“The current state of mainstream media election coverage and even public meetings in New Zealand are despicable.”, Says Deputy leader of New Conservative, Ted Johnston BSc BA LLB.

Modern democratic countries are too big for individual political movements and parties to easily reach the vast majority of the public, and explain their policies, aims, values, and why the public should vote for them.

This l information is fundamental to the fair functioning of a democracy, and is provided to the public by the media. It is their democratic responsibility to fairly inform the voters, and many of the media are specifically funded by the government to do so.

However the mainstream media do not give fair coverage to smaller parties, nor even the pretence of such. We have seen youth party debates on tv last week, but most smaller parties do not even get invited to a tv debate, and regularly fight this in court during election years.

In NZ the media just excludes smaller parties and ignores them. No matter how good their people or policies are, the public will generally never see them nor hear from them. And if they even get a tiny amount of coverage, it is swept aside by the tsunami of free news media coverage of the major parties. For example, puff pieces about the PM and sausage rolls.

“The right to freedom of speech is worthless without a right to be heard” says Ted Johnston. Freedom of political speech is likewise worthless, if it cannot reach the public. The media proves you do not need to use jackboots or police to suppress political parties and movements, just exclude them.

Even in Local body elections unless you spend a fortune on advertising, you often aren’t included. Those spending most on advertising, also get far more news coverage.

“Elections should not be for sale, to the highest bidders” says Ted Johnston.

We also have public political meetings restricted often to only a few invited parties, and the rest are excluded.

I have noticed recently held public meetings in the Auckland Central Electorate by’ Child Poverty Action Group’, and the ‘Great Auckland Central Election Debate ‘at St Mathews and even the Auckland University Public policy club excluded New Conservative from attendance, claiming that they had insufficient notice (with most over a week’s warning) yet none advised us prior, of these events.

The Auckland University Public Policy Club also claimed there was insufficient time and space to add one person, and that NC had not generally polling over 1%.

In fact NC has been regularly polling above 1% over the past few months.Despite me pointing this out to them they did not change their position.

High points for New Conservative polls. Mar, 2023. 2.5%, 1%, April. 1.7%, May. 1.6% 1.4%, June 1.3%, with some lower ones over Jul/ early Aug. Even the average with fluctuation is 1%.

In my day the Universities fought racial and other unfair discrimination, eg the springbok tours. We marched and opposed the govt when we believed it was wrong.

Now we see students leading the charge to tow the govt party line on Global warming, and other ideologies.

What happened to freedom of thought, freedom of belief and students developing their own views? These university students involved need to be ashamed, that they received the advantage of us earlier students fighting for the rights they now have, yet they ignore and exclude others.

This is why we have no real change in New Zealand. The status quo can’t change if no real choices are given to the public for necessary radical improvements. Just the choice between two very similar parties, Labour and National who don’t have to be any good, they just have to be better than the other.

We face huge current crises including; the cost of living, housing, crime, rundown and underfunded, police, justice, education, health and transport systems as well as attacks on our primary industry and businesses, and uncontrolled corporate price-gouging monopolies.

We need radical changes in NZ to fix our problems, that only New Conservative will perform.” Says Ted Johnston.

© Scoop Media