Comments on: The Alliance wins

By: MT_Tinman

MT_Tinman — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:27:56 +0000

Unlike the commynists and freeloaders who know damned well the only way they get broadcasting time is to steal it I believe that ALL political funding, for any purpose, should only be from monies raised by a party for that purpose so I agree DPF, “hopefully the law will also be changed so parties can spend their own money purchasing broadcast advertising”.

By: Lutzie

Lutzie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:18:11 +0000

I tend to agree, having done a paper or two in political philosophy, that all electoral funding should be public. So no private funding required. I’m not 100% sure how those public fund should be apportioned though.

By: Inky_the_Red

Inky_the_Red — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:11:59 +0000

I am am an Alliance Party member and have been since Anderton crawled off. Congratulations to Andrew and his team for taking this to court and participating. Also thanks for the other parties not claiming costs in the High Court case.

Why shouldn’t non-parliamentary parties get this small amount of advertising around election time. Parties that are in parliament are already known, there ideas and beliefs are already known (and publicised for free). Other parties have reason to exist, the Alliance is a Democratic Socialist / Social Democratic party that is not currently similar into the parliament. The Labour Party is centralist Liberal party and no longer close to what I would call socialist (despite what some people here might think)

I thank (maybe Graeme can confirm) that in Canada there was a ruling that small parties should get more free advertising as the news media tended to ignore small parties.

To register a Party you need 500 people willing to pay to join.

If people think that 18 parties is too many, why? Should we be like Iran where candidates are banned because they are considered unsuitable by the leadership elite?
Surely in a democracy it is a small prize to pay to have a few minutes of free advertising (every 3 years). As the incumbent party policy is well know maybe they shouldn’t be able to advertise at all?

By: Nigel Kearney

Nigel Kearney — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:46:46 +0000

It’s anti-democratic that people standing for election get to make the rules about elections at all. As long as they have that power this kind of thing is inevitable since politicians are scum.

By: ben

ben — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:47:20 +0000

Is it not plainly anti-democratic to have laws which coercively allocate resources to political parties based on votes earned at the last election? In what sense is it democratic to have laws which entrench incumbents and which lock out challengers?