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...
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 in the latest Herald-DigiPoll, 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...