Founding Rats Jump Ship

ACT’s two founders, Sir Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley, have announced they have resigned as ACT’s patrons.

In one sense this may not be a bad thing for ACT as Sir Roger only made news when he was criticising ACT, and this makes it less news worthy. However I suspect some of the members will not be happy.

Sir Roger repeats his usual complaint about more focus on policies and less on scandals. And he is of course right to a degree. But what I think he misses is that the media give far more attention to scandals that serious policy alternatives.

If one looks at PRs from ACT, and Rodney’s blog, there is a lot of focus on policies, but they never get much media attention.