Dialogue: Challenge of holding support together out on the edges

By COLIN JAMES

Out on the edge, how do you build your vote? On the wings of our electoral system are two parties that claim the future. But they could hardly be more different futures and they could hardly promote them more differently.

The Greens want ecological harmony, humans linked to nature in economic and spiritual life. Act insists harmony comes from individuals following their best instincts. The Greens believe in regulation to achieve their ends, Act in deregulation.

The Greens have generally been better at getting support than Act these past two years. Why? This disturbing question will stalk Act's conference this weekend.

If Richard Prebble is true to form he will cite Act's 0.2 per cent lead over the Greens in last Friday's poll. But the Greens have led by an average 2.3 per cent over the past 12 months. Since the 1999 election Act has averaged 4.2 per cent.

Since Act will not win an electorate seat, that is a bother. National supporters will probably once again hoist it over 5 per cent. But that is no way to a long-term future. The key to that future is to recognise explicitly what the Greens have recognised implicitly, that both are edge parties.

Of course, both think their futures so common sense that one day people will swarm to them. But the Greens have pitched their message better. They have been more sensitive to their natural catchment and played to it.

So they have fluttering at their mast a rack of pennants - safe food, organics, conservation, anti-free-trade, peace, youth, cannabis. Closest to the mast are true believers, fiercely dark green, tapering away in the breeze are lighter green people, a few maybe with as much blue as green.

These slivers of vote add up to more than 5 per cent in polling.

Act has chosen a diametrically different course. It has principles and even publishes books to explain them. In debate and in speeches, these principles are a recognisable substratum.

But Act's popular face is different. First, it is the scourge of scandal. That is useful, in exposing the questionable Kiwibank's commercial foundations, for example. If the Government was ageing and not popular for other reasons, this would drain votes. But it does not build Act's vote.

Secondly, Act pushes some principle - on the Treaty of Waitangi, for example - in a manner intended to appeal to redneck voters who would otherwise vote Labour. But these voters do not like the economic and social policy principles. And those who do like them do not like the populism. Act is not playing to its positional strength.

An edge party does not have to satisfy middle New Zealand to clear 5 per cent. It can focus on a smaller catchment. But even then it must perform a balancing feat.

The idealists' future will never arrive on a 5 per cent vote. On that vote, the future can be grafted only in small amounts on to a big party's centrist programme. And such incrementalism can split edge parties, as the Alliance has found.

However, too much radicalism turns off softer fellow-travellers who may be needed for 5 per cent. The Greens' polling has dropped by a fifth since the GM potato vandalism and promises of "sovereignty" for Maori. Such radicalism appeals only to the darkest greens. Lighter greens have the Labour Party to switch to. So the pennants have been fraying at the ends.

Prebble understood the perils of radical excess when he dumped zero income tax and rescued Act in 1996.

But too little radicalism loses the true believers. The question for Prebble is whether he has paid too little attention to the 2 to 3 per cent who should be his core vote. Without them, Act's future is fragile.

* ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz