ACT has released its party list, and stuck Roger Douglas at number three. From their point of view, its an effort to threaten their voters into voting for them: "if you want Roger, you'll have to tick ACT". For the rest of us, its just a threat. Douglas is a reminder of a dark time in New Zealand politics, an unrepentant throwback whose chief regret is that he didn't fuck up our lives enough. And given ACT's position as National's default preferred coalition partner, the thought of him exercising any influence at all over a future National government ought to be truly terrifying to anyone who remembers his first time round. Which means that ACT has just given Labour the perfect election slogan: "vote Key, get Rogered". I bet they're printing the stickers already.
As with last election, I've done a table showing the top ten candidates relative placements with last time. The fifth spot is apparently being held open at this stage while they look for another high-profile candidate.
| 2008 Rank | Name | 2005 Rank | Difference |
| 1 | Rodney Hide | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | Heather Roy | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Roger Douglas | -- | -- |
| 4 | John Boscawen | -- | -- |
| 5 | ? | ? | |
| 6 | Hilary Calvert | -- | -- |
| 7 | Peter Tashkoff | -- | -- |
| 8 | John Ormond | -- | -- |
| 9 | Colin du Plessis | -- | -- |
| 10 | Shawn Tan | -- | -- |
| 11 | Ron Scott | -- | -- |
| 12 | Aaron Keown | -- | -- |
| 13 | Nick Kearney | 51 | +38 |
| 14 | Lyn Murphy | -- | -- |
| 15 | David Olsen | 14 | -1 |
| 16 | Frances Denz | 28 | +12 |
| 17 | Dave Moore | -- | -- |
| 18 | Mike Bridge | -- | -- |
| 19 | Lech Beltowski | 18 | -1 |
| 20 | Beryl Good | -- | -- |
| 21 | Ashok Kumar | -- | -- |
| 22 | David Tattersfield | -- | -- |
| 23 | William Wong | -- | -- |
| 24 | John Thompson | -- | -- |
| 25 | Kevin Campbell | -- | -- |
| 26 | Mark Davies | 52 | +26 |
| 27 | Michael Bailey | -- | -- |
| 28 | Carl Friemann | -- | -- |
| 29 | Chris Albers | -- | -- |
| 30 | Vince Ashworth | -- | -- |
What's surprising is the almost complete turnover in the list: apart from Hide and Roy, none of them were on ACT's list in 2005, and all ACT's former MPs seem to have completely disappeared. It's as if it was a completely new party - though sadly, its still promising the same old thing.
Update: Updated table from list of full candidates. Still an awful lot of new faces there. I know minor parties have churn, but when you lose almost all of your previous top ten candidates (basically, anyone who didn't get a seat), that's something else.
