Campaign for Mt Albert is live

One of the candidates for the Labour nomination, Meg Bates, has a campaign website up.

Putting aside all the interesting ramifications of if a List MP wins the nomination, and then the seat, it is good to see there will be a hard fought battle for the nomination, with a number of good candidates. Safe seats (and I still consider Mt Albert relatively safe for Labour unless a List MP is selected as their candidate) should have a vigorous contest for the nomination. After all, that person who wins it could well end up being an MP for 20 – 30 years.

And even though it is a decision for the party only, I think it is good to see campaign sites from candidates for the nomination. That way the public gets to see what is on offer at an earlier stage.

National has extremely restrictive rules on campaigning for a nomination – basically you can’t do so publicly. You can’t even confirm you are seeking the nomination until after pre-selection. The rules were designed to stop candidates from attacking each other publicly, but in my opinion should be amended so that websites, like the one for Meg Bates, are allowed at any stage.

If readers know of any other candidate websites, let me know and I will cover them.

Kiwiblog likes elections. We consider the three years between general elections as boring (even though academically we think a four year term is preferred) so relish a by-election. Haven’t worked out yet exactly what sort of coverage we can do, but at this stage I am keen to spend at least a week in Mt Albert doing interviews with voters, candidates etc. Also cover some meet the candidate meetings.

UPDATE: The Greens have confirmed they are standing a candidate, despite some informal approaches by Labour not to do so. A Green candidate could do quite well – by-elections often do strange things – the Alliance almost won Selwyn and Tamaki, and ACT almost won TKC.