Just as we all expected, the Greens will support the ETS. They have shown once again that they don’t care about actually helping the environment, they just want to support policies that sound “eco-friendly” to grab the votes of those voters who don’t know the science but think they like the environment.
There goes any last drops of credibility they had.
If you like the environment, support the Family Party this election – the only party who promises to base environmental policy on science.
The Family Party and the Alliance are currently contesting the broadcasting allocations for the election. There has been some discussion of this on Kiwiblog, where David Farrar has rightly pointed out that minor parties already receive a higher allocation per voter than the major parties, according to current polls.
The problem is not that the Family Party wants more free money, as some have suggested. The problem is that you cannot spend more money on broadcasting than your broadcasting allocation, to quote the Elections website:
Registered parties may only use funds allocated by the Electoral Commission to advertise for the party vote, together with any free time allocated for party opening addresses and closing addresses.
This means that the Family Party allocation of $10,000 is also the limit as to what we can spend on broadcast advertising, which is a major impediment in campaigning. By comparison:
All of which is paid for by the taxpayer. As you can see this places the Family Party at a major disadvantage to, for example, Progressive, even though we are polling higher than them. And National and Labour’s massive allocations will ensure they have a much better chance of doing well this election than anyone else, regardless of whether their policies are any good. Each of these two parties has a similar allocation to that of EVERY minor party put together.
In a completely fair system no party would receive state funding, and there would be no limit on spending. This would put all parties on a level playing field, rather than subsidising the incumbents. However we must work within the system we have, and so we must seek a higher allocation if we wish to spend more on broadcasting.
Hopefully the judge can see the logic in this position and will favourably consider our application for more funding, comparable to those parties we are currently polling at a similar level to (Progressive, Act and United Future).
I am using OpenID whenever I post on blogspot blogs now. Unfortunately there is a glitch in that which means my display name is now “sjdennis” on those blogs, rather than “Mr Dennis” as usual. Just pointing it out in case of any confusion, and hopefully WordPress will fix this sometime.
Samuel Dennis 