However Master O’Reilly may not be such a popular name down at APN Media after all today. It seems Master O’Reilly is keen to sell his stake in APN, one of New Zealand’s dominant media companies. And New Zealand’s other major newspaper publisher, the other horse in the race, Fairfax, is rumoured to be interested in buying APN. New Zealand already has one of the most deregulated media environments in the world. The Greens’ broadcasting policy notes:

Four companies, all overseas-owned, dominate the New Zealand news media. There is a near duopoly of print and radio, a monopoly in pay television, and only three significant competitors (including the state-owned channels) in free-to-air television. News-gathering and reporting has become more centralised, and the same stories are channelled into radio, television, the internet and print media…

A vigorous, independent and diverse media is the cornerstone of a free society: the media are none of these things if they are predominantly controlled by the state, or owned and controlled by international media conglomerates, or dominated by local commercial monopolies.

The policy aims to give much greater support to independent community and Maori media as well as publicly-owned media.

What a tremendously unbiased sample the Herald has chosen for their survey about our political leaders. I’ll look forward to their equally credible follow up “Mood of the Unionised Workplace Smoko Room.” Prediction: opposite result.

And of course these infotainment leadership ‘polls’ continue to treat the election like an FPP one where voters only have two choices, which does nothing to help people make informed choices.

Mr Carson, who came up with Labour’s “Keep it Kiwi” and “This one’s about trust” campaigns, says the key to advertising a political party is to pit yourself against your opposition. In the commercial world, you want to be positive about your product. In politics, you want to malign your rival.

All parties should and do criticise each other on various issues and sometimes more generically they will criticise each others’ very reason for being.  But when parties have only 15 or 30 seconds of advertising time to get their message across and they choose to use that to abuse or denigrate their opponents it shows a lack of vision and commitment to improving things for New Zealanders.

Under MMP attacking the opposition rather than promoting yourself misses the point.  Labour voters who enjoy denigration and abuse of political opponents would be better voting New Zealand First – Winston is better at it.  If however they want a positive, practical vision they can choose Green.

The implication is that were National to form a government with a minority of the popular support but more votes than any other party then the majority of voters would who did not vote for National would all be sitting back saying ‘Look, even though we all want something completely different to you John, it’s your turn. Go ahead and rip apart the Resource Management Act and this country’s few environmental protections. We’ll talk again in three years.’

We all know that there wouldn’t be eighty percent support for that proposition.  There wouldn’t even be fifty percent support for it.

It goes to show that you nee to word your question carefully if you want a result that gives you the information you were seeking.

This week’s guest judge was Alan Russell, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Canada, Vancouver,who said:

First Choice goes to Green Party. It’s so damn simple I ask myself, as with all the best work, why didn’t someone think of that before? Few words, striking photography, emotional appeal, clever, yep it’s got my vote.

Kudos to photographer Alistair Guthrie and the creative team at Special in Auckland.

Part of it , is as Wendyl Nissen notes, that our time has come:

The Green Party’s reason for being has subtly changed from someone you treat as a mad aunt on a break from the Rajasthan ashram, to someone you seek out for their knowledge and find that everything they say seems to make sense. They are the geek who you wrote off until your computer crashed or the karate kid you ignored until he saved you from the bullies.

But the other reason for success so far I reckon is that the Greens are campaigning hard, but not just through the lens of mainstream media.  Green Party members and supporters are out this election more proudly telling people they are Green and explaining why.  Old-fashioned campaigning where people talk to each other kanohi ki te kanohi and discuss politics together remains one of the hardest and least noticeable to the media forms of campaigning but also one of the most powerfully effective. And it is also one of the most democratic, because it allows two way communication rather than just one way slogans.

Much like the Karate Kid you don’t notice it happening until it has already hit you.

Actually in the last month Labour’s vote finally seems to have stabilised from its steady downward fall over the last year. National’s vote has softened slightly - So it’s not strictly true to say the Greens are taking our vote directly from Labour.  The Greens seem to be picking up votes from those who now see us as the alternative way to really change the Labour government without getting John Key. So my guess is that we are taking soft votes off both National and Labour.

EDIT - I’ve just spotted the Herald Digipoll has not such a good number for us (5.4 percent) but still shows our vote tracking up according to the general trend.  This is good and the Herald poll is traditionally the one the Greens seem to perform worst in, so our overall average result should continue to rise.

There has been a lot of discussion that pacific people will vote on morality issues like section 59.  It might be though that what is really on their mind in the polling booth is the morality of what we are doing to the people of Kiribati and Tuvalu, by doing nothing of significance on climate change.

Photo  credit: Luigig

So Harry is not perfect. I am liking Harry. I have always liked Jeanette Fitzsimons. A young woman appears.

“This is Romina, our wwoofer,” Jeanette says.

“I beg your pardon,” I say, thinking I have misheard.

“Wwoofer. Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms. Romina’s from Cologne. She’s been here a few weeks.”

Fancy that. A world exchange programme to help organic farming young people see the world. Romina seems quite at home.

Photo Credit: The New Zealand Herald