Sponsor's Message

It seems that political lobbying is making the headlines with increasing regularity these days.

The opposition alleges that the government is cheating by using taxpayer's money to fund lobby groups and suppress criticism but of course the government says it's all kosher and nothing to worry about.

So are the opposition parties making good use of the Net to fight back and have their own perspectives well-aired? And what are some of those issues?

The abolition of the right of appeal to the Privy Council looks set to be steamrollered through parliament despite the fact that 80% of Kiwis want a say before such a constitutionally significant move is made.

The lifting of the GM moratorium is another hot potato that has become a real political football, filling the headlines and TV news.

So you'd expect that with our political parties trying to get the public in behind them on these critical issues, there'd be a lot of activity on the web right?

Well I certainly see little sign of it -- and that surprises me.

Okay, ACT have been pretty proactive and is encouraging people to print out, get signatures on, and mail back an online petition form calling for a referendum on the Privy Council issue -- but only the 30,000 people on their mailing list were told about that.

There's a banner and promotion for this petition on the front page of their website, but the premium banner position seems to favour selling Deborah Coddington's new book.

Where's the smart little tactic of encouraging other website and homepage owners to stick a little icon on their pages promoting the petition and linking back to ACT's latest updates on the campaign?

Where's the moderated online forum on that allows interested voters to comment and voice their agreement/disagreement with the Privy Council move?

The National Party website appears to be little better, having some "hot issue" buttons on its front page -- except that under my tired old copy of Netscape 4.5, those buttons don't work (Javascripted -- WHY???) and under the up-to-date Mozilla Firebird browser, the page renders like this (Javascript, images, style-sheets, all enabled).

And further down the page, their Fart Tax logo doesn't display under NS4.5 or Mozilla Firebird either. Of course it renders fine under IE -- is the National Party a division of Microsoft now?

Now The Greens seem to have themselves far more sorted when it comes to promoting their causes on the Web.

Right at the top of their front page there are good old plain HTML hypertext links to a raft of relevant information -- well done!

Actually, although it looks perhaps a little cluttered, The Greens website does a surprisingly respectable job of presenting lots of information without a great deal of fluff -- I'm impressed.

However when it comes to their politics and principles I'm a whole lot less congratulatory.

Despite all their posturing and plastering the issue all over the media and their website, I can't help but feel that The Greens aren't really interested in preventing the lifting of the GE moratorium. Either that or they're really incompetent politicians.

Why do I say this?

Well right now the have the Labour government over a barrel.

Labour can't pass its controversial Privy Council legislation without the support of The Greens -- and the greens (allegedly) see the retention of the GE moratorium as the single most important issue before the nation right now.

Now excuse me -- if The Greens could just poke their heads out of that cloud of wacki-bacci smoke for a moment -- don't you see the obvious solution here?

All The Greens have to do is make their support of the Privy Council legislation conditional on extending the GE moratorium for some additional period.

I know that The Greens would like to see the Privy Council abolished, but they really need to decide which is the more important issue -- as it stands, they clearly can't have both. The stunning fact is that by playing hardball with Labour, they might just get both -- but they're just too chicken to put their money where their mouth is -- or just plain stupid.

It strikes me that The Greens are abandoning their principles and what they would have us believe is almost their prime directive, simply to ingratiate themselves with the Labour Party.

I find it hard to have any respect for a party that would sell-out so easily.

Politicians -- bah! Even those with good websites can't be trusted.

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