liberation

Images of the Act Party and Jamie Whyte

This is a collection of recent images - cartoons and photos - relating to the Act Party and it's new leader Jamie Whyte. [Read more below]

Bromhead - NZ Herald 2 March 2014

 

Geoffrey Miller: Has John Banks breached the Act Party constitution and rules?

Currently the Act Party is attempting to distance itself from the ‘banks.com’ scandal engulfing its leader. For example after the Dotcom donation allegations became known, Act Party president Chris Simmons told the New Zealand Herald ‘There's a bit of a beat-up going on. It was all to do with the mayoral campaign. It doesn't have anything to do with Act’. But in practical terms, it has become fairly clear that anything to do with John Banks has in fact a great deal to do with Act, given that he is now their sole MP. In this guest blog post, Act-watcher Geoffrey Miller asks whether Banks has formally violated party rules? [Read more below]

 

Election year – reinvigorated by the minor parties?

Suddenly we’re seeing a rather boring-looking election year spring into life. Until last week, we’ve had a relatively safe and slow moving government about to sleep walk to victory over a lame-duck Labour Party. But now the party system has been somewhat reinvigorated, and the contest might be a lot more interesting because there’s going to be some real policy disagreement, and some relatively dynamic debate being forced by these parties to the left and right of the big two giants (National and Labour). I was interviewed this morning on TVNZ Breakfast about this topic and about what the changes in the political landscape might mean for the referendum on MMP. The video of the interview is here, and it was also reported in a story entitled ‘Race row could escalate ahead of election’. This blog post elaborates on some of the points I made about the changes in the political landscape. [Read more below]

Winners and losers in the Act Party leadership coup

The New Zealand political landscape changed in some major ways with the extraordinary coup by Don Brash for the leadership of the Act Party. Who wins from this unusual changing of the guard? Long-time Act-watcher, Geoffrey Miller, argues in this guest blog post that the ‘winners’ to come out of the coup are Don Brash, John Key, John Banks, Aaron Bhatnagar, Phil Goff, Hilary Calvert, and the Coastal Coalition. And the ‘losers’ are Rodney Hide, John Key, John Boscawen, Brian Nicolle, and Reform New Zealand. [Read more below].

 

NZ Politics Daily: 29 April

Act leadership. Check. John Banks as Epsom candidate. Check (just the formalities to complete). Next on the list – seize control of the Treasury. Don Brash is not one for wallowing in victory and has now publicly set his sights on being the next Minister of Finance. See: (TVNZ: Brash targets senior government role), Claire Trevett and Audrey Young: Brash aims for job as finance minister). John Key thinks Brash is getting a bit ahead of himself - Tracy Watkins and Andrea Vance (Key talks down Brash Cabinet role) - but he could hardly expect anything else and is, in any case, leaving his options open (RNZ: Key says he'd consider cabinet post for Don Brash and NZPA: Brash may be in line for minister’s portfolio). Whaleoil points to Bill English protecting his job (Whaleoil: Why rule anything in or out?) while Imperator Fish (What Next For Don Brash?) sees Brash take his winning tactics to their logical conclusion. Andrew Geddis’ blog post, It’s the sound of the New Man, running down your back, is also well worth a read.

There are eulogies for Rodney Hide (Adam Bennett: Hide leaves a colourful legacy in Parliament) and refreshers for those who might have forgotten Brash and Banks’ long political careers (John Hartevelt: Don Brash: From political punching bag to reborn leader) and Jeremy Elwood: Brash from the past). Apparently they now have their own collective nickname (Tracy Watkins: Triumph of the codgerati).

 Dire warnings about the evil influence of Dr Brash on National continue to pour forth from all but the Maori Party, who probably have most to worry about. The Dom Post (Political briefs) point out, however, that in all of Peter Dunne’s huffing and puffing he ducks the issue of whether he would go into a coalition government that includes Brash.

The latest Parliamentary spending figures are out and it seems that transparency is forcing MPs to cut back a bit on travel (DomPost: Abstemious MPs lose taste for travel), except for Hone Harawira who, unsurprisingly, has been doing a lot of travel recently (NZPA: Independent MP Hone Harawira spent $43,000 on travel in three months). No Right Turn has a detailed breakdown of Murray McCully’s drinking while overseas (Paying for McCully’s drinking). What may be more damaging to the Government, given the skepticism around the millions being poured into the America’s Cup and Rugby World Cup is the revelation that anti-violence programmes are facing large cuts , including Women’s Refuge (Simon Collins: Move cuts help to anti-violence groups) and Emma Brannam: Women’s Refuge centres under threat).

 

[Continue reading below for a full list of the highlights of NZ Politics Daily] 

 

National, Act, Brash and Orewa

Orewa, the name of a small seaside town north of Auckland, has been part of the New Zealand political lexicon ever since January 2004. Now, with Don Brash’s attempt to take over the Act Party, it has again surfaced in the news. Is there a connection between Orewa and the decline of Act? Will Brash take Act back to Orewa to breath life back into the party? This guest blog by Geoffrey Miller investigates these questions. [Read more below]

 

 

Don Brash’s move from National to Act

Don Brash’s current bid for the leadership of the Act Party is viewed as a National Party takeover of the minor party – because Don Brash is an ex-leader of National.  However, in reality Brash has always been seen as more aligned with the ideologies of Act - after all, when he was a National MP he was dubbed 'Act’s tenth MP’. So, is Don Brash naturally more of an Act Party politician than a National Party one? And if so, why didn’t he join Act in the first place, and not National? And just what is the relationship between Brash and Act? In this guest blog post by Geoffrey Miller, attempts to answer these questions, suggesting that much might be explained by the personalities of Michelle Boag and Catherine Judd. [Read more below]

 

Don Brash – a new hope or an old headache for the Act Party?

‘Don Brash clearly believes he can do Mr Hide's job.  Equally clearly, many of his colleagues do not - as yet.  If they were really confident Dr Brash was up to it, he would have been installed as leader by the end of this week, so wretched has been Mr Hide's performance.  But Dr Brash is not of a mind to get the message.  For the party's sake, he should have done one of two things. Either organised his putsch with absolute secrecy until the deed had been done. Or issued a statement at some point in the past couple of days pledging his loyalty to Mr Hide’. These comments, with a little imagination, could be from today. But with the exception of ‘Mr Hide’, they are not. They are the words of New Zealand Herald political commentator John Armstrong from October 2003. The parallels are instructive for understanding the Act-Brash dilemma of 2011 – and this is what is examined in the guest blog post by Geoffrey Miller. [Read more below]

 

Review of New Zealand politics in 2009

 

The year 2009 was a hectic one in New Zealand politics, partly because it was the first year of the new National Party Government’s term in office. At a general election in November of the previous year, National had ousted the Labour Party from its three-term tenure in office and formed a single-party minority government with support agreements with the Act Party, the Maori Party and United Future – all of whom gained ministerial roles outside the cabinet. In this first year, the new administration was both ideologically centrist and highly popular, being challenged only on difficult issues relating to the economic recession, political finance controversies over MPs’ expenses and various race relations questions. The following blog post examines these issues via a ‘Review of New Zealand politics in 2009’ which has just been published as a peer-reviewed journal article in the top political science periodical, the European Journal of Political Research (in the December 2010 edition). As well as looking at how the National Government fared in 2009, it also briefly analyses the main issues in politics (such as the economy, social issues, political finance scandals) and the changes in the other parliamentary political parties. [Read more below]

David Garrett and politician behaviour

One of the key trends in modern parliamentary politics is a fixation with the personal behaviour of our politicians. Partly this is driven by the perception – which is largely-correct – that politicians are increasingly untrustworthy and self-serving. It’s certainly healthy to have some focus and scrutiny applied politician behaviour, and the growing public mistrust of MPs is also apt. Yet unfortunately a number of negative consequences also arise from this increasing obsession with the foibles, flaws and misdemeanours of political personalities. Not only does it perpetuate the transfer of attention from political substance to the superficial, it also creates a demand for greater state or parliamentary control, regulation or monitoring of the personal lives and backgrounds of public representatives (or candidates for office). This could have all sorts of democratically unhealthy ramifications – such as turning the political milieu into an even more narrower bunch of professional politicians with bland and conventional backgrounds. [Read more below]

 

Cold war in the Act Party

The most recent scandalous revelation about MP David Garrett reflects just how dysfunctional and divided the Act Party has become. In a more healthy political party these type of ‘skeletons in the closet’ might exist, but they don’t normally come out, and if they do, they don’t normally reflect the level of deceit and irony that they do in this particular case. Currently the party is leaking like a kitchen sieve, and further revelations are likely to keep appearing, ensuring that the death spiral continues. Partly that’s because there is essentially a ‘cold war’ going on in the Act Party at the moment. I was interviewed about this yesterday on RNZ Checkpoint (audio here) and TVNZ News at 8 (story here). The blog post below is an elaboration on the points that I made. [Read more below]

 

The Act Party loses its soul

Whenever a political party ceases to be relevant and loses its core reason to exist – effectively losing its ‘political soul’ – all manner of bizarre and dysfunctional personal behaviour arises and dominates the internal life of that organization. That’s what we’re currently seeing with the meltdown of the Act Party. For some time now within Act the focus on the ‘political’ has been replaced with that of the ‘personal’; what once was an intellectual powerhouse of the right with a coherent political goal and idealism has been transformed into a petty, personality-driven, feudal-like competition between ambitious and narcissistic individual egos. Instead of ideology, vision, and cohesion structuring such a party, we now see Act driven by desperation, bitter rivalries, free-flowing allegations, infighting and dirty tricks. Without a political soul, talented individuals in Act have been transformed into heavily flawed and unlikeable politicians. Without the dynamic of a higher-vision, the now extremely pragmatic Act has become an empty shell of a party, and what we’re seeing is the remnants bouncing around inside it. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – John Boscawen on Act's 2008 campaign

The changing political identity of the Act Party is the core focus of MP John Boscawen in writing about his party’s 2008 election campaign. Most notably, the leader was ‘repositioned’, the party’s oppositional style was dropped, friendships were sought with other minor parties, and controversial positions on Maori and the Treaty were abandoned. And although this sounds like Act were turning into ‘National-lite’, the party then campaigned on the basis that National was becoming ‘Labour-lite’. This is all discussed in the short and concise chapter by John Boscawen in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – The future of minor parties

Under MMP we supposedly have a multi-party system – with a plethora of minor parties giving colour and life to political debate. But the reality is that this image is more of a mirage. Our minor parties are the weakest they’ve been for decades, and it’s not clear that any of the them have an assured future in Parliament. These are the issues examined by Jennifer Curtin and Raymond Miller in their excellent chapter entitled ‘New Zealand’s party system: a multi-party mirage?’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the most interesting points made by Curtin and Miller, including the suggestion of a more limited future for the smaller parties. [Read more below]

Conspiracy against Hide? Or Conspiracy by Hide?

There are two conspiracy stories about the alleged November 2009 leadership challenge in the Act Party which is still dogging the party today. The dominant version about the so-called failed leadership coup is that deputy leader Heather Roy and maverick MP Roger Douglas conspired to topple Rodney Hide from the leadership position within Act. A second conspiracy theory that deserves some attention is the idea that the whole story is actually a beat-up, or at least an exaggeration, and that the story has actually been encouraged and exaggerated by Rodney Hide himself. Thus, rather than there being a conspiracy against Hide, there might well have been a conspiracy by Hide. This blog post outlines that possibility. [Read more below]

Act’s problem – Roger, not Roy

Pity Heather Roy. Suddenly the low-profile deputy leader of the Act Party has become the party’s she-devil – a subtle and manipulative plotter out to destroy everything she has helped the party to gain. This is a commonly-held analysis in the New Zealand political world at the moment. But guest blogger and Act-watcher Geoffrey Miller puts forward another interpretation. He argues below that the party’s real difficulty is the 72-year old backbencher – Roger Douglas – who has, Rodney Hide told Miller in 2007, ‘always bagged his own team, he's done that his entire life in politics, and so he's continued’. Roy, by contrast is merely rational, rather than radical, and unlikely to have been a ringleader in the 2009 failed Act leadership coup. [Read more below]

The Act Party – two factions fight for control

The Act Party’s divisions and future prospects are examined in Radio New Zealand National’s latest Focus on Politics programme by Catherine Hutton (which you can listen to or download here). I was interviewed for the programme, speaking about Act’s schisms and the recent damage to Act’s electoral brand. In the blog post below, I elaborate on what I spoke about on Focus on Politics. I argue that with the Act Party having now been in government for well over a year – a tumultuous year for the party – its annual conference is a chance for both party members and the leadership to draw up a balance sheet about Act’s successes and failures, to sort out the internal schisms that nearly split the party in 2009. Furthermore, the conference would allow the politicians to try and plot a way forward whereby the party might reverse its current popularity and credibility slump, but ultimately the future depends on who will triumph out of the two different factions in the Act – the pragmatists and the radicals. The history of another minor ‘flank’ party – the Alliance – also in coalition with a more conservative major party, is instructive in this regard. [Read more below]

Key to victory – Levine and Roberts' new book

New Zealand’s preeminent psephologists – that is, political scientists that study and explain elections - Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts have just published their latest book, entitled Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008. This edited collection is their ‘eighth in a series of New Zealand post-election books that have followed on from conferences held shortly after each general election’. The book attempts, they say, to provide ‘an overall perspective of what occurred and why’. As well as editing the book, Levine and Roberts wrote two chapters and a preface, which are discussed in this blog post. This work explains some of the factors shaping voting behaviour, making use of a pre-election voter survey that they commissioned – which they’ve done in every election since 1984. The results show, for instance that the Greens were the least liked party in the 2008 election, and that Helen Clark was no match for John Key in what was a two-horse leadership race [Read more below]

The changing nature of ideological conflict in New Zealand electoral politics (1996-2008): The rush to the centre & the rise of post-materialist issues

To what extent does the left-right political dimension still structure political party competition in New Zealand politics? Where do the parties sit on that spectrum? What other political dimensions now underpin our electoral politics? This extensive blog post presents the findings of a regular survey of New Zealand political scientists about party ideological conflict that has been carried out for the three MMP general elections of 1996, 2002, and 2008. Explaining the results, and drawing on some previous blog posts, it argues that the left-right spectrum is of declining importance in New Zealand politics, and that ideological conflict is cohered to a greater degree by post-materialist issues. The major political parties in New Zealand now all agree on the basic post-Keynesian economic framework that dominates discourse and policy formation. No party fundamentally challenges the paradigm shift that occurred with the neoliberal revolution that occurred from 1984 onwards. All parties now agree, explicitly or implicitly, that the market is the best mechanism for generating wealth and distributing good and services. Within this ‘new policy consensus’ there is, of course, room for some limited discussion of when and where the state should intervene to correct market failure, but because there is essentially no debate of any substance around material/economic issues, what might be called ‘postmaterial issues’ now represent the arena for ideological and political conflict in parliamentary politics. Furthermore, within this post-reform era political conflict is underpinned by a strong pragmatism rather than principle. Some explanations are proposed for the rise of the new consensus, the decline of left-right conflict, and the increasing salience of societal issues in electoral competition. [Read more below]    

Act’s 2008 election campaign

Of all the minor parties, Act was the most ideally placed to gain from the centrist transformation of the National Party under John Key. National’s shift into the centre of the political spectrum meant that – unlike when Don Brash led National in 2005 – Act had a large potential market of voters on the right to win. Act did make use of that gap in the market, but was ambivalent and ambiguous about it orientation towards the popular centrist National Party, choosing sometimes to hug its rival and sometimes to bite it. In regards to this, I look at the party’s strategy in the section on the Act Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the 11th of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about Act that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Review of New Zealand politics in 2008

Every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a political date yearbook which gives a review of politics in a number of western countries. I contribute the section on New Zealand to the journal – last year’s publication on New Zealand politics in 2007 can be read here. Below is the first draft of my review of New Zealand politics in 2008. It still requires a bit of abridging and editing, and as always I’m interested in feedback and suggestions, which you can leave in the comments section or email me (edwards.bryceATgmail.com). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 29: The 2002 campaign

In the 2002 general election campaign Act was in a defensive mode – attempting to defend its 7% of the party vote. It therefore made a significant effort to rid itself of its extremist image (James, 2002i). This might have been an influence of president Catherine Judd’s Liberal Project within the party. According to Colin James, it tried ‘to present a less rednecked and less radical image than in 1999’ (James, 2002f). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 28: The Liberal Project

Following the 1999 election, in which Act attempted to mobilise support on the basis of a socially conservative or populist platform, the more radical and policy-seeking faction of Act attempted to pull the party back towards its founding principles. Most significantly, this involved installing Catherine Judd – a Roger Douglas nominee who had not previously been involved in the party - into the party presidency. As president, Judd then instigated the ‘Liberal Project’ – an attempt to develop and reiterate Act as a party of social and economic liberalism. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 26: Factions and intra-party MP relations

Throughout 1997 a substantial divide developed within the Act party caucus over the general direction that the party had been taking within Parliament. The substance of the division was mainly to do with two general strategic issues: [1] the question of Act’s strategic orientation towards National and, [2] Act’s populist campaigns. In the debate over the populism, Rodney Hide and Richard Prebble appeared at one pole of the caucus, while Derek Quigley and Patricia Schnauer were at the opposite policy-orientated pole. The divide was so great, that speculation grew about Quigley looking to leave Act for National. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 25: Further economic moderation

Act’s first parliamentary caucus was by no means a homogenous group of Rogernomes. Ironically, due to the diverse range of opinions in the new Act caucus, the identity and policies of the party were narrowed and moderated. This was because, to function effectively and gain consensus, the party had to adopt a lowest common-dominator platform. Thus the caucus had to ‘agree to disagree’ on many matters and not raise contentious or unresolved issues as Act policy. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 24: Socially conservative repositioning

Early on in Act’s history, commentators were inclined to categorise Act as a new right urban-liberal party – a party that is rightwing on economic issues, but liberal on social ones, and sophisticated rather than traditional. This was certainly an image the party leadership, and in particular Richard Prebble, wished to convey. According to political analyst-satirist Dave Armstrong (writing in 1997): ‘This is the image Act are successfully portraying: they're fun-loving trendy young things with Pajeros and CD Roms. Act is the National Party without all the boring old farts who want compulsory military training, respect for the flag and a drinking age of thirty-three’ (Dave Armstrong, 1997: p.8). But in reality, the party was always somewhat less socially liberal than they might have seemed, and this was concealed only by the fact that they had initially chosen not to market themselves as social conservatives. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 23: The early National-Act relationship

It was obvious that the futures of the National and Act parties were always going to be closely linked. However there had been division within the Act over how to orientate towards the National Party, with the main question being: should Act treat National as a political ally (and therefore work with it) or as an enemy (and therefore seek to displace it)? This debate was not easily resolved and in 1996 the new Act caucus had to consider if it would be willing to play a role in a coalition government with National. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 22: Populism in Parliament

As soon as Act was in Parliament, there was a perceptible shift in the party’s activity. As the Parliamentary caucus sprung into action, the MPs looked less like Roger Douglas protégés, and more like the leader, Richard Prebble. While the Act leadership probably thought that their first year in Parliament was a time to define the party’s brand more clearly, the new MPs ended up being identified with trivia, side-issues and gossip. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 20: The 1996 election ‘success’ and its support base

In the 1996 general election the Act Party came in at 5th place with 6.2% of the party vote. The result was somewhat victorious in the context of the fact that Act ‘had been averaging only about 2.5 per cent in the polls in the first half of 1996' (Fraser and Zangouropoulos, 1998: p.55). However, the 6% vote was unimpressive in the context of Prebble stating that Act would get 15%. Analysis of Act’s election support shows some interesting issues about Act’s support base. [Read more below]

Act – after 6 months in government

What shape is the Act Party in after six months of being in government? That’s the question asked that was asked this week by Radio New Zealand National’s Focus on Politics programme, for which I was interviewed. You can hear the programme here (or the Morning Report abridged version here). This blog post draws on previous material, elaborates on some of the points I made to the Focus on Politics show, and generally discusses the Act party’s ideological disorientation, social conservatism, and shift towards both the centre and possible irrelevance. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 19: The 1996 campaign techniques

Act’s main campaign techniques in the 1996 general election related to running a presidential style campaign around Richard Prebble. The fact that it was an outside party – without an established base, parliamentary funding, media focus, etc – was a disadvantage, but perhaps made up for by Act’s significant private funding. It used much of this funding to purchase campaign technology and marketing techniques that meant that Act did not have to rely in the campaign on its instincts. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 18: The 1996 campaign strategy

Much of Act’s 1996 campaign focused on converting National voters to Act. The success of this strategy, no doubt, partly accounted for Act eventually crossing over the 5% MMP threshold. Although the National Party never formally agreed to a strategy to help get Act into Parliament as a potential coalition partner, some key National individuals did help Richard Prebble win his constituency seat. Prebble had chosen to run in the Wellington Central seat and he had a well-resourced and enthusiastic team of activists campaigning for him. The campaign in this particular seat became a central part of Act’s election strategy. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 17: Factions in Act

Factions continued to play a part in Act’s turmoil. As discussed an earlier blog post, there was a difference of opinion in the party between those wishing the party to market itself along ‘social justice’ lines, and those more old-fashioned rightwingers and conservatives who saw no sense in this strategy. Leader Richard Prebble came to agree with the latter faction, saying: ‘think we should concentrate on people who support us' (quoted in Corbett, 31 May 1996: p.14). Meanwhile party founder, Roger Douglas, became increasingly frustrated by some of the more populist campaigns and issues being pushed under the new leadership. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 16: Recruitment of party-hopping MPs

A central part of Act’s strategy for 1996 was to recruit some Members of Parliament to the party. The lack of any representation in Parliament prior to the 1996 election had proved a significant disadvantage to Act. Still low in the opinion poll ratings, a sense of desperation developed in the party. In early 1996 the party leadership therefore set about to recruit a number of MPs from other parties, hoping this would rectify Act’s problems. Serious prospects included Maurice Williamson, Phil Goff, Peter Dunne, Bruce Cliffe and the whole United party. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 15: Feminising the party

The Sydney-based Kortlang Group was employed to help reconfigure the languishing Act Party in 1996. One of Kortlang’s most visibly apparent recommendations was the advice to feminise the party’s image. Act had obviously become associated with its prominent male leadership and much of the party’s propaganda contained messages that were supposedly more orientated to males. According to Act organiser Brian Arps, ‘We've been selling it with the numbers.  Men are more linear thinkers, and women are more inspirational in how they think' (quoted in Campbell, 19 Nov 1994: p.16). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 14: Employing political consultants

The first six months of 1996 was a time of extensive reworking of the Act Party, yet Act continued to rate below the significant 5% figure in opinion polls. The resulting desperation brought on a second phase of reinvention, when four months prior to the 1996 general election the party leadership contracted the Australian political and public affairs consultancy company, the Kortlang Group, to help them in a last throw of the dice attempt to re-configure the party. Ian Kortland, who specialised in helping smaller political parties, worked with Act right through to the 1996 election and then subsequently during the 1999, 2002 and 2005 elections. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 13: Softening its image

In 1996 Act replaced its stark yellow and black party logo with one that utilised ‘the New Age shades of azure and turquoise' (Trotter, 13 Dec 1996: pp.16,17). The use of upper case letters (‘ACT’) in the old logo was also now totally replaced by lower case letters (‘act’). According to Prebble, the logo was ‘changed because the old one looks like a prison sign’ (Scherer, 1996: p.5). The new logo also omitted the strangely pointless full-stop from the middle of Act’s name (“ACT. New Zealand”). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 12: Rebranding Act

The defining feature of Act’s first few years was their process of ‘rebranding’ – as the party worked to recreate its public identity again and again. First Act went from being a programmatic ‘party of policy’ to being a ‘party of personalities’, and then again under Richard Prebble it was re-branded as a ‘party of values and virtues’. The new strategy was clearly a lowering of the party’s horizons, and emphasis was now on 'reform rather than revolution' [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 10: The new leadership

A new strategic focus by the Act Party on leadership image coincided with the announcement in December 1995 by Roger Douglas of his decision to stand down as leader. Douglas had always maintained that he was only a transitional leader, but he now also announced that he would not even stand for Parliament. This decision could only improve Act’s public standing. Douglas, after all, had actually been a liability for Act because of the public’s association of Douglas with the pain of the Fourth Labour Government’s economic reforms. However, Douglas was also not a strong leader – lacking leadership drive and charisma. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 9: Reinvention of the Act Party

Act’s disappointing performance in the opinion polls in 1995 very quickly lead to a re-evaluation of their political message. The fact that the party was run by marketing professionals, entrepreneurs and managers meant that the party and its message were always treated largely as a ‘product’. The background of the personnel involved, therefore, had a significant influence on the party’s development. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 8: Initial failure

Like most new parties, Act had an initial honeymoon period where it obtained credible support (4-5%) in the opinion polls. This support slowly declined over 1994 and 1995 until the party hardly even registered. Act was as far away as possible from their prediction of winning 50% of the vote at the 1996 election. Two competing explanations for the failure pointed to either the basically unattractive political product being sold, or alternatively the poor packaging and selling of it. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 7: Party structure and organisation

The new professionalism of the early Act party was represented most starkly by its organisational structure. The party did not just have a ‘leadership’, but also a ‘management’. The leadership obviously consisted of the public figures of Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley et al., while the management included the higher echelons of the party activists and paid organisers. The founders were attempting to create a modern highly-professionalised political party with a structure very different to the traditional ones. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 6: Initial strategy and expectations

The radicalism of the early Act party was matched by the leadership’s strong confidence in its future. Roger Douglas, for instance, expressed the belief that Act would win at least 50% of the vote in general elections. This prediction went against all available evidence that political scientists could offer. Such research showed that the New Zealand electorate was only ever likely to yield a maximum of 5-15% support for a radical free-market party (see Hubbard, 19 March 1994: p.30). The leadership quickly downplayed the 50% figure and the prediction was later downgraded to the smaller number of 30%. Many in the party continued to fret over whether to sell Act as an ideological party of blue or red [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 5: Initial radicalism and branding

Libertarians pushed the newly-formed Act Party to stand on a platform of an unfettered free market society, free from all state interference, except on ‘necessary’ intervention to ensure the maintenance of law and order – in particular the protection of private property. Early in its life, Act presented itself clearly as an overtly ideologically-focused party advocating a minimum state. Roger Douglas was personally opposed to state involvement in everything from health care to fire-fighting. Likewise, even Richard Prebble was on record saying that the state should be limited to a role of minimal regulation of enterprise and that of ensuring law and order – although he also conceded that much of the law and order operations could be contracted out to private firms (Kilroy, 30 April 1996: p.9). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 4: Initial factions and differences

Like all new political organisations, Act had many factions (or political tendencies”) within the organisation in both its initial phase as a lobby group and then as a political party. There were rural tendencies, pragmatists, social conservatives, ex-Labour social liberals, and libertarian ideological purists. The relationship between these early factions was far from harmonious, as the internal life of the party fitted well to the theorem that ‘the intensity of party politics is in inverse proportion to the amount of power the party has achieved’. Yet because the party was instigated by its leadership rather than its membership, there was little in the way of disputes between the rank-and-file and the leadership – especially with Roger Douglas possessing a rather messiah-like standing with many. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 3: Early ideology

For a brief period this new vehicle was a radical new right force that was serious about substantially changing New Zealand society. In its early days, the Act was known for promoting very low taxes, a minimal state, increased individual responsibility, and a general continuation of the new right “revolution”. Roger Douglas’s book Unfinished Business was essentially the party's founding document, and Douglas played the role of the party’s guru or thinker. In reality, however, Act’s political ideology was derived from the political economy of Milton Friedman and Frederick A Hayek. In a sense, Douglas’s Unfinished Business represented the views of Hayek and Friedman as applied to the New Zealand case. The essence of Act’s philosophy was a strong belief in deregulated markets and a minimal State. As opposed to other variations of new right political economy, the place of the consumer played a significant role in Act’s schema. Accordingly, the consumer, rather than simply the capitalist, should be entitled to the maximum “choice” and “freedom” in the marketplace. [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 2: Formation of the party

The question of whether to turn the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers group into a political party proper initially divided the organisation into two groupings that held diametrically opposing views. One group wanted to continue as a think tank, while the other more ambitious group wanted a party launch in anticipation of an election win (Carr, 1997: p.85). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 1: Formation of a pressure group

16 years after being formed, the Act Party has finally become part of the New Zealand Government, joining the John Key National Party administration at the end of last year. The following blog post series seeks to analyse the political nature of this party of government by looking at its initial history during the 1990s. Hopefully this series of postings will complement the excellent research work of Geoffrey Miller, published on his Act Watch blog. This first post looks at the formation of the original Association of Consumers and Taxpayers lobby group and the personnel involved. [Read more below]

Does political advertising work?

Does political advertising work? Governments and political parties spend millions of dollars on paid advertising, but the results are often of dubious effect. As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between how much a political party spends on advertising and how many votes they obtain (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here). The 2008 mega-professional and expensive Green Party campaign was yet another example of this in action. The party’s taxpayer-funded Buy Kiwi Made advertising campaign has also been a significant failure. [Read more below]

Who runs New Zealand in 2008?

The question of who runs New Zealand is infrequently examined in the media (or even that much in our universities), but it obviously deserves the attention of anyone interested in understanding politics or wanting any kind of social change. Fortunately, for the last five years the Listener has been publishing its annual Power List in an attempt to do just this. Although it’s always more journalistic and celebratory than analytical and critical, the exercise does nonetheless always shine a light on the people involved in running New Zealand. And it indicates some significant trends. This year there has been some major changes to the list, partly representing the fact that the outgoing Labour Government’s favoured businesspeople, ‘thinkers’ and lobbyists are now out in the cold as a change of government brings about different influences, but also because the Listener probably wants to dazzle us with new faces that are supposedly wielding great undiscovered power. This blog post offers a critical summary of, and commentary on, the Listener’s list. [Read more below]