responses.

There is an argument that the green vote is actually over stated, due to the low turn out of younger voters which is not factored into the some of the demographic models that some NZ pollsters use.

As you are student of political science, I would suggest that you take a few undergrad papers in opinion polling before you express an opinion on something you know little about.

Regards
Stuart Wilson
Director
Lysander Research

---

Hi Stuart,

It's tempting to fight fire with fire. I welcome genuine feedback, but I don't think it's fair to make patronising comments to me, especially when your own background is hardly an independent one. I am upfront about my research interest in ACT, you should be upfront about your partisan one.

To clarify, Lysander Research is a front for ACT. I found the following information revealing (source: http://groups.google.com/group/nz.general/browse_thread/thread/fc7dff3374919d2f?pli=1)

"There is a website lysanderresearch.com that never seems to work. They seem to have done "polling" for Dick Quax who stood for Parliament as an ACT Party candidate. Now they appear to be doing "polling" for Rodney Hide. The pollster was evasive when I asked if he was connected with a polical party. So if Lysander Research phones anyone, ask if they are polling for ACT. And where's their office and why don't they have a website that works."

"Companies Office records show the involvement of a Stuart Wilson in
Lysander Research Ltd. A whois lookup for lysanderresearch.com shows the registrant as Stuart Wilson, ACT NZ, Suite 5, Level 2, 309 Broadway, Newmarket."

"Thanks, I thought as much. I did ask the interviewer if he was
connected with a political party and he said no. A typical ACT liar."

It sounds like your own polling methods are somewhat questionable. And your criticism of my commentary does not even focus on the key point: ACT has polled better in opinion polls immediately before elections since 1999 than it actually does on election day. I do not need to have taken "a few undergrad papers in opinion polling" before making this observation.

The statement you chose to critcise was merely an attempt at a possible, plausible explanation for this phenomenon. Notice that I caged this with "perhaps", precisely because this was merely a supposition.

As for your explanation of polling company methods - my "completely ignoran[t]" view is this. Ringing landlines to "reach quota" doesn't replace actually ringing mobiles - you are just getting youth who have access to landlines, which is not the same thing. Given overseas pollsters ring mobiles using random dialling techniques, I'm surprised your company doesn't do this.

And seeing you are a professional, please offer some supporting evidence about your "argument" about the Green vote being overstated by "some" polling companies.

Regards,

Geoffrey

Attack - and be attacked

2008-10-21T11:08:00.005+13:00

Recently ACT has launched some scathing attacks on both Labour and National, in the hope of tarring both with the same brush and showing ACT out to be the only option for something different. To take just one example, from last week:

It's clear to us that the problem for New Zealand is economic as well as financial. It's also clear that the political response from John Key and Michael Cullen has been both woeful and irresponsible. Their policy promises will make tough times worse.

ACT can keep chipping away on these attacks, but its capacity to be heard is limited. Money per se is not and never has been ACT's problem - as was recently exemplified by the revelations of John Boscawen's and Alan Gibbs' high rolling donations. But most people will think of ACT's attacks as some borer chewing away at furniture: you don't notice it's even happening until its too late.

Now, much more effective than doing the attacking is being attacked by someone else. On Monday, Helen Clark associated National with ACT and Roger Douglas. By attempting to associate National with Douglas, once - but perhaps no longer - the most polarising of New Zealand political figures, Labour is hoping enough voters will have second thoughts about voting for National on November 8.

It's a similar, yet different tactic, to Barack Obama's linking of John McCain to George Bush in the "other election". For Obama, it's part of a concerted and organised campaign; for Clark, it smacks of desperation.

But it should be good news for ACT. Being both Prime Minister and the leader of a much bigger party, Clark naturally draws substantial media attention. Most of ACT's attacks will never be reported; Clark's might be.

Furthermore, if Clark attacks ACT, she is in fact bringing ACT into the political debate, from which it is normally firmly shut out in a currently de facto two party contest. Studies show that small parties benefit from attacks from a "mainstream" party, perhaps because of an inclination to support the underdog.

Even better from ACT's point of view would be for National to respond to Clark's association: it could force John Key to enunciate his party's position to ACT, again bringing the smaller party into the frame. Having been shut out of all-party debates, an attack would give ACT the chance to be evaluated side-by-side by voters. And some of those voters might decide they like what they see.

Hide the stuntman

2008-10-21T10:23:00.007+13:00

A supporter of most ACT policies was kind enough to send me some photos of the party's weekend campaign event. Some refreshing honesty here: even the supporter described it as a "stunt". As the photo shows, it involved putting up 77 cardboard coffins to represent victims of violent crime who would have been "saved" had ACT's crime policy been in place.

Visual representations like this are designed for television and are not a stupid idea by any means. There was talk at ACT's conference in March of carrying out similar exercises for economic matters. The obvious one would be to pile up a stacks of money to a certain height to show how much other parties' spending plans would cost per second/minute/year. However, in recent weeks ACT seems to concluded that its economic plans are unsaleable to swing voters and has switched to a heavy emphasis on crime instead. Hence Sunday's stunt.

Unfortunately for ACT, the stunt seemed to go largely unnoticed - neither the Herald nor Stuff websites seemed to carry a report, according to a search of Google News. The notable exception was a piece on 3 News, which I thought gave some sympathetic coverage of ACT's campaign. Organisers of the stunt would have been delighted that prison staff tried to shut down the event - being attacked always generates more heat.

Intriguingly, the 3 News reporter told viewers that a recent poll of polls found ACT was on track to gain 3 MPs in the next Parliament. I'm not sure whether this came from ACT itself, but I've been watching Curiablog's summary and thought ACT had been stuck on 2 MPs for some months now (although it did rise to 3 earlier in the year).

What to make of the billboard itself? Considering John Ansell parted ways with ACT earlier in the year (although as he said he would still help the party in certain ways, perhaps he did have input), I think it's not a bad effort. But there are some flaws. I like the alteration to the "three strikes and you're out" message which is not new and in fact extremely tired. By replacing "out" with "in", anyone who reads the billboard will do a double-take, driving home the idea even more strongly. (Although I'm sure it will still wash over some). The simple ACT logo with the big party vote message is also bold and effective - mercifully the ineffective and immemorable "The Guts to Do What's Right" slogan introduced earlier in the year has been dropped (looking at the ACT website this seems to have been a uniform decision).

However, I wonder why we need a smiling face of Hide plastered over half the billboard. Sure, he is the party's most recognisable figure by a long way. But his jovial picture just jars with the harsh message of the billboard. You don't want a snarling Hide either - so I suggest leaving him out altogether. You can't vote for Hide on the party vote, so let the party stand alone for once. A pair of hands with handcuffs on them - a la ACT's 2002 billboard - would have been a good substitute. Save pictures of Hide for either billboards asking for the electorate vote in Epsom, or for billboards with positive messages, such as "ACT to make NZ wealthy again" or whatever.

Last thought - when I first glanced at the photo I was sure the middle figure was Stephen Franks. (Actually David Garrett).

It would have been right up Franks's alley.

How accurate are ACT's poll ratings? Part 2

2008-10-20T05:35:00.006+13:00

ACT is polling at 2% or less in opinion polls - 1% according to Saturday's Fairfax poll. Three weeks out from election day, this must be discouraging for ACT supporters. Is this picture an accurate reflection of what the party will gain on election day? Or is it underestimating support for ACT? In part 2 of my report, I examine whether a reverse "Bradley effect" could be underestimating support for ACT in opinion polls.

Because I'm interested in historical comparisons, the best resource would be a database averaging the various polls taken in election years. Lacking this, I decided to look at two polls with data easily available. An interactive graphic is available for the Herald-Digipoll, which shows polling results for ACT going back to before the 1999 election, while Roy Morgan has published polls available from just before the 2005 election. A disclaimer: I'm not a statistician and this is an informal experiment. Here is what I found:

In 1999, the final Herald-Digipoll put ACT at around 8.5% in the final poll before election day. This was a downwards trend: the party had over 10% support in the previous two polls. On election day, ACT received 7% of the party vote.
In 2002, the final Digipoll put ACT at 8% support. On election day, this turned out to be 7.1% of the party vote. Previous polls had put ACT lower, however, at around 6%.
In 2005, the final Digipoll put ACT at around 1.4%. Previous polls had put ACT higher, however, at around 2%. The final Roy Morgan poll before the 2005 election placed ACT on 3% support; the penultimate poll recorded 2.5%. On election day 2005, ACT received a 1.5% share of the party vote.

Results? Remember, I don't claim this to be a scientific exercise. Yet on looking at these numbers, it seems that if anything, opinion polls close to election days seem to overestimate support for ACT, not underestimate it! The only time a final poll before election day put ACT below what it actually received was in 2005 - and the Digipoll then only put ACT a tiny fraction lower. This could be ominous for ACT indeed: with the party only reaching 1-2% in most polls, the election day result could be lacklustre to say the least. If history repeats itself, the latest 2008 Roy Morgan poll, which put at ACT at 3.5%, could be as much a "false hope" as the 2.5-3% ratings the company had for ACT last time around.

Why could this be? I can think of two plausible reasons off the top of my head:

The stigma effect no longer applies to ACT as strongly as it once did - if it ever did. Memories of the 1980s have faded. Moreover, ACT has shed any racist overtones it had by playing down its "One Law for All" message. Is anyone really afraid of saying he or she supports ACT? Is it any "worse" than supporting National?
ACT supporters are perhaps actually overrepresented in opinion polls, due to the fact that they are likely to be older and thus more likely to be at home when rung by polling companies. Younger voters are more likely to use mobile phones only and therefore not be picked up in polls. Yet despite a small but vocal ACT on Campus group, they are the voters less likely to be ACT supporters. (By the same token, we could expect younger Green voters to be underestimated in opinion polls).

My conclusion is this: if the polls are "wrong", this is not likely to be in ACT's favour. If polls put ACT on 1-2%, it's most likely because ACT is at 1-2%. Or worse.

How accurate are ACT's poll ratings? Part 1

2008-10-20T04:37:00.005+13:00

At the Frankfurt Book Fair on Saturday, I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by Christopher von Marschall, author of Barack Obama - der schwarze Kennedy ("Barack Obama - the black Kennedy"), which by all accounts is a well-researched and well-written analysis of Obama's career to date. For his research, von Marschall began attending Obama campaign events in 2006, so the book isn't the sort of dashed-off, quick-money affair I thought it might be.

Discussion at the talk inevitably turned to current opinion polls and whether they were accurate enough. As would be expected, von Marschall pointed out the possibility of the "Bradley effect", which implies Obama's support in opinion polls could be less than on election day due to a sort of reverse racism amongst some respondents (this week's Economist has a good article on this). That is, poll respondents say they will vote for Obama, but come November 4, actually choose John McCain.

Putting this in context for his German audience, von Marschall related the Bradley effect to German opinion polls for state elections. These frequently underestimate the support for neo-Nazi parties of the extreme right, such as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), which is represented in state parliaments of several states in Germany's east. The likely explanation for this occurence is that respondents do not want to admit to the telephonist that they support parties which are seen as distasteful and untouchable by many voters (and indeed, all other political parties). (Note that this is actually the Bradley effect in reverse: it implies that polls overestimate support, while the "NPD effect" implies support is underestimated).

I am not suggesting that ACT is directly comparable to extreme-right parties such as the NPD, which promotes overt racism and is described by German intelligence as a "threat to constitutional order". However, ACT still carries a lot of baggage: whenever I told friends and colleagues last year that my research was on the party, I almost always received sideways looks in return - at a minimum. Sometimes, the reaction even went as far as the use of certain words not suitable for printing here. Is there a stigma to voting ACT which prevents prospective voters from admitting their preference for the party?

Moreover, ACT supporters have often claimed their party is unfairly written off by commentators and polling does not reflect the level of true support. For example, one supporter recently commented on this blog:

Firstly, ACT's party vote will increase in Epsom undoubtedly due to the inevitability of Hide retaining the seat. This will occur to a lesser extent around the country and hence ACT will (as per usual) poll higher than the polls suggest. [Emphasis added]

A concrete example of a misleading poll was the TVNZ poll in Epsom in 2005 which showed Hide as losing the seat to Richard Worth, when in actual fact Hide went on to win the seat by a considerable margin. Hide still enjoys reminding voters and supporters of his electorate victory three years ago: "[o]n election night 2005 I was elected MP for Epsom. It was against the odds. It was against all predictions". These comments lend some partisan weight to the theory that ACT is not picked up accurately in opinion polling.

Is support for ACT underestimated in opinion polling compared to election day? One way of testing this would be to look at polling for ACT immediately prior to previous elections and see how close they were to the actual result on election day. This is what I will do in the next post.

ACT campaign launch

2008-10-13T05:21:00.003+13:00

I'm sure most readers will be aware that ACT launched its election campaign with an event at Alexandra Park in Auckland on Sunday. Political party election launches in New Zealand do not give off "bounces", as is always hoped for after the Democratic and Republican conventions in the United States. Indeed, while the US conventions are technically necessary, in order to nominate the candidate, the NZ affairs are pure show.

Perhaps the best that a small party like ACT can hope for from its launch is to rally its supporters into working extra hard for the next four weeks. With so many parties launching their campaigns at the same time, a post-launch "bounce" in support is not in prospect.

Unfortunately the ACT website does not provide any video of the launch, so all I have to go by is the transcript of Hide's speech to the event. Much is the usual grist for the mill which you can read at the ACT website. But there are a couple of talking points for analysis here. The first made me chuckle, even if it relies on the written word, rather than the spoken form in which the speech was delivered. Referring to ACT list candidate John Boscawen, the transcript reads:

Party vote ACT and let John lose [sic] in Parliament. They won't know what's hit them.

Ah, the perils of the Microsoft Word spell-check.

The second point is a more serious one. Hide says:

I often get asked what the number one issue of this election is. I say crime.

Hide might "say" this, but I wonder if he really believes it. Crime is a legitimate issue. But for a party of economics in the first country in Asia to fall into recession, I think the genuine number one issue for ACT can only be the economy. And it was precisely that issue on which ACT was focusing up until the last month or two - the "biggest pledge card ever" was, after all, about how to make New Zealanders $500 better off per week.

However, I'm not saying that Hide is stupid for saying crime is the number one issue. Far from it. A hardline stance on crime is a populist, proxy issue for winning over hardline voters. In other words, the voters on National's right.

If voters had been convinced by ACT's economic plan, they would have said so by now and support for ACT would have filtered through to the opinion polls. But as I've said before, the time is over for convincing voters on policy detail. ACT needs a "soundbite" issue.

And crime is perhaps the one topic that is capable of whipping up something resembling a fervour and putting some quick runs up on the board in the final weeks.

Hide left to pick up the Peters

2008-10-13T04:26:00.004+13:00

I recall once reading an article on ACT which compared Rodney Hide's perkbusting campaigns with rubbish collecting: it's something that has to be done, but you don't have to be enamoured with the rubbish collector. In other words, don't expect a boost in support for pursuing scandals.

Perhaps that's what happened with Rodney Hide and the Winston Peters saga. Despite Peters's claims to the contrary, it's clear that Peters was involved in something shady. No, the Serious Fraud Office did not find enough evidence to proceed further, but that doesn't mean that Hide was wrong to pursue the complaint. But ACT hasn't noticeably profited from the scandal, in terms of a substantive boost to its share of party vote.

To be sure, on his session on Radio Live last week, Hide distanced any association between his Peters complaints and his perkbusting of the 1990s. According to him, the 2008 version was different because he wasn't bursting with glee over the whole thing and drip-feeding titbits in Question Time. Instead, Hide said, he made official complaints through the proper channels and didn't feed it via the media. Ultimately, he said, Peters would be judged by two groups: the authorities and the voters.

But whether Hide likes it or not, for many voters his tackling Peters this year has brought back memories of the "old Hide" and his perkbusting. Indeed, it was the Radio Live host (James Coleman) who put the similarity to Hide; several callers into the show congratulated Hide on his work in the Peters affair. So there is a fair comparison.

I think the rubbish collecting analogy is a good explanation as to why ACT has not profited electorally. I think there were and are plenty of people grateful for Hide's tackling of Peters. John Key would be one of them, because it meant he did not have to get directly involved. But as with Hide's perkbusting campaigns in the 1990s, voters see the Peters saga as a sideshow. What else could a party on 3% (that's NZ First I'm talking about, not ACT) be? For most non-political watchers, the whole "Owen Glenn thing" is too messy to understand in any event.

Many voters - some 97% or so - would be quite happy to see the end of Winston Peters in the upcoming election.

Many voters are quite happy that Rodney Hide has taken out the "rubbish".

And many voters - some 94% or so - will be quite happy to choose neither ACT nor New Zealand First on November 8.

Roy Morgan poll

2008-10-13T03:57:00.003+13:00

ACT supporters were no doubt buoyed by the Roy Morgan poll out on Friday which put ACT on a 3.5% share of the party vote. For a reality check, I looked at my own commentary from back in August 2008:

A little hope...came in the latest Roy Morgan poll, out on Friday. ACT - which these days normally doesn't even make it into polling commentary, leaving one to hunt for the light blue line just above the 0% mark in the accompanying graphic - has perhaps gained a little of what Duncan Garner et al. would call "traction". The party is now up to 2.5%.

Well, looking at the Roy Morgan site it seems that this hope subsequently faded back to 1.5% - Roy Morgan's result for ACT in the following three polls. Moreover, the TVNZ and TV3 polls out over the weekend both put ACT on less than 2% (1.6% and 1.8% respectively).

Troubling for ACT is also that National is descending faster than the smaller party can rise. The TV3 and Roy Morgan polls put National on 45% and 40% respectively. By those measures, ACT's 3.5% isn't going to put National over the line.

The results are in...

2008-10-13T03:13:00.003+13:00

Well with a quite respectable total 51 votes, readers have voted on what they think will realistically be ACT's share of the party vote this year. The outright winner was the 4-4.9% segment, with 11 votes (22%), with 2-2.9% and 3-3.9% tied on 10 votes each. Going to show this blog is non-partisan, the very unlikely 7% or more band was favoured only by 9 voters and the doomsday scenario (for ACT supporters) of less than 1% had no support at all.

With some luck, I think it's plausible that ACT will get over the 4% mark on election day. There are enough voters on National's right who would prefer a more decisive stance on the economy and a more hardline position on crime. With the deterioration in the economy over the past few months, ACT's call for wholesale change begins to look more appropriate - if not exactly appealing. Locking up criminals for a long time also appeals in hard times. ACT offers both of these.

Equally, I think it's quite plausible that ACT will come in at considerably less than 3% - perhaps around the 2.5% mark. With some unfavourable polls for National, right-leaning voters may decide that they had better swing in behind their team and not risk the prospect of a Labour-led government (even though a vote for ACT should not engender this).

If ACT is to improve, it must keep bringing across its strategic benefits to voters - and thus pointing out its relevance. In recent weeks ACT has attempted this by stressing that a vote for ACT is a secure vote for a National government: as Hide says, "A Party Vote for ACT will ensure John Key makes a difference". The challenge is to gain access to the swing National-ACT voters and make them believe that they are not wasting their vote by choosing ACT.

In this respect one drawback for ACT is its deprivation of "air", caused by the absence of an all leaders' debate. This would have given Hide the chance to put his ideas directly alongside National's and could have forced John Key to enunciate his position on ACT to voters.

I'll keep the blog poll results up until the election and we'll see what happens.

Hide on Radio Live

2008-10-07T10:21:00.003+13:00

Rodney Hide is on Radio Live with host James Coleman taking talkback calls until midday today. So far there's been a lot of talk on crime policy but in the second hour we're getting more on to the economy.

It took almost an hour for the first female caller - 9.57am!

Herald's "street poll" in Botany

2008-10-07T09:10:00.003+13:00

In 2005, ACT felt aggrieved by a One News poll which appeared to give Richard Worth a substantial lead over Rodney Hide. ACT's claim was that respondents were confused by the wording of the question on the electorate vote, which asked for the preferred party of the candidate, rather than the candidate's name. This gave the misleading impression that Worth was well in the lead.

Today the New Zealand Herald has published a street poll in Botany which seems questionable to me. For those of you who don't know, ACT is standing its candidate Kenneth Wang in the new electorate. He is not on the party list and is aiming to promote a "two for one" deal as Hide did in Epsom in 2005, as the National candidate, Pansy Wong, is sufficiently high enough on the National list to remain in Parliament anyway.

Before reading on, check out the polling graphic and accompanying article. For the record, the poll appears to give Kenneth Wang 8%, Labour candidate Koro Tawa 13% and National candidate Pansy Wong 52%.

Here are the problems I see with the poll at a glance:

It's not a genuine poll, but an unscientific street survey of just 100 people. While this gives some sense of "mood on the streets", it's certainly not the same as a random, telephone-based poll of a more substantive sample.
The party vote section of the graphic gives candidates' names, when these should be in the electorate vote section. This could just be a layout error, or it could suggest participants were asked a confusing question, as in the 2005 TVNZ poll.
Kenneth Wang is attributed to New Zealand First! Again, just a layout error?

However, let me conclude by saying that just because the poll may be flawed it doesn't necessarily mean that Wang is actually in the lead. Pansy Wong has been an MP for a long time and has a reputation of her own; moreover, she is running a concerted campaign of her own.

But we need an accurate poll to see really who is in front.

Reduce the indifference factor, not the fear factor

2008-10-07T06:25:00.006+13:00

The New Zealand Herald has two articles on ACT in today's paper. One is a "Q&A session" with ACT leader Rodney Hide in today's edition, which doesn't offer a lot of new information, alhough it's interesting that when quizzed on economic policy Hide chooses to prioritise "certainty" for investors above the more punchy "tax cuts" message normally favoured. According to Hide there has been "policy uncertainty" in economic matters with the Labour-led government. I'd like to see Hide elaborate about what he means by "certainty".

The other article is a general overview of ACT's fortunes called "A[CT] needs to reduce the fear factor". Again, there's nothing particularly new but the last section which considers what ACT "needs to do in the campaign" is worthy of comment:

Reduce the fear factor associated with the "slash and burn" politics linked to Sir Roger Douglas when he was Labour's reforming finance minister. Convince voters that Act's policies are aimed at increasing the wealth of working New Zealanders, not just big business.

Convince right-leaning voters that Act could have some impact in a National-led government.

This cuts to the core debate over the merits of bringing back Douglas to ACT in 2008. If he was meant to be a "circuit breaker" for the party, it hasn't worked - ACT is polling at virtually the same level now as it was last year - less than two per cent. So at this stage perhaps we should mark down Douglas's return as a mistake: he has brought the party zero extra support. Even worse, Douglas has given the party a headache by reaffixing what the Herald calls the "fear factor" to ACT, with all the connotations of the unpopular 1980s economic reforms. Is this interpretation correct?

I might have tended towards this view in the past, but now I'm not so sure whether Douglas has had any effect - for better or worse. Looking at the latter, I think it's more of an "indifference factor" than a fear factor. Devoted ACT supporters which since 1994 have made up 1-2% of voters have been energized by Douglas's return - but the party hasn't been overwhelmed by an influx of new supporters. ACT's core supporters were always going to vote for ACT - now they actually want to.

A pertinent comparison from the "other election" could be how the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket has sparked new enthusiasm in the party's base, but has not brought over many moderate voters. Republicans were always going to vote for John McCain - now they actually want to.

Granted, the return of Douglas may have rekindled some of the distaste for ACT for some politically aware people. But these people were never going to vote for ACT anyway. Moreover, there haven't been any anti-ACT campaigns start up (as in the 1990s, when Sue Bradford led her unemployed rights marches against the party). The indifference to ACT and Douglas today is illustrated well by fellow blogger and University of Otago lecturer Dr. Bryce Edwards, who recently recalled his own activism against the party in the 1990s:

I last saw Douglas speak in about 1994 at the University of Canterbury. I actually organised a lot of publicity on campus for the talk by putting up hundreds of posters denouncing Douglas for his rightwing radicalism and warning people about his upcoming talk to students. Of course, this had the counter affect, and I think my friends and I were inadvertently responsible for helping Douglas fill the auditorium (and dozens were turned away from the large venue).

Edwards contrasted this event with his experience of Douglas in 2008: instead of filling an auditorium of university students, he was giving a watered-down speech to a sleepy business audience which "didn't appear terribly enthused by Douglas and his 'vision'...[v]ery few questions were asked; long silences occurred." Edwards concluded that the "'Roger Douglas comeback' is definitely without the Rogernomics, and nothing that is going to revitalise the fading A[CT] party."

Why has the "fear factor" reduced? A major factor I think is that there are so many people now who have no direct memories of the 1980s reforms, with the two main groups being all voters aged under about 30 and recent immigrants. Above all, many voters have since moved on: if Rogernomics were new and different twenty-five years ago, much of the policy (if not the most radical components) has already become part of the wallpaper. It seems natural that Telecom is a private company. It seems normal that we pay 12.5% GST. And no-one is calling for reintroducing farming subsidies - not even the farmers themselves.

So if there is in fact no "fear factor" to eliminate, what else could be the problem? One month out from the election, I think the answer is the question of relevance. The Herald hints at this in the final line - that ACT needs to make voters believe that it will have some effect in a National-led government. Somehow, ACT needs to convince voters to vote ACT for its tactical ability, above all via a "keep National honest" message.

I think the time is largely over for ACT to try and convince voters to choose the party based purely on the merits of its policy. Instead it needs to get voters on election strategy. In short, ACT needs to talk down the likelihood of National gaining a clear majority and talk up the necessity for a coalition partner:

Can National/John Key be trusted?
Do you want to give National a blank cheque for 3 years?
Will National really reform the country or is it just "Nationalabour"?
Would you prefer Maori Party or ACT to be National's coalition partner?
Do you want the Maori Party/New Zealand First to hold National to ransom?

Election strategy is also about stressing the "value-for-money" messages which ACT successfully trialled in Epsom in 2005. Get Hide and Worth. Get Wang and Wong. Or use the Hillary Clinton line: get change and experience.

We're entering the final phase...

Wisdom from Guyon Espiner

2008-10-05T09:26:00.005+13:00

Some flippant food for thought...

I didn't know that Guyon Espiner had a blog, but buried on the TVNZ site it appears he does. In his latest post called "Minor parties and political power" the state broadcaster's resident sage gives his opinion on the best of the rest - and mentions only New Zealand First, the Greens and the Maori Party, in that order.

Beryl Good (20 on ACT's list) commented directly on Espiner's post:

"Hello Guyon Why have you not mentioned the ACT Party on your Minor Parties and Political power talk? ACT has so much sensible policy AND they have the top people ready to offer NZ a government of change NOT just a change of government. It seems strange you would mention the other parties and not ACT".

Beryl has overlooked Guyon's clever but subtle riddle. There are clearly two options:

For ACT non-supporters: ACT does not and will not have any "political power"
For ACT supporters: along with Labour, National, United Future and the Progressive Party, ACT is a major party!!!!

ACT, David Garrett and the Sensible Sentencing Trust

2008-10-05T08:29:00.003+13:00

I neglected to place a comment at the time on ACT's announcement that David Garrett, legal counsel for the right-wing lobby group called the Sensible Sentencing Trust, is on place number 5 in the party list. Place 5 was left open at the time of ACT's main list announcement in August.

It's not surprising that ACT has, as Steve Braunias puts it today, "sidled up" to the Sensible Sentencing Trust. An anti-crime message has been a key part of the party's election platform since 1999. In 2002, the "Zero Tolerance for Crime" was accompanied by billboards showing handcuffs on a supposed criminal with the slogan "ACT. Somebody has to.".

"Laura Norder" (as former ACT MP Deborah Coddington called it) is a safe topic for a right wing party. It's a social issue, easy to understand (although of all elections, 2008 should be one for debating the economy). Criminals are a very small percentage of voters (indeed the ones in prison don't have the right to vote at all), so ACT doesn't have to worry about "offending" them. Moreover, it's popular grist for the right-wing mill. I'm quite sure more than a few ACT members would agree with Garrett's stance in favour of capital punishment.

Trouble is, so many political parties agree with tough sentences for criminals that it's become almost a dead issue. Indeed, crime is what political scientists call a "valence" issue - no parliamentary parties disagree with the necessity of sentencing criminals - the question is only the extent. The opposite of a valence issue is a position issue - such as, say, tax cuts in the 2005 election. National supported tax cuts, Labour opposed them - a clear cut difference.

To make itself stand out against the crowd, ACT is naturally trying to position itself as the toughest on crime. That's why Hide told Braunias "we could put young offenders in cabins out in the wop-wops". No family group conferences here. Yet this isn't a lot different to National leader John Key's "boot camps" idea of last January. National has a lot more human and financial resources to sell this message. Moreover, it has more credibility in promoting it, because it is in all likelihood going to lead the formation of the next government. Moreover, ACT has to compete with similar messages from other right-wing parties such as New Zealand First (which despite everything still commands twice the support, in party vote terms, of ACT) and even left-wing parties such as Labour, which is keen not to seem soft.

From ACT's point of view, a more profitable strategy would be to take a position or even valence issue which is less occupied by competition. Possible substitute social-conservative issues include:

A hard-line stance on so-called Maori "privilege", still officially on ACT's books as "One Law for All" but tucked away in a bottom drawer. Reviving this would tap into the feelings of socially conservative voters who voted for National in 2005 and would build upon the many thousands of dollars National spent promoting on that campaign back then (National has since stepped away from this position, leaving the way clear for a niche party like ACT). The most plausible way of getting some quick fire votes in the lead-up to election day. However, the issue has faded in New Zealanders' minds since 2004. Would have been an excellent issue to push had Don Brash agreed with Sir Roger Douglas's invitation to stand for ACT this election.
Cutting back social welfare is another perennial hard-right issue. It's less well trodden than crime (Labour is keen to defend what's left of the Welfare State). National has stepped away from benefit cuts since the departure of Don Brash. A recession would, sadly, seem an ideal time to take issue with "dole bludgers".
Anti-immigration is central to the success of right-wing parties overseas, seen most recently in the success of fringe parties in Austria which last Sunday took a combined 30% of the party vote. In hard times, it's easy to find scapegoats for people's economic troubles and claiming unskilled immigrants are taking "Kiwis' jobs" is potentially credible. However a no-go area for ACT both because free-market ideology correctly sees immigration as a net gain for the economy (as seen by the benefits to the US economy of "illegals", without which the agricultural sector there would collapse) and due to the fact that Hide has a son of half-Chinese parentage and is genuinely finds racist slogans unpalatable. Another downside is that anti-immigration and particularly anti-Asian sentiment is associated with New Zealand First, not something with which ACT would like to be associated.
Pro hunting. Works for Sarah Palin. Not really offensive for anyone. There are a lot of fishermen too. Worked for the Outdoor Recreation party in 2002 which gained 4% of the party vote but failed on the 5% hurdle. But problem with credibility: impossible for ACT, still the party of "big business" for many, to push this wheelbarrow. Plus no real equivalent to the National Rifle Association to generate heat.
Anti-abortion. Works for Sarah Palin. However ceased to be a political issue in New Zealand in the 1970s. Don't go there.

A hard-line on law and order isn't going to cost ACT votes - but don't expect it to win all that many extra either.

Vote first here!

2008-10-05T08:18:00.004+13:00

For those of you who can't wait to cast your vote on November 8, make sure you cast your vote in Douglas to Dancing's poll on ACT's party vote on the sidebar at left. There are six days to go. In the question I ask "realistically" what percentage of the party vote ACT will get. I thought this could be overwhelmed by ACT supporters hoping the party will get "7% or more" - but a check just now found that of the 12 votes cast (a modest success given the niche appeal of this blog), the most popular band was 4-4.9%.

I wonder if 4% has become ACT's new set of goalposts. The member e-newsletter pointed out this week that 4% would give ACT 5 MPs. A month out, this is still a realistic target - but ACT has an awful lot of work to do in a limited time-frame if it is to reach this target. With only a month to go the latest polls still put the party on 2% or less. In the final weeks, the party needs to gain credibility with a simple line - vote ACT, change the government and keep National honest.

MMP - it takes just TWO ticks

2008-10-05T06:47:00.004+13:00

Amidst a lot of the usual pap there are some good gems of information in a Steve Braunias article in today's Sunday Star-Times. The setting is the campaign trail in Hide's Epsom electorate:

Hide, 51, leader of the Act Party, MP for Epsom, moved along the pavement with pretty little steps and a winning smile on his tanned, tight-skinned dial. He asked: "Vote for me?" He handed out Act leaflets. Few resisted. Many welcomed the chance to shake his hand. He was among friends; when Hide won Epsom in the last election, he beat his opponent, National's Richard Worth, at all six polling booths in Remuera.

My criticism of this strategy can be summed up in the three words "Vote for me?". Obviously it's important for ACT to have Hide campaign in Epsom and secure the party's "lifeline". And it's only responsible that Hide is not wanting to appear complacent and is campaigning hard. Yet it's clear that Hide is secure in the Epsom seat: the challenge this time around is getting the party vote. As Braunias points out, in 2005 fewer voters in Epsom gave ACT their party vote than the Greens. Given Epsom is probably an area where Hide and ACT-sympathies run deeper than most, it would seem obvious to campaign hard in 2008 for a "two ticks for ACT" (or preferably a more memorable pun involving "double ACT" etc.), especially in Epsom. In other words, don't just "vote for me" - but "vote for me AND give your party vote to ACT".

To make this clearer: in 2005, ACT received 34,469 party votes in total (nationwide). In Epsom, however, ACT gained just 1,237 party votes. By contrast, the National Party in Epsom alone received 21,310 votes - well over half of ACT's nationwide total!!! So if ACT and Hide managed to convince just half of all those voters who gave National their party vote to give it this time to ACT, the party would have some 45,000 party votes. I'm not sure exactly how the mathematics work but that's close to getting ACT another MP - especially if some more party votes come to ACT from up and down the country, as should be expected this time if more ACT-inclined voters believe their vote won't be wasted due to Hide being "safe" in Epsom.

Interestingly ACT's member e-newsletter is keen on essentially pointing out this fact, in a clear and quite punchy way.

If you want to see a change in government you have two choices.

You can either give your vote to National and ACT – Each is of equal value when it comes to changing the government.

But the real issue is not getting National over 50%. The issue is getting ACT and National over 50%.

Polls show that Rodney Hide will win Epsom so a Party vote for ACT is not a wasted vote.

Every party vote for ACT will count. Even a 4% party vote for ACT will send 5 MPs to parliament.

There is no 5% barrier to be reached.

How about giving voters, as well as members, a lesson in MMP?

TV debates: MMP, not FPP

2008-09-29T09:42:00.005+13:00

News that Helen Clark and John Key are refusing to debate each other with other party leaders has understandably been received with anger by Rodney Hide. Television debates are a major platform for small party leaders to put forward their case to voters. Excluding leaders other than from National or Labour devalues votes given to small parties and only encourages the mistaken view that New Zealand has a presidential system, rather than a proportional, MMP environment.

Hide performs well in debates and will be annoyed that he will be robbed of a potential opportunity to swing voters from National in the manner that Peter Dunne did back in 2002, via the infamous "worm".

Hide's words from his Sunday speech are worth repeating here. Even if you don't support ACT, you should support Hide's position on this issue. I certainly do.

I am disappointed for our country and our democracy. We need to see our Leaders debate their policies. There are serious issues confronting the country. We need to debate the future direction of the country. The man who would be our next Prime Minister is refusing to do so. That's disappointing.

It's MMP. Voters vote a coalition. Having John Key debate with the Leaders of the MMP Parties would be so valuable: voters would get to judge how the Party Leaders and their ideas would work together. Voters need to see the dynamic between the Helen Clark and the Greens, and John Key and ACT. They deserve to see how the Maori Party would fit in.

John Key has denied voters that opportunity. I think it's a shame and anti-democratic.

Here's an idea Hide should take to TVNZ and TV3: encourage them to cancel their head-to-head debates with Key and Clark if they do not agree to take part in debates with other party leaders. Judging by the success of the news media's ganging up in the US against molly-coddling of Sarah Palin, this could be quite effective.

Wong way to do things

2008-09-29T09:31:00.003+13:00

National MP Pansy Wong's attack on Kenneth Wang, the ACT candidate in Botany, should backfire. Wong has lodged an EFA complaint against Wang on the basis that his billboards, which claim voting for Wang will net voters both Wang and Wong (because of the latter's high list position), amounts to an unauthorised and untrue endorsement of Kenneth Wang by Pansy Wong, who has done no such thing.

If mainstream-niche party competition theory, as set out by Bonnie Meguid and discussed by me earlier this year, holds, this attack should have only upside for ACT. Voters feel sympathetic to a small party being attacked by a larger rival; moreover, the attack has drawn far more attention to the billboards than they would have had just being mounted on the street (the Herald article, for starters).

And voters will likely seriously consider Wang's proposition: as he himself points out, people like a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Botany is a new seat created after the 2006 census (see the Wikipedia for a surprisingly detailed background piece).

ACT and the financial crisis

2008-09-29T04:28:00.004+13:00

With all the coverage of the financial contagion which centres on the United States, it's sobering to recall that it is New Zealand, not the US, which has moved into a "technical recession" in the past week, having suffered two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The last time this happened was in 1998 - a fact which should give ACT pause for thought. While financial troubles are not normally something to be embraced with glee, ACT should actually profit electorally from the economic uncertainty.

In 1998, the year of the last recession (which took place amidst the Asian Crisis), the party managed its best ever election result in the Taranaki-King Country by-election of of 2 May 1998. The by-election, held to find a replacement for the previous seat-holder, ousted Prime Minister Jim Bolger, saw ACT haul in 24% of all electorate votes cast and candidate Owen Jennings come within a veritable whisker of winning the seat. What should have been a safe seat for the National Party was won by Shane Ardern with a majority of just 988 votes of almost 20,000 cast.

Sure, that was just a by-election and ACT has done one better in electorate seats both before and since: Richard Prebble won Wellington Central in 1996; Rodney Hide, of course, has held the Epsom electorate since 2005 and according to ACT will safely win the Epsom seat this year. But let's go back to the 1990s: while the economy had recovered somewhat by 1999, the situation was precarious enough to allow the 1999 election to be fought primarily on economic issues. Recall Jenny Shipley threatening increased power of unions; Helen Clark promoting a new 39% top tax rate. For its part, ACT managed to increase its number of seats in Parliament from 8 to 9 - the only time in its history (other than its inaugural entry) it has managed to increase representation.

With New Zealand's economy stronger in 2002 and 2005, these elections were not fought on the overall state of the economy, but on more peripheral issues. These encompassed crime, the environment and race. (It's true that tax cuts were a campaign issue in 2005, but this was not equivalent to a debate over wider economic reforms). To borrow a simple doctrine I heard last week from one of CNN's talking heads: when the economy is doing well, something else is the main issue; when the economy is doing badly, the economy is the issue.

For ACT, a party based on economic reform, then, the hard times New Zealand is now facing should be gold dust. The economy is in trouble; house prices are falling - where is the solution? ACT has one ready in the form of a 20 point pledge card plan - available on its website. But ACT is showing few signs of benefitting according to current opinion polls - it is "static" on 2% according to Sunday's 3 News poll; curiablog's rolling average puts the party at just 1.5%. Why aren't economic troubles appearing to benefit an economic party? After all, in Rodney Hide's own words, "ACT is the only Party with a detailed plan to lift our economic performance".

Here's what I think: ACT's remedy is not perceived as befitting the disease. The collapse of numerous banking institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere has been attributed by voters to the greed of "Wall Street" - with bankers greedy for profits taking inordinate risks. These risks are now being unwound in the form of taxpayer assistance, in the US to the tune of US$700 billion. ACT's free market message is hardly likely to appeal. Why let the market decide when the market can so clearly badly stuff things up?

Most voters won't feel the need to go through this analysis - they'll see "Roger Douglas", remember the 1980s and think "let's not go there again". This doesn't mean they don't want the free market, but they prefer a more compassionate form than the unbridled version. In other words, the smiling-your-mate-John Key version appeals, the version which promises no more asset sales, the version which promises no funding cuts for just about anything.

There is an alternative interpretation the financial crisis which is supported by more right-wing members of the Republican party in the United States. In this version, bankers and their greed were not the problem - the free market is not at fault. Rather, it was the government which forced them into this position by dictating that as part of a social policy mortgages should be granted to all and sundry, rather than just those who can afford the repayments. I haven't seen an ACT position on the causes of the crisis, but I strongly suspect they would side with this view and reject further government intervention.

The trouble for ACT is, far more voters agree with interpretation 1 than interpretation 2. ACT's remedy is too harsh for the disease.

Update: Simon Walker

2008-09-29T03:43:00.003+13:00

I mentioned Simon Walker in my post on targeting New Zealand voters abroad. Walker was included in ACT newsletters during its start-up phase in the mid-1990s as the party's London contact. Walker edited the 1989 book Rogernomics: Reshaping New Zealand’s Economy, a collection of articles in favour of the economic reforms began five years earlier by the then Minister of Finance and later ACT co-founder, Sir Roger Douglas.

Mr. Walker has since contacted me to say that he is still an ACT party member and supporter. Indeed, he appears to still be living in London and is the Chief Executive of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), which describes itself as "the industry body for the UK private equity and venture capital industry. Our membership of well over 400 members represents the overwhelming number of UK-based private equity and venture capital firms and their advisers".

ACT is a party of interesting personalities and one of the interesting aspects of studying the party in depth has been following up where supporters and former MPs have ended up. Walker is by no means the only ACT figure living overseas - as I noted last year, Derek Quigley now lectures in Canberra; blogger Clint Heine lives in London; Rob Good lives in Los Angeles - and these are just names off the top of my head. I'll try to continue keeping tabs on ACT figures - wherever they are in the world.

Update: targeting voters abroad

2008-09-26T06:55:00.004+12:00

Many thanks to Stephen who posted some interesting information as a comment to yesterday's post on the difficulties of targeting New Zealand voters abroad. According to an expat organisation called Kea New Zealand, which is running a campaign called "Every Vote Counts", only around 28,000 of 500,000 New Zealanders living abroad who are eligible to vote actually do so, which I think is a staggering statistic. As for the motives behind the campaign, according to Kea:

Every Vote Counts is strictly non-partisan, and does not advocate that expatriates vote for any particular political party or candidate, nor hold or act on any particular political opinion. No public funds are being used to support Every Vote Counts.

It seems unfortunate that it is left to a volunteer group to encourage New Zealanders living abroad to vote. Kea's website is a pretty professional effort and I might add slightly more attractive than Elections New Zealand's own site, which does a good job of burying information for overseas voters. As I said in the previous post, getting to overseas voters is not an easy job, but there must be a better way. I wonder whether departure cards filled out at the border when leaving New Zealand could be used as a contact point (so long as passengers grant their permission), with an e-mail and/or letter sent out automatically reminding people to enrol and vote from abroad. If you can be stopped at the border for not paying traffic fines, surely it would be possible to get people on the electoral roll.

While Kea is non-partisan, I also found a Labour Party effort (shrewdly registered with a .co.uk suffix) called "Kiwi Vote" (as an aside, with "Kiwi" being used for nearly anything these days, I wonder when Labour will rename itself KiwiLabour). It promotes Jacinda Ardern as "your candidate in London", although it would appear she has returned to New Zealand by now. From April onwards, however, she was apparently scouring the streets of London to find eligible New Zealand voters, both to encourage them to enrol and vote for Labour. Ardern has been ranked 20 on the Labour Party list.

ACT supporter Clint Heine is also based in London and is also on the ACT list this election, at position 39.

Targeting voters abroad

2008-09-25T05:38:00.002+12:00

Finding on my return that the election was so close was something of a surprise - November 8 is certainly not far away! For voters abroad such as myself, it will be even sooner. I received a letter from Elections NZ advising me on how to vote from overseas and it looks like the easiest way will be to download and fax my voting papers back to New Zealand - from two and a half weeks prior to the actual day.

A figure I've heard quoted before is that there are some one million New Zealanders living overseas. I don't know if this is accurate - but if there are about 500,000 New Zealanders in Australia and at least 100,000 in the United Kingdom (as was reported around the time of the 2005 London underground bombings), it seems plausible. Not every New Zealand passport holder automatically has a vote, however. If New Zealand citizens do not return to New Zealand at least once every 3 years, their voting rights are withdrawn. To me this seems extremely unfair considering that New Zealand generously grants even permanent residents the right to vote, but I think most New Zealanders would return at least once within that timeframe - so let's say that makes around 750,000 eligible voters.

This would make them an important and much neglected voting bloc. ACT recognised the influence of overseas voters earlier than most - it established a contact point in London in its start-up phase in the mid-1990s headed by Simon Walker. Walker was involved in the right-wing think tank called the Centre for Independent Studies in the 1990s and as I recall edited a book or two. I don't know what the status of his involvement with ACT is these days - he still seems to be based in the United Kingdom according to a quick search on Google.

Fast forward to 2008 and I don't know if ACT is doing anything concrete to target voters abroad, who must be tricky to round up. With the possible exception of a couple of Australian cities, the concentration of NZers is so weak that traditional advertising methods such as newspaper and television advertising is out of the question (indeed even where it could be technically possible, it would be ruled out for expense reasons alone), leaving only the internet. Yet even here there is limited scope: taking out advertisements on the New Zealand Herald website or similar could be an option, but this assumes voters are actively engaged in NZ matters and that they do not ignore the online advertising (which is much easier to do on-screen than in a physical publication or TV broadcast).

Social networking websites, via methods such as Facebook groups, offer an alternative, but again they assume that the interest of the voters is high enough to encourage them to seek them out. I suspect that social networking is most of use for political parties themselves - ACT has created a number of "fan" pages on Facebook to rally the troops for the campaign. This method is probably particularly effective for the small but vocal ACT on Campus legion of supporters.

ACT should be interested in overseas voters - perhaps more so than most parties. Because it takes some degree of get-up-and-go for someone to move overseas, quite often because of a job opportunity, many are on the other end of the "brain drain". They know why they left New Zealand - and they know what it will take for them to want to return. In addition, I suspect the income of New Zealanders living abroad is disproportionately high compared with their countrymen living at home, not only because of higher wages abroad, but also because their work is likely to be more highly skilled on average. We know from election studies that ACT voters are likely to be earning a higher income on average, so it is plausible that a higher proportion of voters living abroad vote for ACT. Because overseas voters are hard to track down, however, I do not believe there are any actual statistics to prove this one way or the other. For practical reasons, election studies have focused only on New Zealand residents.

As a final note, I suspect that there are many New Zealanders living abroad who could vote, but do not, simply because of the perceived hassle involved and a certain level of disconnection from the election campaign. You cannot vote online. While are fax machines are more convenient than conventional post, they feel like 1990s technology. Moreover, it's almost impossible to avoid the election when you're at home - step outside your house and you'll see a billboard somewhere. When abroad, your awareness will come from checking online and talking to friends and family in NZ - but it's unlikely to be omnipresent. (Incidentally, with the US elections so closely followed abroad, this situation would be quite different for Americans overseas, who can quite easily keep up with the campaign without actively seeking out information).

ACT and other political parties would be well advised to encourage non-resident eligible NZ voters to put some effort in and cast their vote at the election.

Normal service resumes?

2008-09-25T03:18:00.004+12:00

Back for the election. I admit that the reputation of this blog has suffered in recent months with a paucity of updates. After an extended break, I'm back and hope to provide some useful commentary on ACT in the election campaign. From now on I will try to make posts more timely and topical and move away from the extended, but irregular analysis pieces which I preferred earlier in the year. Expect Douglas to Dancing to be more concise and follow the news agenda more closely from now on, although I'll still try to provide original material and comments not available elsewhere (the unique selling point of any blog). I can't promise daily updates, but will attempt to provide commentary at least several times per week.

Naturally for a blog focusing on a small party, this blog has a small readership. Its future will partly depend on ACT's fortunes in the 2008 election: if ACT does manage to put Sir Roger Douglas in as Minister of Finance, its survival in its present form is assured - anything less and it may not be. For example, if ACT's party vote decreases from the 1.5% it attained in 2005, the time may be nigh to put the full stop on the ACT story. I suspect the ultimate outcome will fall somewhere in between. The ultimate dividing line between success and failure will be whether the support from ACT - either in a coalition or in a more informal arrangement - determines the composition of the next government. It's worth noting, however, that Jim Anderton (via his Progressive Party) has been in coalition with Labour for the last two parliamentary terms, yet I don't think anyone could find enough interest or material to create a blog on him (except Anderton himself, perhaps!)

Please remember to send comments and questions to me at any time, either via the in-built comments feature or to my e-mail address (details at left).

ACT List 2008: announcement 11am on Wednesday

2008-08-19T22:27:00.002+12:00

Being away I can't promise any immediate commentary, but check all the usual places for details at 11am on Wednesday, especially the ACT website: www.act.org.nz.

Limited blogging

2008-08-16T19:28:00.002+12:00

I'm out of town for the next few weeks, so blogging will be limited or non-existent for a little while. But I'll be back in plenty of time to cover ACT's fortunes as it begins its election campaign.

ACT List 2008: not today?

2008-08-16T19:11:00.003+12:00

I couldn't find any trace of an announcement of the ACT List in any of the usual places, so unless a release is scheduled for tonight I assume it has been delayed. Perhaps it is possible that ACT's Board was only deciding the List order, with the announcement of it only to come later.

My information that the List would be unveiled on August 16 was in the July 4 issue of member e-mail newsletter ACTion.

Towards the Party List #7

The Board will decide the order of the Party List on Saturday 16 August, based mainly on ability to participate effectively in the Parliamentary process.

An important part of the build-up is for the Board to interview the candidates, particularly those who are seeking a favourable place on the List, starting in Wellington on 6 July.

In addition, we are rapidly approaching the time for the indicative ballot, where the Board seeks the views of the Members of the Party on the relative merits of our Candidates.

All those on the Candidates Register at 18 July will participate in the indicative ballot (apart from any who specifically ask to be excluded). After that date the Candidates Register will remain open, but the latecomers will just have to “take their chances”.

Very clever

2008-08-16T09:36:00.004+12:00

Very clever indeed.

Heather Roy has a relaunched website with a new news blog called "Royters". Which person in the office had that stroke of genius I wonder? The name alone is reason enough to visit!

Incidentally I'm told from sources within National that Roy has little chance of beating former ACT MP Stephen Franks in the Wellington Central electorate. Roy is truly a credit to ACT and an asset to Parliament though, so I hope ACT polls enough to get her in alongside Hide.

ACT List 2008: what would be a "dream team"?

2008-08-16T08:35:00.002+12:00

There are just hours to go until the ACT List is scheduled to be revealed - today, August 16. I'm not aware of any delays to the announcement and so hope to put some commentary later today on the release. In the meantime, here is some healthy speculation and wild guessing to get your teeth into.

Back in February, we were told that Sir Roger Douglas would be just one of a "dream team" of candidates that ACT would announce during the course of the year. Yet there have been few, if any, truly stellar candidates unveiled. That's not to say that some interesting names did not appear in the list of candidates who put themselves forward to be ranked by members: Pauline Gardiner for one is an intriguing proposition. Depending on her list placing and how strong her profile becomes, as a former National cum United MP up until 1996 she would be better placed than most to win over more moderate National supporters.

Other people in the list ranking exercise of interest include Kenneth Wang, who heads ACTs "Asian Chapter" and Hardev Brar, a businessman of Indian background who was on ACT's List in 2005. As Winston Peters likes to remind us, the "Asian" voter bloc in New Zealand is a growing one. If ACT can harness this even to a small degree it will be doing well.

Who else could be on a "dream team" for ACT? What follows are some ideas in no particular order of who could and/or should be on the ACT List today. A note that this is pure speculation - enjoy!

Paul Holmes. Pictured with Rodney Hide at the ACT function in the Herald on Sunday the day after the election in 2005. Gave flattering comments on Hide's autobiography in 2007. Gave media training to Don Brash, proponent of ACT-like ideas. Is retiring from radio at the end of 2008 - perhaps would like a chance to be finally openly partisan and stay in the public limelight. Still has a big public profile, particularly in Auckland. A natural communicator who would package ACT ideas more appealingly. Would be a good number 3 pick. Cons: viewers did not follow him to Prime TV; no guarantee they would follow him to ACT either. Would have to get out of radio contract early to get Hosking in the chair well before the ratings period in October.
Jenny Shipley and other former National figures. You want National's vote? Try putting some National faces on the campaign and send a message to National supporters that not everyone is a Key fan. Shipley is from the right of National, has been out of politics for a while and is perhaps longing for another chance to tackle Helen Clark in a TV debate. She has business experience with her company "Jenny Shipley New Zealand Ltd" which she formed after leaving politics. Also try Max Bradford, ardent supporter of the free market and famous for privatising the electricity sector.
Maurice Williamson and other current National figures. Williamson has been sidelined since 1999 in National. He's also from the right of the party and is not a Key acolyte. What better way to draw attention to ACT than a bust-up within National over the centrist positions taken by Key? As a current MP, Williamson could defect to ACT right now and boost ACT's parliamentary profile (the "waka jumping" legislation no longer applies).
Immigrant dairy owners. They're hard-working small businessmen, supporters of low taxes and unfortunately all too often suffer the effects of violent crime - an ideal platform for ACT's law and order policy. They are the face of much of Auckland. They're non-white, an asset for a party stereotyped as a gang of "rich white men".
Charlie Pedersen (head of Federated Farmers). If ACT could capture more of the rural vote, it could easily boost its party vote up to 4-5%. Currently this is the preserve of National. ACT has some rural faces, as noted in my last post, but none who carry significant political weight in the rural community. As the head of FF, Pedersen would send a strong message to rural National voters that the Nats aren't the only choice in 2008. With the loss of Gerry Eckhoff as an MP in 2005, ACT lacks a farmer on board; Hide has given the party a very urban feel with his focus on the Epsom electorate. Con: Pedersen is not in the best of health. Also try: Craig Norgate (managed the Fonterra merger, now heading PGG Wrightson).
Barry Colman - ACT has a reputation for being a party of "big business" but going by the names in my last post is really a party of small businessmen - essentially the lesser known petit bourgeois. Colman, on the other hand, is one of the country's few big businessmen (publisher of the NBR) and carries significant weight in the business world.
Theresa Gattung - all the benefits of Colman with the extra benefit that she is a woman. With fewer than 20% females ACT could certainly do with a few more to balance up matters.
Roger Kerr, Graeme Scott, Catherine Judd...these are definitely "old ACT" faces but a dream team needs to also satisfy the party base. Graeme Scott, former Treasury secretary, is obviously popular with free marketeers and missed out in 2005 despite the plum 3rd position on ACT's List due to the disastrous election result.
Tim Shadbolt - against the EFA and the subject of my speculative piece earlier this year. Extremely popular as a personality and particulary with the elderly - could help ACT to pick up some of the grey vote. Might be looking for a chance to get into national politics, especially if he's looking for a new challenge. Think of him as a cuddly Winston Peters.
You. In the spirit of TIME magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year". Let's be honest - voters don't scrutinise the ACT list that closely, especially down at place 46 or so. If you're reading this blog, you're obviously interested in ACT and quite likely support their ideas. Why not pop along to see Nick Kearney - the party secretary whose street address is at the top of ACT's website and other materials as part of ACT's authorisation message - and get him to put you on the list of hopefuls?!

Those are the wild guesses - but the reality may unfortunately turn out to be much more ordinary...

Special report: the ACT List 2008 (part 2)

2008-08-06T11:40:00.011+12:00

What follows is a breakdown into categories of ACT members who have put themselves forward for selection for ACT's List at the 2008 election. I have collated this list using the biographies provided and occasionally using personal background knowledge. Obviously I have gone by the information provided by the nominees and could only place them in categories for which information was provided. For Alan (Smilie) Wood I had no information other than that he "[l]ives near Kerikeri".

Nominees will usually have been placed into at least two categories, one reflecting their geographical location and another their occupation, as well as any other relevant categories. Sometimes even relatively straightforward information could not be deduced, e.g. if no location information was given and a mobile phone number used as the contact number (preventing me from using the area code to deduce region). If you notice any errors please let me know.

As I understand it not every person on this list will necessary be on the final party list. If the Board does not like a particular person, he or she could be left out. Space reasons could also lead to an omission of some of the lesser-known candidates, particularly if there are a number of stellar candidates put forward between now and August 16.

But here are a few statistics.* Of the 57 names:

33% (19) come from the North Island outside of Auckland
32% (18) come from the Auckland area
28% (16) are current or former small business owners
19% (11) are aged 60+
19% (11) are apparent foundation/early ACT members (joined in 1996 or earlier)
17% (10) are students, recent former students or otherwise young people
16% (9) come from the South Island
16% (9) are women
11% (6) are from a farming or related rural background (e.g. agribusiness)
11% (6) are bloggers
9% (5) are current or former MPs
5% (3) are from an apparent non-European background
5% (3) are lawyers
4% (2) are academics

Some commentary: rather than me setting out the categories, they tended to choose themselves by nature of their frequency. However I admit that the intention of this exercise was to see to what degree the traditional "stereotypes" of ACT held. To this end, I expected to see quite a few business people, but was struck by the fact that 28% were current or recent business owners. I also expected quite a few people to come from Auckland, which proved correct (32%), but was surprised to see that even more (33%) came from elsewhere in the North Island. One of the more interesting statistics was that around 11% are bloggers, which I am sure would be one of the highest proportions amongst political parties (although Labour does have Jordan Carter!).

My most dicey category is the "apparent non-European background" one. I could class just 3 people into this category, but there may be more which I did not pick up. Some readers may ask why this category matters: I would respond by referring you to ACT's perennial "image problem", as discussed in my dissertation (chapter 3). The same goes for the alarmingly low number of female nominees - just 16%.

Keep watching Douglas to Dancing for more analysis and commentary on ACT's 2008 List composition, including coverage of the final List when it is announced on August 16.

***

Raw data

North Island except Auckland
Vince Ashworth
Shane Atkinson
Michael Bridge
Alan Daniel Davidson
Mark Marshall Davies
Frances Denz
Colin du Plessis
Pauline Gardiner
Duncan Lennox
Garry Mallett
Lindsay Mitchell
David Jeffrey Moore
James Jeremy Read
Ron Scott
Graeme Tulloch
Alan (Smilie) Wood
Peter McCaffrey
Mike Collins
Heather Roy

Auckland and environs
Michael Bailey
Dr. Lech Beltowski
Hardev Brar
Kevin Patrick Campbell
Hon. Sir Roger Douglas
Beryl Marjorie Good
Rodney Hide
Andrew Jollands
Nick Kearney
Rodney Martin
Stephen Martin
Thomas John McClelland
Athol McQuilkan
Peter Boris Tashkoff
John Thompson
Scott Uren
Kenneth Wang
Max Whitehead

Apparent current or former small business owners
Ray Bassett
Colin du Plessis
Kevin Patrick Campbell
Hilary Calvert
Carl Freimann
Beryl Marjorie Good
Roly Henderson
Garry Mallett
Athol McQuilkan
Jonathan Cyril Olsen
Ron Scott
Toni Severin
Benjamin David Smith
David Tattersfield
Graeme Tulloch
Max Whitehead

Apparent 60+
Shane Atkinson
Michael Bailey
Ray Bassett
Dr. Lech Beltowski
Alan Daniel Davidson
John Fraser
Hon. Sir Roger Douglas
Thomas John McClelland
Athol McQuilkan
David Edward Olsen
Graeme Tulloch

Apparent foundation/early ACT members (joined in 1996 or earlier)
Vince Ashworth
Alan Daniel Davidson
Hilary Calvert
Hon. Sir Roger Douglas
Patricia Martin
Colin Nicholls
James Jeremy Read
Ron Scott
Thomas John McClelland
Rodney Hide
Clint J Heine

Students/recent former students/young people
Michael Bridge
Mike Collins
Mark Marshall Davies
Clint J Heine
Peter McCaffrey
Ian Donald Parker
Benjamin David Smith
Michael Tabachnik
Andrew Falloon
Stephen Martin

South Island
Hilary Calvert
John Fraser
Thomas Edward (Ted) Howard
Aaron Keown
Patricia Martin
Colin Nicholls
Geoffrey Russell
David Tattersfield
Andrew Falloon

Women
Hilary Calvert
Frances Denz
Pauline Gardiner
Beryl Marjorie Good
Patricia Martin
Lyn Murphy
Toni Severin
Lindsay Mitchell
Heather Roy

Farmers/rural background
David Edward Olsen
Graeme Tulloch
Vince Ashworth
Roly Henderson
Athol McQuilkan
Graeme Tulloch

Bloggers
Clint J Heine
Peter McCaffrey (also blogs for ACT on Campus)
Rodney Hide
Lindsay Mitchell
Peter Boris Tashkoff
Michael Bridge

Current or former MPs
Hon. Sir Roger Douglas
Pauline Gardiner
Rodney Hide
Heather Roy
Kenneth Wang

Apparent non-European background
Kenneth Wang
Hardev Brar
Peter Boris Tashkoff

Lawyers
Nick Kearney
Mark Marshall Davies
Hilary Calvert

Academics
Dr Lech Beltowski
Lyn Murphy

*Statistics have been updated after the initial posting to reflect information supplied to me by readers

Special report: the ACT List 2008 (part 1)

2008-08-06T11:18:00.004+12:00

ACT members have been receiving voting forms and brief biographies of members who have put themselves forward to be on the party list for this year's election. The accompanying information sets out the purpose of the vote, which is non-binding:

On 16 August 2008, the Board of Trustees of the ACT Party will decide our Party List for the coming General Election. In the build-up, the Board members are gathering information about the contending candidates from many sources to assist them with that responsibility, including:

- Speeches by the candidates
- Summaries of qualifications and experience
- Interviews with the candidates
- Opinions of other people

As part of that preparation, the Constitution provides for a ballot in which all members of the Party can express their views by ranking (1) the candidates across the whole of New Zealand, and (2) the candidates in their region. The ballot papers will be analysed by the same computer method as for previous elections, and the results will [be] presented to the Board. What the Constitution says is:

"The results of the ballot shall however be indicative only to the Board and shall not compel the Board to name any particular Potential Candidate on the List or at any particular place."

The information continues with a reminder that the list of candidates on the ballot is not exhaustive, as it represents only the prospective candidates who have registered as at 18 July 2008. In other words, any number of others could suddenly appear on ACT's list come 16 August 2008 and in the case of any "star candidates", almost certainly will be. This means they do not have to show their hand right now.

There are 57 names on the ballot. As ACT members who feel compelled to stand for Parliament we can consider these people to be the most ardent supporters of the party. While it is possible their backgrounds do not necessarily represent those of all members or supporters, the 57 names are the closest I have to a snapshot showing who is ACT in the year 2008. More valuable of course would be the register containing all members and supporters, but this is something ACT, like all political parties, keeps safely under lock and key.

In part 2, I break down the 57 names into categories and find some intriguing patterns.

MMP officially under threat

2008-08-06T08:48:00.003+12:00

The New Zealand Herald has today devoted its editorial to agreeing with National on holding a referendum on MMP. As I've previously criticised, ACT is supporting a referendum on the basis that voters should have a chance to put forward their opinion. And National has committed to holding a binding referendum no later than 2011 on the MMP system. Yet as the Herald editorial shows, there is so much misinformation on MMP that no "fair" referendum could ever take place. I shook my head at the following in the editorial:

Those who backed MMP no longer wanted unbridled power to reside in the hands of a single party. They also hoped for more fruitful and less confrontational consensus politics, thanks to the probable demand for governing coalitions.

Time has confirmed they were overly optimistic. Parliament is not noticeably more congenial and people are irked by several of MMP's characteristics, most notably unelected list MPs and the disproportionate influence wielded by minor parties.

Some thoughts on this:

Point 1: I'd like to know who all these people were who thought Parliament would become more "congenial" with MMP. Friendliness is not the aim of proportional representation and despite another oft repeated claim, I wouldn't say "co-operation" is either. Politics is always about power and this does not change simply because the number of parties represented in Parliament increases. What MMP does offer is fairer representation of interests and the opportunity for "niche parties" such as ACT put forward their ideas. Parties which have goals in common will naturally seek to work with each other, depending on what numbers are needed after voters have cast their votes on election day.
Point 2: list MPs are not "unelected". Political parties put forward lists before each election. Voters can read these. If you don't like who is on a list - and plenty of voters will not like seeing Sir Roger Douglas's name on ACT's, to cite one example - then you don't vote for that party. For me this claim is always the most irksome, because it is demeaning to the many, many hardworking list MPs in Parliament. Many list MPs could never win an electorate, not because they are stupid, but because there is not an overwhelming concentration of supporters for their party in any one location. ACT supporters should think of Heather Roy, who is easily one of the most diligent and pleasant MPs around. As the blog site co-run by probable ACT list candidate Clint Heine recently pointed out, Roy will have little chance against National candidate Stephen Franks (ironically himself a former ACT MP). But it would be a great pity if Roy were not returned to Parliament. That is what the list is for.
Point 3: "disproportionate influence wielded by minor parties". Disproportionate influence? Looking at current arrangements, this is hardly the case. New Zealand First and United Future provide the numbers for Labour to govern, but have little more than token positions. Yes, Winston Peters is Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade - but he merely ceremonially represents the foreign policy of the government as a whole; moreover, the foreign affairs portfolio is probably the least partisan of all. As for United Future, Peter Dunne is Minister of Revenue. If you'd forgotten that, or (to use Don Brash's favourite phrase) can't recall the last time you heard anything about what he's been doing, I think it shows exactly what "influence" his party exerts - a very small one precisely in line with support for United Future at the 2005 election. My other major complaint about this part of the editorial is the use of the self-fulfilling term "minor parties". Please - be less normative and call them small parties instead.

The smokescreen that supporters of another referendum on the electoral system put forward is that a return to FPP is not necessarily the desired outcome. Despite the overall thrust of the editorial (against MMP, as indicated by the title "Referendum due on MMP"), the Herald makes some sound observations on what could possibly replace MMP:

It is hard...to spot [the] alternative. STV's stocks have slumped thanks to its use in district health board elections, and preferential voting, similarly, is viewed widely as unwieldy.
This offers further reason to think twice about casting aside MMP. As does the fact that, as much as it may need refinement, it can be defended strongly on the basis of having, by and large, delivered representative governments over the past 12 years. It should be given a fair trial.

In other words, the alternative proportional representation alternatives to MMP are fairly unappealing or unintelligible for most voters. FPP would therefore be the only genuine alternative. But for the reasons above, amongst others, this does not make it the correct one.

One swallow does not make a summer, but...

2008-08-02T06:16:00.007+12:00

As ACT strategist Brian Nicolle emphasised to me in written remarks last year, National has not won an outright majority since 1951 - the year of the waterfront workers' strike. One could argue that a landslide election victory is well overdue and deteriorating economic conditions (don't forget, New Zealand, not the United States, is the country halfway to a technical recession) offer fertile ground for a National 50%+ result. But if the rule, rather than the exception, prevails, we should expect National's support to erode over the next few months as voters seek to "keep Key honest". Presuming National steps down from current poll ratings of 50-55% to more realistic 40-45% levels, what happens to the 5-10% "froth"? ACT will be hoping some of it comes to itself.

A little hope for this came in the latest Roy Morgan poll, out on Friday. ACT - which these days normally doesn't even make it into polling commentary, leaving one to hunt for the light blue line just above the 0% mark in the accompanying graphic - has perhaps gained a little of what Duncan Garner et al. would call "traction". The party is now up to 2.5%. From Australia, Gary Morgan tells us:

New Zealand First has lost some ground in recent weeks likely due to the funding scandal surrounding leader, Winston Peters, while ACT NZ’s increase is likely due to the strong performance in Parliament of ACT NZ leader Rodney Hide in questioning Peters about where the funding has gone.

Well, maybe. I recalled similar optimism a while back and on searching through my old ACTion weekly e-newsletters found these comments in the April 18 edition:

New poll details released today by UMR Research showed the ACT Party polling below 1 per cent at the start of the year but support jumping to 2.4 per cent by March. So the ball has started rolling and the closer we get to election time the more the momentum will pick up. Roger’s prediction that if we can get to 3% we can get 7% might just come to pass or even surpass that.

It's been reported that UMR - the polling company used by the Labour Party - has withheld its polling data since April, so I don't know what more recent results are in UMR polls. But a reality check: in the New Zealand Herald's "poll of polls", ACT comes in at just 0.9%; in this week's Herald-Digipoll, ACT polled just 0.2% - surely its lowest-ever result. Until ACT starts registering higher results in other polls, treat the Morgan result as an outlier.

Still, an ACT contact pointed out to me the most recent results in the Morgan poll for ACT have been 1%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2%, 0.5% and 2.5%* - "it's the trend that matters". That's a fair point - if you remove the 0.5% result, ACT has been putting on an average of half a percentage point per poll - but when measuring such miniscule figures I'm not sure how much validity they hold. To use another Duncan Garner word, wait and see whether ACT can gain "momentum" by the time of the next Roy Morgan poll - and move up to 3%.

As The Hive implies, the real story behind the Morgan poll is National's drop in support below the 50% mark, to 47.5%. In the most recent poll of polls, it reached 51.6%. If this trend is reflected in further polls, it suggests voters may be tempted to keep National in check by going to a small party. When this effect happened with Labour, New Zealand First and United Future became beneficiaries, as they cultivated a more centrist position. ACT needs to collect support from voters on National's right who dislike Key's compromises with the left over the likes of his adoption of the Working for Families policy.

UPDATE: some hours after I posted this I found Colin Espiner had written a commentary piece coming to similar conclusions as mine in the last paragraph - definitely worth reading:
There may be another reason why the Yellow Coat of Epsom has a spring back in his step. National is giving Hide plenty of room to play on the centre-Right at the moment. The Working for Families announcement was an absolute gift. Judging by some of the comments on this blog, there will be a few disgusted National voters heading ACT’s way over the decision to continue to deliver welfare to upper-middle-income earners.

*corrected

A Critic-al view of ACT - part 2

2008-07-26T08:34:00.003+12:00

The main event in Critic this week was an interview with Rodney Hide, on page 39. Despite John Ansell saying this week that with the exception of Hide, ACT's electorate candidates had "bugger all chance of winning", Hide still expresses confidence in the ability of Sir Roger Douglas to win the seat of Hunua:

Well, the key thing is the party vote but you have to say, the um … [laughs] I’m sure more people know and respect Roger Douglas than have ever heard of [National candidate in Hunua] Paul Hutchison.

If Ansell is to be believed (and he has had a front seat in ACT's campaign for the first half of 2008), Douglas's campaign in Hunua is a waste of time. On this note, I've been critical in the past of ACT concentrating too much on electorates, rather than the all-important party vote. However, on reflection I've come to appreciate more the rationale for standing constitutency candidates is that it boosts ACT's profile in the electorates in which it fields contenders. This relies on ensuring ACT voters are savvy enough to know that they must give ACT both votes (or at least the party vote), rather than, say, giving Douglas just the constituency vote (which will be wholly wasted if Douglas does lose) and National the party vote.

Party opinion has shifted dramatically over recent years on this point: in 2002 ACT ran a "party vote only" campaign, preferring to conserve campaign resources by not standing any electorate candidates. It is fair to say, though, that the strategic environment has changed just as much in the same period: small parties currently have only a slender chance of retaining representation in Parliament without an electorate seat.

But even more intriguing comments from Hide lie ahead. Later in the interview, he is asked about the merits of MMP. I was surprised at how eager and direct his response was to a very vague and open question:

So you said that ACT is an MMP party; does that mean that ACT is happy with the way MMP runs?
We definitely believe that there should be a referendum. We support a referendum
ahead of the 2011 election.

I'm on record as saying ACT supporting a referendum on MMP simply does not make sense. If it were not for MMP, it would not have Heather Roy in Parliament - and ACT would have never gained the strength it did in the 1990s. According to Hide, "MMP has the plus that it allows for greater diversity in our Parliament, but it has a minus that it lessens accountability and transparency". Huh? Surely not. By its very nature MMP removes the ability of one big party to cook up changes behind close doors and pass them into law the next morning using its clear governing majority.

Indeed, it was this not exactly transparent feature of the FPP system which allowed Sir Roger to implement his economic reforms during the 1980s. I disagree with Hide's example to show why MMP is not transparent or accountable:

Well, take the emissions trading scheme that is currently winding its way through Parliament. It was presented to Parliament, people gave submissions on it, it then had a thousand changes made to it. It’s now being changed again as the Government tries to negotiate with New Zealand First, the Maori party and the Greens to get it through Parliament. At the end of the day no one party is going to be responsible or accountable for what comes out because it’s been hatched behind closed doors.

Of course "no one party" will be responsible for this law being passed. That is the nature of a coalition (or cooperative, seeing Labour is not in a formal coalition with any of the above mentioned parties) government. Voters will hold the parties which pass a law accountable for it, just as Hide and others have held Labour, New Zealand First and other parties responsible for the passing of the Electoral Finance Act (EFA) and the "Section 59" amendment (the so-called "anti-smacking" legislation) to the Crimes Act.

I have discussed ACT's desire for a referendum on MMP before on these pages. But here is a recap. The reasons why ACT would support a MMP referendum are three-fold.

Firstly, there is the usually stated rationale given by ACT for having a referendum - "giving people a say". Yet this is disingenious - voters were already given a choice to change their electoral system just over a decade ago, which is a tiny length of time in historical terms. Changing the voting system is not something to be taken lightly. The United States has not fundamentally changed its system in 250 years; why should New Zealand change its system twice in less than a decade and a half? MMP must be given a long-term trial run, I suggest at least 50 years. If you think that's unreasonable, consider the fac that FPP had close to 150 years to prove itself in New Zealand and plenty more prior to that in its English home. MMP is yet to be given a fair chance.
Secondly, if ACT becomes a one-MP "Jim Anderton" party after the election (with only Rodney Hide keeping the party in Parliament through his electorate seat), ACT will turn into a de facto FPP party anyway. The party vote becomes irrelevant because ACT simply cannot get enough of it to make it worthwhile. Getting rid of MMP would then eliminate parties rivalling ACT for votes in the future which are unable to capture an electorate seat, such as the Greens or New Zealand First. By doing so, ACT could become the only "third party" and paradoxically enjoy more support than it does today, because it could become an outlet for "protest votes" - the disaffected who are looking for another option to Labour and National. (N.B.: exactly this phenomenon is what led to the introduction of MMP in the first place!) This could be called the "last man standing" rationale.
Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, the return of Sir Roger to the party has generated a longing within ACT for the "good old days" of the 1980s, when, as Minister of Finance, Douglas had carte blanche to remake the New Zealand economy. This rationale is irrational: Douglas is 1) not in a 50%+ position with ACT, 2) never will be and 3) is not in either of the big two parties which could possibly be. The only plausible explanation for the delusion could be that ACT is hoping with a little pressure from itself, National could use a return to MMP to implement some of the radical changes Douglas never had a chance to do himself, such as introducing a flat tax.

Yet none of the three reasons is a compelling reason for ACT to support a referendum on MMP. If ACT really is an "MMP party", as Hide says in the same Critic interview, he should surely be calling to support the system by taking a closer look at what parties sother than National have to offer - such as ACT.

Put it this way: I didn't hear Hide calling for a referendum in 2002, when ACT had 9 MPs - all thanks to the party vote.

A Critic-al view of ACT - part 1

2008-07-26T06:35:00.006+12:00

I must have felt nostalgic for my alma mater tonight when I entered the URL of Critic, the student magazine of the Otago University Students' Association (OUSA), into my browser's address bar. Fortunately, as a free on campus weekly, Critic sees no need to fumble about with clunky "E-Paper" technology and posts each week's edition as a freely downloadable PDF, including this week's paper.

This week, Critic featured (on page 22) an interview with Warren Jones, the organiser of the Dunedin chapter of ACT on Campus. Jones's name featured in the acknowledgements of my dissertation, as he was most helpful at the outset of my research and particularly with introducing me to figures in the party. According to Jones, the Otago branch of ACT on Campus currently has "12-15 activists and a wider group of registered supporters". This isn't a huge number, but it respectable considering ACT's overall relatively low profile, general student political apathy and the fact that Jones was given the task of restarting a virtually moribund group when he moved to Dunedin to study in 2007.

Still, the modest grouping today at Otago pales in comparison to what it once was, mirroring the decline of ACT itself. In my dissertation, I found out that a decade ago Otago had one of the larger and more active ACT youth branches. In those days, it was called "Prebble's Rebels". Former ACT candidate Willie Martin recalled in an interview with me (the transcript begins on page 99 of the dissertation) how the Otago campus buzzed with activity with "big house meetings all the time...policy days where we go and talk about policy and one of our members managed a hotel so we were allowed to have our monthly constituency meetings in like a hotel conference room and they were really quite busy". As Martin explains, the forerunner of ACT on Campus in Dunedin had a core group of fervent supporters:

When I joined in '97 there were heaps of young people and we picked up quite a few around the '99 election and had quite a vibrant sort of, it was called Prebble's Rebels at that stage, had quite a vibrant sort of grouping, and yeah there were probably easily 10, 15 of us who'd regularly do stuff, and part of the reason for that was there was a guy called Clint Heine who ran it at that stage, who's now in the UK, but he basically spent far more time devoting, devoting time to Prebble's Rebels stuff than he did to his university studies and right up to the '99 election he was basically just working for ACT full-time and it sort of became a social thing as well, sort of like Clint was organising sort of going putting posters up and that sort of stuff and a lot of them were doing that and then organising heaps of sort of, drinks on the weekend and that sort of thing, so it was a social thing as well as a political thing, back then and certainly ACT on Campus in Dunedin has never quite reached that since

Martin does credit the personality of Heine for much of the seemingly unlikely early success of the Dunedin grouping (Dunedin North being a Labour stronghold). But he also notes that the youth wing's fortunes were interwoven with ACT's: "the party as a whole at that stage had a lot more members and a lot more buzz happening...it was sort of Richard Prebble trying to do something new and innovative and certainly once we got more used to it I think that slowed down as well".

I understand Heine remains a loyal ACT supporter. He now runs a group blog on New Zealand politics which offers some good, partisan commentary on ACT's fortunes, including some comments this week over the departure of John Ansell from the ACT campaign.

Illustrating the vitality of Prebble's Rebels in the 1990s, I've been told that Prebble's Rebels enjoyed making trouble in lectures by the likes of Dr. Brian Roper, a left-wing academic whose beliefs could probably be summarised as being the antithesis of ACT's. ACT supporters sitting towards the back of the lecture theatre used to heckle Roper during his lectures on New Zealand politics. With much reduced numbers, it's hard to imagine ACT supporters attempting a similar endeavour now.

Coincidentally, an interview with Roper (whom Critic describes as the "[u]niversity’s self-proclaimed resident left-wing activist") also features in this week's Critic, on page 13. I was somewhat surprised by his prediction of the outcome of this year's election, which could be described as resigned acceptance of a National-led victory:

I think that National will win the next election comfortably, at least in terms of being the party with the largest share of the popular vote. The only reason I hesitate in terms of predicting a National victory is that National, since the introduction of MMP, has struggled to a greater extent than Labour to find coalition partners. But I actually think it will find some coalition partners for the next election, particularly when John Key is going to present the National Party as being a moderate, sort of centrist kind of party.

This is not exactly fighting talk - but it becomes even defeatist in the next paragraph, when Roper says "it’s a good election for Labour to lose – we’re looking at the most severe recession in the world’s economy since the 1970s and some political economists are predicting a global recession on the scale of the depression of the 1920’s". Whatever the circumstances, it would seem to be a bold call to essentially wish defeat on the party which is in the best position of representing something remotely close to your political beliefs in Parliament. In a year's time I wonder whether Roper will still believe it was an election worth losing for Labour - assuming, of course, that it does lose, which is still by no means certain.

Why did Ansell leave?

2008-07-25T00:12:00.006+12:00

A little less of my day job at the moment leaves a little more time for Douglas to Dancing. And there are plenty of things to comment on. Easily the most significant is the departure this week of John Ansell, essentially a marketing expert who was brought in earlier this year with the aim of sprucing up ACT's appeal and packaging the party's policies in more voter-friendly ways. As many will recall, Ansell was responsible for the ideas behind much of National's advertising (and notably the half/half Labour-National comparison billboards) during the 2005 campaign. Let's begin with Ansell's words of frustration, published in the New Zealand Herald on Tuesday:

"I wanted a mandate to do my job properly but I think I'm regarded as a bit of a troublemaker. In political parties you get 60-odd candidates creating their own personality cults rather than branding the party in a unified way...Yet other than Rodney [Hide, the party leader] they've got bugger all chance of winning their electorates. It's nuts and I said as much but couldn't get any traction. So I was trying to lay down the law that it was not about them, it was about the party vote."

My first instincts when I saw Ansell had left was that he and Sir Roger Douglas did not get along. Yet surely this should not have happened: Ansell was, after all, brought in at the same time as Douglas - at the March 2008 annual conference. Ansell would surely have never been brought in to the ACT team, had he and Douglas had not seen eye to eye. But here is the key: even though I understand Douglas invited Ansell on to the team, Douglas may not have accepted that it would mean delegating a fair amount of the control over ACT's "message" to the marketing men.*

Had it been Hide who had invited Ansell to help out ACT and Douglas never returned to ACT, I am sure there would have been no such problems. After all, it was Hide who understood the importance of image. This was, of course, seen in his desire to give ACT a more positive and warm exterior in 2006 and 2007, when he participated in Dancing with the Stars, took up a fitness regime and released a snazzy-looking autobiography, the cover of which had more in common with a sportsman than a politician. Hide - and Ansell - appreciated the importance of good looks.*

To put it another way, if Hide and Ansell were like hand and glove, Douglas and Ansell would be more like chalk and cheese.

Douglas: the principled politician, who would rather see ACT at 1% but with the most pure, undiluted and potent bottle of policy-medicine from the pages of Unfinished Business and its offspring.
Ansell: the pragmatic salesman, who would rather see ACT at 10%, with the copies of Unfinished Business stacked in the ACT office cellar and at best only an edited highlights package of policies remaining - but with some more appealing 21st century policies sprinkled on top.

This does not have to mean Douglas was completely hostile to Ansell; on a personal level they may have even got on well. Douglas's invitation to Ansell must have been driven by the realisation that ACT needed a dramatic refresh in its branding. But as far as Douglas was concerned, these efforts would have to be in parallel with his own plans. On no account was Douglas going to clear his ideas with Ansell before publishing them, even Douglas's method of presentation for these ideas was incompatible with the forward-looking and streamlined party Ansell was trying to create.

This clash was encapsulated by the release on Douglas's campaign website of Further reading to ACT‘s 20 Point Plan to bring our children home. Tellingly, this collection of readings from the likes of Roger Kerr (Business Roundtable) and Phil Rennie (Centre of Independent (=neo-liberal) Studies) - was uploaded on to Douglas's website only. Download the PDF and you will find page upon page of closely printed text, with a few graphs and tables added in for good measure. Definitely no slogans, no colour (with the exception of the ACT logo on page one) and no simplified campaign messages.

While we cannot say for certain that Douglas himself put the package together, the pseudo-intellectual (pseudo-intellectual not in a derogatory sense, but because it is a campaign document), statistical nature of the document does lead me to that suspicion. There are more than a few parallels with Unfinished Business (1993) and other publications issued by Douglas over the years, such as a regional conference presentation he put together after the 2002 election.*

Douglas (or possibly a volunteer staffer) put a fair amount of time into putting this package together - but for what purpose? I am certain the only people who would bother reading the report would be either some of the loyal ACT supporters (1% of New Zealand voters) who will be giving the party their vote in November anyway, or political watchers such as myself (and even then I should hasten to admit that I have by no means read every word in the PDF). The report would not convince any voters wavering between voting for National or ACT (the voters ACT needs to attract), simply because there is no chance they would ever read the report.

In summary, the report was a waste of time, convincing no new voters and wasting precious campaign time that Douglas, or whoever was responsible for the "further reading" brick, could have spent on working the ACT mail stuffer. If a rift developed between Douglas and Ansell it may well have been partly due to Douglas's insistence on publishing the report. Indeed, it is intriguing that Further reading... appeared on Douglas's personally controlled campaign website, rather than at the official home of ACT, despite bearing the official party logo and not just being related to Douglas's Hunua campaign. Originally, I was told by an ACT insider that the report would soon also be available at the main ACT website; yet when trying to verify this today, I could not find any trace of it.

In light of Douglas's report, it is clear that the 20 point "pledge card" unveiled on the ACT website some time earlier was an Ansell inspired compromise with Douglas to boil down the essence of his masterplan into a more manageable (but still hardly bedtime reading) list of policies which ACT believed would "get you an extra $500 a week, beat Australia, and bring our children home". Some colour and more personal language made this infinitely easier to comprehend than the Douglas PDF-doorstop, but it was still a wad of detail that I imagine few recipients could be bothered reading.

Indeed, I suspect Ansell was frustrated by a desire by Douglas to include nearly every possible policy area. Ansell would have known that ACT needed a 3 point plan, not a 20 point one. A reply by Douglas to an interview by Salient this week suggests that Ansell's creative abilities were constricted by Douglas's desire to micro-manage:

I think John probably from his point of view found there were frustrations, he wanted to control from woe to go.

Douglas's quest for control indicates why even the slimmed down pledge card was still a mass of closely printed text, instead of a few bold "bottom lines". ACT is not going to win votes on climate change, whatever it says, so why include it on a mailout to voters? Why is ACT the only political party which sees the need to compare its policies with those of Trinidad and Tobago and Belize?

Above all, the pledge card - even though it could have been much worse had Ansell not been around - illustrated a return to the age-old, ACT-old tendency of putting up a policy tsunami as if it would win 50% of the vote in the election. After he took over the leadership in 2004, Hide took steps to tackle this flaw and in 2005 ACT did not even issue a full policy manifesto as it had done in the past (as seen by the lengthy summaries from manifestos summarised in the appendix of my dissertation). In 2007, Hide told me the party would campaign this year on just a few bottom lines, a stance which would have been completely in sync with the tactics used by Ansell. But Douglas's return brought back the idea of presenting an all-encompassing "masterplan". Yet a party on 1% - or even 10% - will never be in the position of being a political master, or even a political mistress.

It was a former New York state Democratic governor, Mario Cuomo, who once said politicians "campaign in poetry but have to govern in prose". Douglas campaigns in prose - and at this rate will never have to worry about the governing.

Seeing his "poetry" corrupted by his paymasters, Ansell has unsurprisingly set off for pastures new.

*Portions of this post have been edited to reflect feedback supplied to me by a contact

Douglas publishes "further reading" to 20 point plan

2008-07-09T17:07:00.003+12:00

Sir Roger Douglas has published a 129 page document giving "further reading to ACT's 20 Point Plan to bring our children home". See also the pages by Douglas at his campaign website, http://www.roger4hunua.com/. I'm told the file will soon appear at the official ACT website.

Commentary to follow.

Is it Worth trying to face up to Hide online?

2008-07-02T06:46:00.006+12:00

A few weeks ago an e-mail came across my inbox from Facebook. This is not remarkable in itself - even fellow occasional social networkers like me will be aware that the form e-mails advising that person XYZ "has added you as a friend" come along as regularly as the sun rises and sets.

But this time the person adding me as a friend was no-one other than Richard Worth, National's candidate (and former Member of Parliament) in Epsom who is again standing, this time to try and unseat Rodney Hide as the local MP. My first concern was to wonder how on earth Worth came to the idea of adding me to his friends list. I soon realised that he had gone through and added anyone with connections to ACT listed on Facebook. Over the last year a number of ACT members or people linked with ACT have added me as their "friend", so it is not hard to see how Worth came across a handy reservoir of names. It's a good bet that a fair number of them are Epsom voters. Of course, I'm sure many people refused the invitation to be Worth's "friend", but seeing he is listed as now having 316 friends, I suspect many clicked accept without a second thought. (Naturally, I accepted Worth's invitation, for research purposes mind...).

Overseas, social networking has become popular with politicans trying to get in touch with the so-called YouTube generation. Anyone who has not heard about how many Facebook friends Barack Obama has acquired, for instance, just hasn't been listening properly. While the United States inevitably leads in such innovations, we also saw social networking play a role in the election of Kevin Rudd as Australian Prime Minister last year. Political operatives see the opportunity of reaching more "young voters" - who may consume relatively little television and print media, both of which are traditional outlets for political advertising. Doubtlessly the "two-way" potential of online networking via sites such as Facebook is also seen as an advantage (although whether it is harnessed properly is another question altogether).

Inevitably, New Zealand's politicans have attempted to follow suit. Late last year, Rodney Hide founded his "supporters'" page on Facebook, which to this day has changed little from the brief bio and photo piece established on launch. Hide does not provide regular updates to his page and indeed he does not really seem to appreciate the nature of online networking. To note just one flaw, the third-person biography should surely be written in the first-person if the page is to avoid looking like a mere electronic brochure written by a party staffer. Given Hide's devotion to technology (he is an addicted BlackBerry user and has been one of the few NZ politicans to regularly maintain an self-written blog, although this has been silent of late), I wonder if he intends to rectify his Facebook presence closer to the election. At the moment, it looks like his heart is not in it.

So what about Worth? His page has a number of advantages over Hide's: it is updated regularly (seems to be daily at the moment), has a filled-out profile with Worth's personal interests (including mountain climbing in Africa and elsewhere - I wonder if he has ever met Helen Clark along the way - who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1999?) and moreover, all of this would appear to be written by Worth himself, as it is in the first person and doesn't sound polished enough to be written by a staffer.

What is more, Worth's profile is a fully-fledged one, meaning users can post messages on his "wall" and use all the classic Facebook features - i.e. you can "poke Richard". Rodney Hide's profile, by contrast, is a limited "fan" version which severely restricts the amount of possible user interaction. Worth's openness on Facebook is to be commended.

However, while all this sounds fine in theory, in practice Richard Worth on Facebook is well, a little dull. The profile photograph is hardly "Yes We Can" material; clicking through to see the other Flickr photographs Worth has uploaded is an effort not fully rewarded. Moreover, Worth's daily updates resemble the programme This Week in Parliament (alas, absent from the airwaves for several years now because Radio New Zealand decided to cut its funding)

Yesterday, for instance, Worth's "friends" could read some scintillating new information:

Business in the House this week will be the remaining stages of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, the Relationships Registration Amendment Bill and the first readings of the Judicial Matters Bill and the Public Lending Right Bill.

A little more interesting was an update from last week. Now, political parties are not normally keen to admit they are influenced by "lobbyists". Which lobbyists were you referring to, Richard? Did the invitation to celebrate also extend to PR companies - Crosby Textor, by any chance? And what ever happened to supposed journalistic objectivity?

Last night the National Party Caucus hosted its annual party for media representatives and lobbyists. It was a long running night and doubtless some this morning will be feeling the pace of a splendid party.

I spoke in the House on changes to the law which would permit union and employer association lawyers to give advice to their members. That is controversial because it does not reflect the lawyer/client relationship.

There is some mirth provided by Worth's lack of choosiness over his "friends", illustrated by these comments posted on his wall:

Of course, we should not get carried away with evaluating politicans by their Facebook pages or anything else of the virtual manner. Certainly, it's an easy (everything needed accessible by pressing a few keys) and reasonably fun exercise to carry out. This is probably one reason that for years, political scientists and other commentators have carried out evaluations of political party websites. For example, in April 2007, the MainlyPolitics blog (run by Chris Hipkins, now the 2008 Labour candidate for the Rimutaka electorate) carried out a survey of New Zealand political party websites and from memory gave high marks to the Greens. Unfortunately the blog has now been taken down, which probably has something to do with Hipkins's candidacy.

In these, it has been far from clear that a good website translates into higher polling results. In New Zealand, one of the most striking examples of this might well be the website of the Labour Party. For years, it put forward an offering which would make Russell Brown despair, yet it was the party in government with 40% or more support. For two years following the 2005 election the site still invited supporters to contribute to the election campaign. Now, its website gleams with bright and breezy graphics with regularly updated news brought on by a wholesale overhaul - yet as we know support for Labour has substantially declined.

Above all, we shouldn't take a party website, blog or Facebook page to be a proxy for the actual party. A poor online presence need not necessarily mean a party has a poor offline presence. Indeed, it seems to be the case that a party will invest more time and money online when the party is performing poorly in terms of polling. To the Labour example above we can add ACT's own site, which underwent a complete overhaul (although I'm not sure entirely for the better) in 2007.

With this in mind, perhaps ACT has decided that while a certain online committment is important, it is not worth spending money on virtual efforts which could be spent on campaigning on the ground.

After all, when all is said and done, Richard Worth's provision of a daily mini-Hansard is unlikely to to power him to victory against Rodney Hide in Epsom.

ACT website down

2008-06-19T07:51:00.005+12:00

The biggest, juiciest pledge card ever has been replaced by the most frustrating, annoying error message ever...(well probably not that bad but certainly a pain when I wanted to check something just now!).

Correct as at 8am on Thursday New Zealand time...

Time warps, Peter Dunne and ACT

2008-06-19T06:46:00.004+12:00

This a "well-strained" post (given that it relates to a comment on a Kiwiblog post about an interview at the Scoop website) but I couldn't help chuckling at a particularly sharp reader comment about a party which is faring even worse in the polls than ACT: Peter Dunne's United Future:

United Future – the personality cult without a personality.
The interview is classic Peter Dunn[e] isn’t it. Sounds oh so reasonable but actually the sum is meaningless.

I remember the 1980’s: yes [Sir] Roger [Douglas] was dynamic and exciting. Peter Dunn[e] can never been accused of that….. even then.

I love the first comment - it summarises the United Future "phenomenon" down to a "t"! In my research I found the depth of feeling about ACT (and let me say, usually against ACT) was remarkable for a party polling such a small amount of support, 1-2% at most. In most cases the strong feelings were almost solely generated by reactions to Sir Roger Douglas, sometimes with a sprinkling of distaste for Rodney Hide's "muckraking" thrown in (although this was usually tempered by admiration for his dancing routines).

Douglas is that most polarizing of political figures: you either idolize or despise him and there really isn't much of a middle ground. I did find that some first-year university students were indifferent to him, but this was simply due to lack of first-hand memories of Douglas's actions during the 1980s and an unawareness of history. A former candidate I interviewed put the latter case down to a poor education system (I would agree with this and add the deficiencies of the New Zealand media which knows no context and no history, both of which are usually provided by serious documentary strands).

Dunne's comments in the Scoop interview on ACT were criticised at Kiwiblog by several others apart from the above contributor. According to Dunne:

The problem with Roger and the whole Act Party is that they’re trapped in a time warp, at the point when Roger was sacked. The world has moved on. The implicit mantra is that if we all went back to 1987 and picked up where we left off, things would be different. Its rubbish.

Symbolising the frosty relationship ACT has with the National Party, Kiwiblog owner David Farrar agreed with this view. But while Douglas does much to generate the perception that ACT simply wants to restart the policies of the 1980s (and as Helen Clark would put it, the "dark days of the '90's"), by itself this does not make the policies stupid. Dunne and Farrar would do well to remember that tax cuts, a central policy of the Douglas years in the 1980s (and indeed the plank for which Douglas fell on his sword) are also favourites of the United Future and National parties.

Or let's pick up an analogy from the social democratic side of the equation: should we not dispense with unemployment benefits and the Welfare State, because we don't want to be stuck in the "dark old days of the 1930s" and the Great Depression?

It's easy to come up with slogans ("going back to the '80's", "trapped in a time warp") - but much harder to give a reasoned critique on exactly why the policies promoted by Douglas and ACT are inadequate. Unfortunately for ACT, Sir Roger Douglas is more despised than idolized (once even describing himself as the "devil reincarnated") and makes the easiest target in politics for ad hominem attacks.

What Gerry's been up to

2008-06-12T08:10:00.004+12:00

The ODT reports today that former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff yesterday voted against the Otago Regional Council funding Dunedin's new "multipurpose" (read: rugby) stadium to the tune of $37.5 million. This is of course in Eckhoff's capacity as an ORC councillor.

Cr Eckhoff said he could not support the stadium as it would only be used occasionally, with little chance of a financial return for Otago.

Followers of ACT will recall that Rodney Hide was involved in a much higher profile anti-stadium campaign in late 2006, when he joined forces with Green MP Keith Locke to protest against the proposed waterfront stadium in Auckland. So it is not surprising that Eckhoff has been similarly looking out for ratepayers' interests and with ACT-like thriftiness has voted against it. Eckhoff farms in Central Otago (in Coal Creek if I remember rightly) and for ratepayers living so far away from Dunedin (about 3-4 hours' drive) the stadium would generate few benefits.

As I recall, the Auckland Regional Council was given just two weeks to make up its mind over the fate of the stadium - and subsequently rejected it. The Otago Regional Council has been dithering for about two years on the matter and despite Eckhoff's vote, the stadium has been given an extension of life, with seven councillors voting for the funding and only four against. However, opponents say it is unlikely the stadium will be built, as the funding is conditional on the roofed stadium being built for the already costed $165.4 million, a figure which has already been proven to be unrealistic by several local academics.

Returning to ACT: in his position as a local councillor Eckhoff is standing on his name alone, as is usually the case in New Zealand local politics. But I wonder whether a potential future strategy for ACT could be to stand candidates in local elections under the ACT banner, as part of a "local" strategy which the party seems to be pursuing with the increased focus on electorate contests. Hide has repeatedly emphasised his desire to be the best electorate MP Epsom could have and has spent much time since the 2005 election focusing on Auckland issues, such as the stadium. Of course, whether voters would be prepared to vote in candidates marked with the ACT brand, proven to be unpopular, is questionable - but I think Eckhoff might well have won nevertheless, given his popularity in the Central Otago area and in particular with the farming community.

Poll results offer glimmer of hope?

2008-06-02T01:26:00.005+12:00

ACT has managed to double its poll results, according to the latest surveys by TVNZ and TV3 out on Sunday.

ACT had been down at around 0.3-0.4% in the One News-Colmar Brunton Poll, but had increased that to 1.2% according to Sunday's figures. On TV3, the party was at 1%, up from 0.5% in the last poll. I think TV3 may round its figures to the nearest whole or half percentge point, so the actual result may have been slightly higher (or lower) than 1%.

These results may be no more than a statistical blip, but could it be the start of a surge in support for small parties as voters decide they would rather keep the big parties "honest"? In 2002, we famously saw support for Labour disintegrate, with voters seeking the "middle ground" in the form of United Future. Television's angle on Sunday night was that New Zealand First was catching up - to 4.4% in one of the polls. Considering that NZF was where ACT still is not so long ago, the idea of ACT itself catching up isn't out of the question.

In 2008, ACT will be hoping for a similar effect to what happened in 2002, only this time with respect to National and with itself as the chief beneficiary.

Some further thoughts on MMP

2008-06-02T00:45:00.004+12:00

Unfortunately higher priorities are continuing to prevent me from updating this blog more regularly, so it's time for an overdue catchup. I've had some feedback on my comments on MMP, including a comment on an earlier post suggesting an STV system replace MMP. But these comments reflect the prejudice against MMP:

This I believe would result in a more diverse parliament, with still MP's such as Jeanette Fitzimmons being elected, and the same for Hide, & perhaps 1 or 2 other ACT MP's, and even Winston would be represented, but their power would be limited to how many candidates they can get elected by electorates, rather than quirks of the MMP system.

Let me emphasise: MMP is not a funny money system. Proportional representation, of which is MMP is a form*, is used by most countries in Europe and any "quirks" it may have are far outweighed by the massive "quirk" in FPP which makes it almost impossible for a genuine third party to prosper and have any chance of participating in a coalition government (witness the situation of the Liberal Democrats in the UK). The theory behind proportional representation is simple: add up all the minorities which are split up by electorates and you have a substantial block of voters whose opinions should be represented. I admit that I'm not an expert on STV, but I don't see how it could do things any better than MMP or FPP for that matter. This being the case, I'm happy with MMP.

This doesn't mean that there can't be alterations to the system, however, without a referendum being needed. As I said in my earlier post, I think the waiver of the 5% threshold providing a party's candidate wins an electorate seat has been counterproductive, leading to small parties becoming personality-driven and not carving out substantive, issue-based cleavages. New Zealand's "5% threshold waiver" (for want of a better term) has become a poisoned chalice: the small parties probably wouldn't be there if it weren't for their strong leaders such as Winston Peters, Peter Dunne and indeed Rodney Hide. But conversely, the rule has only encouraged them to build support around the leader, rather than a more durable (in terms of decades), issue-based agenda.

For instance, imagine how long the Greens would have lasted if it had been called the "Anti-GE Party" instead and had acted accordingly. It might have done very well in 2002, when the issue had salience (remember "Corngate"?), but after that the party would have shrunk to a small band of ardent supporters. By promoting itself as the Greens, the party has given itself leverage to pick up on whatever environmental issue is flavour of the month - anti-GE sentiment in 2002, climate change in 2008.

Admittedly, you might say the other small parties have been generic enough too in their names: New Zealand First, for example, not the "Anti-Immigration and Old People's Party". But the connotations are so strong with most of these parties to these issues and usually with the party's foundations in the 1990s that they have engendered a similar fixing in time and space as the fictitional "Anti-GE Party" might have done. ACT will forever be linked with the 1980s and Sir Roger Douglas. It may not want to be anything else, but there will always be a limited amount of supporters for this.

As I said in my post a fortnight ago, it doesn't make rational sense for ACT, a party of MMP, to campaign for a referendum to alter the voting system. I know Douglas and co. are fans of "big change" but you have to be careful of what you wish for. From ACT's perspective, ACT with a 50% majority would be nirvana (this is what Douglas originally predicted on founding the party), but it would never happen. In 2005, many ACT supporters saw National with a majority under Don Brash to be almost as good a deal. But ACT supporters should imagine what a Labour government would do with an absolute majority? It won't happen in 2008, but it could happen a decade or so down the track, once voters' fascination with Key has warn off, especially if FPP came back. In that case, ACT would be left right out in the cold - no representation and no favourable government.

While there has been talk around that we could go to STV or something else other than FPP (I think this is also what Key suggested), in reality supporters of a referendum want to go back to FPP. It would not be worth going through the instability and confusion (not least of all for the foreign investors on whom NZ depends) of changing the system for anything but a direct opposite. The idea of returning to FPP is understandable, to a degree. There is comfort in the familiar and 140 years of FPP system does not go away overnight. Currently small parties have reached a nadir. MMP is probably at its lowest point. So why not knock MMP out while the chance exists? This is clearly what Key would like after the election, especially if he gets the majority for which he is obviously hoping.

But I think MMP has not had anything like a fair test. FPP had 140 years before it was booted out. Now, I'm not saying that MMP deserves 100+ years before a referendum, but it still needs a chance to mature and 10 years is simply not long enough for the party system to mature. To prove this, look at the German model. From the first post-war parliament in 1949 until 1983, the Free Democrats (FDP) were the only third party in the Bundestag, along with the Social Democrats (SPD, equivalent to Labour) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU, equivalent to National). Since 1983 the Greens have also been represented and in recent years a new left-wing party (Die Linke) has emerged, to create a 5 party system. This may change, of course, but after 20 or 50 years in the Bundestag respectively it is hard to imagine (although nothing is impossible) either the Greens or FDP losing representation. In both cases, the parties are indeed fairly secure, with the Greens and FDP achieving 8.1% and 9.8% support respectively at the most recent federal election in 2005.

In NZ currently I think only the Greens could be said to be a stable force in parliament, a party which has carved out a genuine niche - like the FDP did in the early years in Germany. The other parties have not evolved or carved out substantial niches. Obviously New Zealand First and United Future will be out once their leaders go; add to that the Progressives once Anderton retires. ACT has carved out a niche of sorts (mainly Douglas fans) and unlike New Zealand First or United Future has proved longevity with the leadership change to Hide. But it is a precarious niche and at 1.2% or so, not yet a substantive one.

Like the Greens with environmental issues, ACT does have a strong fertile ground with the free market - but its problem is that it is perceived as a "1980s free market" party, which voters do not, on the whole, want to go back to. Who knows, ACT may evolve and become the fourth substantive parliamentary force, especially once United Future and New Zealand First disappear, as they must because of the inevitable retirement of their leaders. But it may be another new party altogether which finds a unique cleavage in society at some stage in the future.

*Correction from the original post - see comments to this post

Breaking news...

2008-05-19T06:34:00.006+12:00

Some breaking news for ACT watchers:

Overnight on Monday, ACT has sent out an e-mail promoting a new "pledge card". The text also appears on the homepage of the party website. On clicking the link one is taken to a PDF with a "20 point plan" of what policy measures ACT supports. There we also see a new party logo - ACT's fourth since launching as a political party in 1994. The 2008 version dispenses with the blue-green mix in place since 1996, replacing it with a solid sky-blue colour, while retaining the tick device in the yellow colour which it has been since 2003. The new logo includes the slogan debated at some length at the conference in March - "The Guts To Do What's Right".

The pledge card is classic ACT - lengthy discussion giving reasons why its policies are needed in New Zealand. Not only that, each policy is accompanied with calculations claiming how much growth it would stimulate and by how many dollars each New Zealander would, on average, be better off for it.

In short: it's the 2008 revised and condensed edition of Douglas's 1993 book Unfinished Business.

As an example, the ACT policy for health as set out in the pledge card is the following:

ACT Policy: Create competitive market.
Countries where similar policy works well: Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Germany,
Sweden (Stockholm)
Benefit: Hospitals cure more patients, sooner. (State gives health policies to all. Patients choose hospitals. Doctors, not bureaucrats, drive healthcare.)
Boosts NZ annual growth by... 1/4%
Boosts NZ average weekly pay by...$25.00

My first observations of today's news are the following:

This has all the hallmarks of Sir Roger Douglas - no shortage of policy detail and solutions all tied up in a grandiose step-by-step plan.
But barring the new slogan, few genuinely saleable messages needed for sound-bites to get VOTES - the prerequisite for implementing even one of the 20 points.
If this is sent out as a mail drop (and presumably it will be), who will take the time to read the fine print?
The new slogan "The Guts To Do What's Right" is undoubtedly an improvement than the previous one ("The Liberal Party", which confused the few who noticed it), but even so, its merits are contested by even members themselves, mainly due to the view that it will be seen as too harsh.
Back to 1996 and the return of "mentors" who will "teach parenting and life skills" - a Douglas idea from the party's inaugural election manifesto "Values. Not Politics".

But the most significant point builds upon my last post. ACT clearly has a death wish. A referendum on MMP and the reduction of MPs to 100 are included amongst the pledges. We know that figures in ACT have always had a reluctant attitude to MMP. Party strategist Brian Nicolle and other ACT figures like Peter Shirtcliffe actively campaigned against it in 1993. Douglas has never believed it is conducive to the "big-picture" changes he thinks New Zealand needs and started ACT with the aim of it replacing National as the major centre-right party.

I have always considered the party's history with MMP somewhat ironic, but thought that ACT figures had long since decided that their best option was to "grin and bear it" and work within the system now in place as a "truly independent MMP party" (according to party president Garry Mallett in 2007). Searching through ACT manifestos from 1996-2005 which are included as appendices in my dissertation, I did not find a single reference to MMP apart from a desire to abolish the Maori seats, included in the manifestos for 2002 and 2005.

The reason for shutting up about MMP was obvious: campaigning to review the system of proportional representation which put ACT in Parliament makes as much sense as turkeys voting to have Christmas twice a year. So the idea of ACT explicitly wanting to debate the future of MMP is unprecedented.

Does it make sense? Here's a conundrum to think about: let's say ACT boosted the number of MPs to its target of 7 or 8 this year (an unlikely scenario on present polling). After getting Douglas elected as Minister of Finance (another unlikely scenario), would it really, seriously campaign to vote itself out of existence at the next election by supporting John Key's referendum on MMP?

Picture credit: http://www.act.org.nz/files/pledge/email_nbpc_logo.png

Time for a save MMP campaign?

2008-05-12T11:45:00.004+12:00

I think it was when I showed my NZ studies course students the latest Herald-DigiPoll that the absurdity of the whole situation really hit me. New Zealand must be the only country in the world which has a government coalition partner (the Progressive Party) with absolutely no popular support. From the 1000 voters polled, not one named the Progressives as the preferred recipient of their party vote. Please don't get me wrong: this certainly isn't intended as a criticism of Jim Anderton's party per se. ACT itself had just 0.4% - "translated" (as Guyon Espiner would say), this means just 4 voters of the thousand polled selected ACT.

Noting this, the post I could write now is that Douglas's return is not having the desired effect. But the problem is a macro, not micro one. Small parties, whatever the colour, are faring poorly. Put together, the two major parties in New Zealand now have 89.3% of the party vote, according to the Herald poll. This leaves just 10.7% to be divvied up amongst all the other parties. Flashback to the 1996 General Election: then, Labour and National captured just 62.1% of the party vote. Small parties now have just a quarter of the vote they did a decade ago to share amongst themselves.

Is this the fault of the small parties? To some extent, certainly. The loophole in NZ's version of proportional representation which allows parties to circumvent the 5% threshold if they have an MP win a constituency seat has led to parties becoming personality-driven, rather than seeking to develop new cleavages amongst voters. Small parties have largely not adapted since 1996: Winston Peters is still Winston Peters, saying the same old things. Not surprisingly, New Zealand First's utterances against immigration seem tired now after fifteen years of reciting them. There is still a constituency for his party's messages, but it is a shrinking one. The same might be said of ACT, which as a party driven by ideology cannot adapt its policies beyond making cosmetic changes to the packaging (the dressing up of education vouchers as "scholarships" is but this year's incarnation). Put it this way: would the Jim Bolger National Party, saying the same things it did in 1996, still appeal in 2008?

But blaming the small parties for their own misfortune is too simple. In fact, there is a massive structural problem at work. From the beginning, MMP has always been treated as some "funny-money" system by the news media and by many voters themselves. I am sick of hearing people who say that "List MPs aren't elected MPs". They are. Now recall the silly (but much heralded) petition in 1999 to reduce the number of MPs to 99 - by slashing the number of List MPs to such an extent that the proportional system would no longer function properly. Then there is Bernard Hickey, who now seems to have joined the ranks of the self-important "commentators" who live in Auckland and can get to TVNZ's studios on a Sunday morning for Agenda. Quizzing Sir Roger on Agenda some weeks ago, Hickey pronounced that New Zealand's productivity gap could be explained by the introduction of MMP in 1996, after which he said productivity growth had begun to decline (see the piece on his own blog).

Hello? MMP is proportional representation, the fairest and moreover, most common form of democracy around the world. If political system had anything to do with wealth, why have countries such as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Germany continued to outstrip New Zealand in terms of productivity and above all GDP per capita? The Swiss example might be particularly illuminating for Mr Hickey - few systems could be as regulated as the Alpine republic's version of proportional representation, working as it does on a complex formula designed to carefully distribute power amongst the Cantons and the four main ethnic groups. Hickey's citing of MMP as the fault for NZ's economic lag behind the rest of the world is as spurious as saying that the rise of the internet from the mid-1990s must have stinted productivity growth. It is simply a spurious and unfounded correlation.

Then there is the news media's habit of focusing almost exclusively on the main parties. How can small parties hope to perform when they are seldom treated as genuine alternatives for voters? The simple fact that they are called "minor" parties illustrates the contempt in which they are held. In other proportional representation countries, such as Germany, parties are never referred to in this way, but are instead given reasonable opportunity to put their views across to voters. Not so for the NZ media, which in reporting of political polls often do not even mention the plight of parties other than Labour or National. This is the "Presidentialisation" of politics: the "battle" between Helen Clark and John Key is the only theme up for discussion.

However, I wonder if New Zealand's current small parties have reached the end of the line. In Germany (on whose system New Zealand's MMP is based), it took around 15 years after the introduction of a revised proportional system (following World War II) for a permanent third party to become established. This was the Free Democrats (FDP) - the party with which ACT likes to compare itself. It took another 20 years after this for the Green Party to become Germany's fourth party, in the 1980s. And another 20 years after that for Germany to become a five party system, with the entry of Die Linke ("The Left") in 2005 and it subsequent consolidation of support.

What the German example shows is that the small parties which have lasted have been driven by support for substantive themes and not merely personalities: a free-market economy (FDP), the environment (Greens) or an expansion of the welfare state (Die Linke). Although its place in Parliament is far from secure, perhaps the Greens will become New Zealand's only viable third party, for now, while the others will fall by the wayside. Of course, ACT itself ought to have a chance, stressing as it does its adherence to ideology. But ACT is too rooted in time and space: in its present form it will never shake off the 1980s - and the return of Douglas to the party seems to indicate that it may not want to. This image problem is without question ACT's chief problem, as I have noted time and time again.

But none of this should mean we, as voters, should give up on supporting all the small parties currently, or not currently, in Parliament. Why bother having a proportional system of representation if a de facto two party system is simply going to take hold? My argument for greater support of small parties is similar to the argument put forward for free speech. You may not necessarily agree with what the small parties say, but you should defend their right to say it.

Hide answering "your questions"

2008-04-28T17:48:00.004+12:00

ACT leader Rodney Hide has featured in the "Interview the Leaders" series on left-wing blog The Standard. It's a fairly useless interview in terms of substance and is indeed so short that I strongly suspect Hide responded via his Blackberry. However, Hide did respond with some more detail on what exactly constitutes ACT's "Smart Green" policy and we now know that it will include the end of the current Emissions Trading Scheme (i.e. the "cap and trade" model).

The price of milk (part three)

2008-04-28T17:19:00.004+12:00

Higher priorities have prevented me from completing the mini-series I began a week or so ago until now, but perhaps that was not such a bad thing. In the interim, the rising price of food seems to have become a fixture of the daily news agenda. Saturday's Weekend Herald led with a story claiming that the "average trolley of food cost 28.5 per cent more this week than a year ago" My copy of Saturday's International Herald Tribune led with yet another food-related story, albeit this time returning to the wearisome "food miles" stable. In the past week, German media here have aired news bulletins warning of the effects of a growing rice shortage, while channels have also taken turns in showing the effects of rising prices on "an ordinary family".

As I intimated in my last post, German consumers actually have little to complain about compared with people elsewhere: in the last week milk prices in supermarkets have dropped by as much as 20%. This means you can buy two litres of milk for around $NZ2.00. Again, this has come largely due to fierce competition between the discount supermarket chains and their ability to put pressure on the large number of small dairy farms which lack the equivalent of a Fonterra looking out for their interests.

But there is another reason why a lid has been kept on food prices in Germany: a substantially lower rate of VAT/GST is levied on "basic foodstuffs". This won't come as anything new to most readers: differing rates of GST are common virtually everywhere the tax exists apart from New Zealand. Australia is a familiar example, as David Farrar sought to remind us in the last week:

First of all I think an absolute strength of GST is that is is near universal for all goods and services. The moment you start varying out a few exemptions, you then end up in an endless litany of moral judgements on what should or should not have GST on it. In Australia you have (or had) GST on your bread if it has sultanas in it, but no GST if no sultanas.

German consumers pay just 7% GST on items classed as basic foodstuffs, as well as on a few other categories of goods viewed as essentials or as being "good for you", such as books and newspapers. As in Farrar's Australian example, having such distinctions does create some silly anomalies, which are easy to see from one's supermarket receipts. Most items on my dockets have the number "7" printed beside them. Ice cream, frozen convenience meals and chocolate biscuits (and no this is not all I buy) - alongside less surprising items such as bread and fresh produce - are all taxed at 7%. What is charged at the much higher rate of 19%? Well, unsurprisingly, things such as bottles of wine - but also orange and apple juice.

I'll let you ponder what makes ice cream "more essential" than fruit juice. But on the whole, the 7% rate on (most) basic food items means that a German supermarket trolley has a substantial advantage against a New Zealand one in the race to be cheaper. Put another way: most non-food items (taxed at 19%) such as electronics, are more expensive in Germany than in New Zealand despite stiff competition; most food items are cheaper. It's difficult to look past the substantial GST differential as the reason for this.

I don't disagree that drawing distinctions within a category such as food is an absurdity. But I think it would be quite feasible to draw a distinction between categories - or at least between food and non-food items. This would avoid any debates over what constitutes a "basic" food item. Yes, it would mean that caviar would be taxed at the same rate as cheese. But it could never be argued that (say) a flat screen TV is edible, or any other non-food item for that matter. This is where I think ACT has an opportunity.

[Interestingly I note that the idea of removing GST on food has been raised elsewhere today, with the New Zealand Herald reporting on Helen Clark's reaction to requests from a lobby group to do so. For the record, this post has been in the writing process for a couple of weeks and was not triggered by this article.]

ACT has always been a resolute supporter of a single, unified rate of GST, with the explanation that anything different would lead to that (cliched) "bureaucratic nightmare". Indeed, Sir Roger Douglas was the very archichtect of the single rate of GST which was introduced in New Zealand in 1986 - at first at 10%, but within a few years raised to the 12.5% level we have today. ACT can keep this position - but employ a slight election-year gimmick along the way.

What to do? Here's a 5 step plan:

1. Call a press conference led by Heather Roy (the "caring" face of ACT). Announce that as part of ACT's "Agenda 2020" plan and to relieve "ordinary Kiwis" of some of the pressure created by rising food prices, GST on food will be dropped to 7% should ACT form part of the next government.

2. Show voters the party is serious by making this the first of ACT's three "bottom lines" to be announced during the rest of the year.

3. Trump any ensuing derision from Labour or National by saying that the big parties are obviously out of touch with "ordinary Kiwis" struggling to make ends meet (similar angle to National when it countered criticism of John Key's January 2007 "Underclass" speech).

4. Deflect any criticism that ACT is going back on its principles by emphasising that the 7% rate will eventually apply to ALL goods and services, not just food - but that food is the priority right now due to the rapid rising prices.

5. Heavily promote the policy the following weekend by giving out free cartons of milk emblazoned with ACT livery - along with fridge magnets of course.

Without question, this would be a populist measure. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Despite some serious competition in recent weeks from the Labour Party and the Ruth Dyson singers, ACT probably still has the largest "image problem" of any New Zealand parliamentary party. Bringing back Douglas has only reinforced for many voters what they already thought: ACT is a hard-right party of the 1980s. This might be worth thinking about for the ACT supporters scratching their heads and wondering why despite all the publicity ACT gained in its Conference month of March, the party is still stuck below the 2% support level in the four recent opinion polls conducted by TVNZ, TV3, Roy Morgan and Fairfax.

To paraphrase Jenny Shipley, let's make it perfectly clear. The General Election of 2008 is just six months away. If ACT doesn't make a move soon, just when is it going to? It's all very well to parade "principles" to which the party is not going to trade away. But while a purist message might be popular with the likes of Alan Gibbs (who as announced by ACT today, recently donated $100,000 to the party) is not a vote-winner, as the party is currently finding.

But I don't think cutting GST just on food even would be contradicting ACT's principles. The aim of the party has always been to cut tax - and this is exactly what this policy would do. ACT could quite plausibly say that it would rather cut GST on everything now, but that to be a prudent manager of New Zealand's books, it will be possible to introduce the 7% rate on other items only as economic conditions allow.

A move to cut GST would also be a powerful antidote to use against the perception of ACT being a party of the rich. ACT is probably never going to change this widely-held perception, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to try once more. GST is a regressive tax - the poor are worse affected than the wealthy because they spend a much greater proportion of their income on comestibles. So cutting GST is immediately going to benefit the less well-off more than the rich, even though it would make a difference to every consumer's pocket. Moreover, there are more absolute votes in cutting GST than cutting the 39% rate of tax which speakers at ACT's Annual Conference in March enjoyed denouncing as an "envy tax".

Attention John Ansell:
ACT to bring the price of food down?

The price of milk (part two)

2008-04-18T03:22:00.002+12:00

Here in Germany, consumers have relatively little to complain about. At my local Penny Markt, a litre of milk costs 0.66 EUR, a price little different to what I paid the last time I was here in early 2006, just before the rising food price phenomenon began. On a simple exchange basis, this equates to $NZD2.67 for the standard 2 litres which New Zealand consumers will usually buy at a time, meaning that if anything, milk is actually slightly cheaper here than in New Zealand supermarkets. In reality, the higher per-capita incomes enjoyed by Germans mean that on a purchasing-power parity (PPP) basis, the felt price is even lower.

Suppositions, assumptions and predictions are the stock and trade of Douglas to Dancing, so using a combination of all three let me examine some possible reasons for the difference. The first may be that EU subsidies are masking the actual price consumers should be paying for their dairy products. Generous subsidies traditionally paid to EU farmers have long been the bane of New Zealand farmers. I don't have the data to prove or disprove this, although I do know that subsidies have been decreasing in recent years.

Well, the second possible reason for the disparity could be the fierce competition between German discount chains. Competition between the likes of Penny Markt, Lidl and Aldi is such that even the supposed global king of discount retailing, Wal-Mart, was forced to close down its German operations in 2006, having racked up substantial losses in its failed bid to compete with Germany's home-grown discount supermarkets. Indeed, the strength of German discounters is so strong that the ZDF television network here on Wednesday ran a story on how despite the rising global milk price, the price paid to local farmers by the chains has actually decreased since October 2007. This has led to farmers suggesting they will "go on strike" and refuse to sell their milk to the chains unless they receive a higher price.

It is clear, then, that economies of scale, extremely high sale volumes and margins often thinner than razor-thin are all features of the German retail landscape and are all absent in New Zealand, at least on a comparable scale. Indeed, the small population of New Zealand almost naturally lends itself to the production of very high-quality but relatively expensive food. This is accentuated by a rather cosy duopoly between Woolworths and Foodstuffs. Instead of a number of discount chains genuinely competing against one another, New Zealanders have a supermarket scene neatly segmented up into mainly "full service" (Foodtown, Fresh Choice, New World) brands with a couple of cheaper chains, namely Pak 'n' Save and Countdown. Again, with a market of just 4 million people, or 24 million people if Australia is added, this is perhaps understandable. German chains produce not only for the 100 million or so German speakers (including Switzerland and Austria), but for much of Europe, but for much of Eastern and southern Europe, generating incredible economies of scale.

It's clear that competition has something to do with the lower costs. But it's not the whole story. The final reason is a subject dear to ACT supporters' hearts: lower taxes. Namely, the Mehrwertsteuer - value added tax or what we call GST. How this makes a difference and whtat ACT might do about it will be the subject of the third and final post in this series.

The price of milk (part one)

2008-04-17T01:09:00.006+12:00

Rising food prices seem to becoming for 2008 what climate change was for 2007. Last Friday saw the release of an official report from the World Bank showing that food prices had risen 83% over the past three years, with wheat prices rising 181%, while the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned at the weekend of mass starvation should food prices continue to rise. On Monday, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, said that the world would need "to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis".

Last week, we saw food riots in Haiti, driven by the rapidly rising costs of staying alive. Going back to the climate change analogy, this might be seen as a minature version of Hurricane Katrina, which "primed" the ground for climate change to become a mainstream issue. The "trinity" of causes of the first rise in overall food prices in 25 years, which we experienced in 2007, are by now becoming familiar: the increased production of biofuels, increased demand for protein in China and elsewhere in Asia and adverse weather conditions in key food-producing areas of the world, notably the Australian drought (which once again brings to mind the effects of climate change).

Rising food prices have become the sort of issue that warrants one of those little graphics next to related stories in the newspapers; the BBC has established a special "Food Price Crisis" section on its website; while locally, David Farrar highlighted an eye-catching Dominion-Post graphic (although why chocolate is included as a "basic" item alongside items such as bread and milk remains a mystery to me). Bar a sudden and dramatic drop in food prices, there doesn't seem to be a natural end point to this story in sight.

Indeed, New Zealanders were probably some of the first to become aware of the phenomenon of rising food prices, thanks to the spotlight cast since around May 2007 on the northwards movement of the Fonterra dairy payout. Understandably, it was first presented as a good news story for New Zealand's farmers, but this began to change as prices for dairy products began to soar. The negative consequences of rising prices were, I think, encapsulated in a highly populist February 2008 report on TV3's Campbell Live programme, in which Campbell grilled the head of Fonterra Brands in a way he might normally reserve for a "Corngate" interview with Helen Clark. Campbell seemed to suspect a vast conspiracy which was making Anchor butter cheaper in London than New Zealand. Naturally, his interview had been preceded by a piece showing the effects of high butter prices on so-called "ordinary Kiwis" who mysteriously thought the solution to higher butter prices was to buy packets of biscuits instead of baking themselves (of course, Griffins must hedge its butter prices for 5 years in advance).

A topic becoming this big demands a political reaction. The backdrop of climate change concerns led ACT to unveil a "Smart Green" policy last year. What ACT's reaction to higher food prices might be is the key question of this Douglas to Dancing "mini-series" of posts.