E-Politics

Bryce Edwards blogs on the growing use and influence of e-politics. A good round-up of what is happening and recommended reading.

I missed that last month Mainly Politics did a review of the party websites. His overall rankings are:

National 7.25
Greens 6.50
Labour 5.75
Maori 4.25
Progressive 3.25
United Future 3.25
NZ First 3.00
ACT 2.25

I recall once upon a time when the ACT website left all the others for dead in terms of functionality and content.

But talking of bad sites, I have to pan the All Our Rights website. It is proposing to end the defence of “homosexual panic” – where people get off murder charges on the grounds they lost control when hit on by a gay person. Now I am sympathetic to their cause, but their website lets them down badly.

The site claims this defence has been used many times, but doesn’t even have a single case study for people to read. It also doesn’t make clear the exact law change it is seeking. There is no statute that provides for a “homosexual panic” defence, so presumably they seek to end the defence of provocation. But this is not clear, and would of course affect many other types of cases.

They have a very sad story about a Stanley Waipouri who was murdered, but nowhere does it link in whether his killers tried to or succeeded in using HPD. In fact it seems the case has not even been heard yet, so what is the link to the campaign.

Also there is no info on who is behind the campaign and are members of the grassroots group.

I’m someone who is likely to support the campaign to abolish HPD, but the campaign website is so sub-standard it doesn’t give me the info I need to make that decision.

No Right Turn on the other hand is his normal mine of information, supplying almost all the info that the campaign website does not have.