John Bishop's NBR Columns
A contemporary of mine when working for ACT at Parliament was John Bishop. He has written a two-part article detailing the rise and fall of ACT for the NBR. (Part 1 here, Part 2 here.)
One of his observations is bang-on:
ACT did not build and could not maintain a strong organization. Its sources of membership were too diverse with economic liberals, social conservatives, libertarians and pragmatic reformers trying to live together.
He concludes:
ACT is not dead, and won't die - at least until after the next election.
I'm more optimistic than John - at least half of ACT's vote was lost because of the TVNZ Poll in Epsom showed Rodney Hide was in third place. The revised poll showing the error of TVNZ and the real situation was lost in the clutter of the last few days in the election campaign.
At every election, a variety of pundits have predicted ACT's disappearance from Parliament. At every election, the pundits have been proven wrong.
ACT leadership, new board and core support now have a challenge ahead of them - to rebuild the party from the ground up with a dedicated team in every big population centre. In their favour is that they have thrown off a lot of baggage - the social conservatives are back in National, the 'Roger Douglas era' group are now all retired from the board.
If they work hard, and play to their strengths, ACT will rise again.
One of his observations is bang-on:
ACT did not build and could not maintain a strong organization. Its sources of membership were too diverse with economic liberals, social conservatives, libertarians and pragmatic reformers trying to live together.
He concludes:
ACT is not dead, and won't die - at least until after the next election.
I'm more optimistic than John - at least half of ACT's vote was lost because of the TVNZ Poll in Epsom showed Rodney Hide was in third place. The revised poll showing the error of TVNZ and the real situation was lost in the clutter of the last few days in the election campaign.
At every election, a variety of pundits have predicted ACT's disappearance from Parliament. At every election, the pundits have been proven wrong.
ACT leadership, new board and core support now have a challenge ahead of them - to rebuild the party from the ground up with a dedicated team in every big population centre. In their favour is that they have thrown off a lot of baggage - the social conservatives are back in National, the 'Roger Douglas era' group are now all retired from the board.
If they work hard, and play to their strengths, ACT will rise again.
posted by Michael at
7:57 PM
1 Comments:
Well said! ACT needs to define what its trying to achieve and stick to it. They need to set a goal of what they want to achieve and then focus on where they are now and how to reach the goal.Stick to Liberal principles and don't confuse or contradict the message.
By
James, at 2:30 PM
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