The Family Party want more money

The Electoral Commission announced on 19 May 2008 its determination for the 2008 broadcasting allocation.

I blogged on the allocations here. The allocations, in a relative sense, favour the smaller parties with the two major parties getting 62% of the allocation despite getting over 80% of the vote.

The Alliance Party was one of ten parties who got $10,000 to spend on broadcasting time, $7,000 for a production package for the opening address and 1 minute for the opening and no time for the closing. They are challenging this allocation in court, and it will be heard on 15 September.

I blogged in June that the Alliance was already getting $10.36 a vote while Labour got $1.07 a vote, so I doubt they have any chance of sucess with increasing their $17,000 allocation. They are also challenging the decision for some of their money to be on a production package – and they may have a better chance of success there. One also can not rule out that they may gain some sympathy to their argument they should have some time allocated for a closing address – no matter how short.

The Alliance are asking for each of the non parliamentary parties to go from $17,000 to $32,000. This would cost $150,000 and they propose Labour and National lose $75,000 each.

A new twist is that the Family Party (Destiny in drag with 1,052 members) have also joined the lawsuit, and are asking the Judge to increase their $17,000 to $100,000 plus seven minutes in total for opening and closing. They are pushing shit uphill to be honest, but I do find their reasoning amusing:

• They made 0.3% in two polls
• They plan to win Mangere
• They are the only Christian party, and Christians make up half of NZ’s population
• The Government has passed some laws they don’t like, and ignores public opinion (which is true but has nothing to do with broadcasting allocations)

I am looking forward to the arguments in court!