I joined ACT for research purposes in February 2007, at the outset of my research, but on Thursday this week finally received my first piece of conventional mail from the party. Of course, like most parties these days, ACT prefers to save money and use e-mail. Accordingly, it sends out...
It’s interesting that ACT and Rodney Hide were overshadowed in the New Zealand Herald‘s coverage of the opposition to the Electoral Finance Bill by other small parties, most notably the Maori Party. In the report space was given only for a comment by Hide in a collection of quotes from...
There have been a number of letters to the editor in newspapers recently on John Boscawen, who has been leading a campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill (since yesterday the Electoral Finance Act). Take this letter for example, from the Christchurch Press last week: Is this democracy? If you or...
This week in Melbourne I attended a lecture at which I learnt that here one is barred from standing for parliament if he or she is a dual citizenship holder. This means that every MP in the Australian House or Senate in Canberra is an Australian citizen only. As far...
Earlier in the year I covered an op-ed piece by former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff in which he advocated the establishment of a Country Party to better represent rural interests in New Zealand. He used the example of the Nationals in Australia to support his argument. Well, the results of...
This week I’ve been in Australia and I can’t get over how much stuff in the papers there is on ACT. Much more than the Herald. The “Roger Douglas Fan Club” (as a journalist described ACT in 1996) must have definitely found a home across the Tasman, right? Well, although...
Some very interesting news out today: Stephen Franks is standing for National in Wellington Central. Although this was signalled in the NBR in July 2007, the big surprise for me is that he is standing in Wellington Central, where Heather Roy recently announced she was standing for ACT. This can...
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