Tuesday, April 29, 2008



Parties II

I was planning on blogging about the political parties bids for broadcasting money (and hence indirectly an unequal broadcasting spending cap), but DPF beat me to it. He points out all the good jokes - particularly the LibertariaNZ's promise to get as much money as possible and then not spend it - but also includes this little bit:

Liberal Party has a long whine about corruption involving the State Services Commissioner, the Chief Ombudsman and the Auditor-General. How the hell do people like this get 500 members?
Which is just a little ironic, given that DPF has spent the last couple of years spewing similar theories across the internet in an effort to whip up his readership. But as with Christians and Marxists, the smallest doctrinal differences - whether it is departmental Chief Executives or the SSC, Parliament or the Auditor-General - assume vast significance. Or maybe he's just worried about someone other than National benefiting from his hard work?

(Snark and irony aside, it does mark the Liberals as being a kook party. Which is a pity. A centrist social liberal party would have been a welcome addition to New Zealand's political spectrum).

One interesting game DPF missed was the game over party membership numbers. Most Parliamentary parties followed their usual practice in demanding their information be kept secret, but the Maori Party said they have 23,000 members (which is pretty sizable), Labour almost 55,000 (including affiliates), and the Greens 3,900. Of the extra-parliamentary parties, the Alliance was proud it had maintained a membership of "between 500 and 600", RAM thinks it will have 1,000 by the end of the month, and several others (including the NWO, who are a good joke even if they think they're serious) are working towards the 500 members required for registration.

Finally, if anyone knows anything about the "Kotahitanga Te Manamotu Kake Tiriti o Waitangi" Party, then please let me know. There are Wikipedia pages to write...