More on ACT list

At dinner last night were candidates 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the ACT Party List. Someone joked I should get a photo with them and announce that I am the secret No 5 candidate 🙂

There has been some discussion as to why long time stalwart and candidate Lindsay Mitchell was not on the list. Lindsay explains on her own blog that she refused the No 14 spot as she was No 9 in 2005, and didn’t feel her performance warranted a demotion. Lindsay certainly has been tireless in advocating for ACT, and has a lot of sympathy for her position.

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn compares the 2005 and 2008 lists. His table starkly illustrates the change. Of the top 12 candidates in 2008, only two of them (Rodney and Heather) were even candidates in 2005. In fact only seven of their top 30 candidates were candidates in 2005.

I met yesterday their No 10 candidate, Shawn Tan. Shawn struck me a very nice and dedicated guy, but has been the subject of some criticism as he was a Green Party activist for many years. Shawn has posted a response as a comment on the earlier thread. Some interesting quotes:

No, I haven’t lost my heart; neither have I experienced premature brain growth. My point is, my ideals used to be utopian ones, based on the theories I read during my tenure as an undergraduate university student. Having been in the workforce for approximately two-and-a-half years, and in fact having worked in the union movement for virtually that entire period, let’s just say my eyes have been opened to the disjunct between leftist theory and the workings of the real world. My ideals today are therefore based on pragmatism and common sense – values and principles embodied by the ACT Party.

And even better:

ACT’s stance on Law and Order is indeed what convinced me to join, though not the only reason why I joined, the ACT Party. My association with ACT is quite simply the culmination of a journey of self-discovery, ‘quarter-life crisis’ and cultural reconnection that began at the end of last year, and precipitated by the ‘South Auckland saga’.

In fact, my alias ‘bledback2life’ was chosen to educidate my transition (some would say transmogrification) from the Greens and the Left to ACT and the realm of liberalism. I juxtaposed the concept of bleeding/blood loss with that of resurrection, in a deliberate act of oxymoronic temerity, in order to illustrate that it has been the exorcising of my Marxist demons, and the purging of Leftist ideology, from my mind and body which has allowed me to be cleansed and thus feel alive once again.

I’ve always been a civil libertarian, even when I identified with various leftist schools of thought. Now that I have embraced economic liberty too, only now can I truly call myself a coherent and consistent proponent of freedom in a holistic sense.

Yes economic liberty and social liberty are natural partners.

Shaun says one of the catalysts for his conversion was Sue Bradford blaming some murders (in 2008) in South Auckland on the policies of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. It was the final straw it seems.

Now NBR has what may become a very big story about Shaun. Shaun is employed by that independent third party, the EPMU. NBR reports Shaun has been stood down because he is standing for ACT. The right to stand for Parliament is a fundamental right, and employers are on very dangerous grounds when they try to limit it, or even worse dictate what parties are acceptable for employees to stand for. The EPMU staff have a clause in their collective contract stating staff must get permission of the national executive to stand for Parliament. It would be a very interesting court case that tested the legality of that clause.