July 16, 2014 3:00pm by David Farrar

A reader on Labour’s website

A reader e-mails:

I went there yesterday to try and find out what Phil Twyford had said about the roading package. First thing I noticed on the front page: no search function. So I went to news and clicked on press releases. They’re in chronological order. So I clicked on page 3, as I figured that might take me back as far as June 29, when we made the announcement. It didn’t, so I clicked on the last available page – page 5. That took me back as far as July 4, but there is an arrow to the right of the five numbered pages, so I clicked on that, figuring it would take me to pages 6 and beyond. Nope, it took me back to the front page of press releases.

Shit I thought, I’ll have to go to Phil Twyford’s MP page – that’s bound to have his press releases. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t actually have any of his media statements – there’s no hyperlinks from his page to anything he’s said, press releases or speeches. It did have a link to what looked to be his personal website (‘Website: twyord.org.nz’), so I thought it might be there, but astonishingly that link merely refreshed the very page I was looking at.

So in a nutshell:

Labour’s website has no search function

It has no archive of its press releases older than the past two weeks, and older releases just seem to drop off the bottom of the list as new ones enter the system

Its MP pages have none of their statements, and the links to what appear to be their external personal websites don’t work

And, as someone else out to me, if you look at their team page, here: http://campaign.labour.org.nz/team the bios don’t follow any orchestrated formula; they’re a shambles – some are in the first person, such as Nanaia Mahuta … “since becoming an MP I have …”, some are in the third person, such as David Cunliffe … “David is in politics because he believes people matter …”, and some, like Chris Hipkins (ironically the Education Spokesperson) are a grammatical mess … “Chris passionate about education …”