Political commentator Paul Henry says he does not think the ACT Party should be in Parliament after this election and the Green Party has run the smartest campaign this year.
On the ACT Party and John Banks, Mr Henry had this to say to Firstline this morning:
“I don’t think he deserves to, I don’t think ACT deserves to be there, I talked to [ACT Party leader] Don Brash yesterday and I said, ‘What do you actually stand for?’ And he said, ‘There are nine things but I can’t remember them,'” says Mr Henry.
On the flipside, he says the Green Party has run a very intelligent campaign, with its simplicity in terms of policy a real asset.
“The Greens have played a very clever campaign, they only have three significant policies, and they can all articulate them very well,” says Mr Henry, adding that those policies are very expensive.
However, he is warning their indecision in deciding which party they will or won’t work with post-election could come back to hurt them, as left-wing voters may give their vote to Labour if they see their voice could be wasted voting for a party which gets into bed with National.
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“It’s a very dangerous game that the Greens are playing, they’re playing the game very well, but they’re juggling a lot of balls. It seems inconceivable they’ll get less than 10 percent support, but what is going to lift them higher than that is swinging Labour and National voters,” he says.
Mr Henry says the last election showed how the Green Party can be affected when it lost a lot of swinging National voters by ruling out working with the right-wing party before the election.
He also believes Prime Minister John Key’s campaign to warn voters off Labour by suggesting they will put Mana Party leader Hone Harawira and NZ First leader Winston Peters into a position of power has "backfired".
“It’s political theatre and that’s all Winston is, he’s a political thespian,” he says.
Click ‘view video’ to watch the full interview.
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