Defeated Invercargill Green Party candidate Dave Kennedy is re-evaluating his party’s electoral campaign approach after the party failed to meet its goal of 15% of the overall party vote.
“It’s the party vote that determines the amount of people you have in Parliament. If we properly contested the electorate votes it would cost a lot of money and take far more resources. And it doesn’t necessarily mean we’d end up with more MPs overall,” he said.
The Greens received 10% of the total party vote, a drop from 11% in the 2011 election, but Kennedy says the campaign was still an improvement in many respects.
“I think we were the most organised we’ve ever been in terms of mobilizing our volunteers – we had over 6,000 volunteers nationwide this year, with around 50 of those from Southland. Green Party membership in Invercargill has also doubled since the previous election.”
Kennedy attributed the lack of media attention of the Green Party as one of the party’s main campaign obstacles.
“I thought that there was a lack of media evaluation or analysis of policies. The Greens were very strongly focused on our policy, but the majority of the campaign nationally was focused on Dirty Politics and Kim Dotcom,” he said.
Kennedy is currently searching for employment outside his current party roles. He left his previous position as a special needs teacher at Invercargill Middle School in 2011 due to discontent with the direction of the education system. He made a controversial blog post earlier this year, where he criticized what he described as a “heavy attack” on public education under a National-led government.
Kennedy was also particularly critical of the $400 million wiped from the early childhood budget in 2012, and the $35 million gifted to private schools.
“I’ve already heard of one Southland principal [that wished to remain anonymous] that’s considering resigning because National got in again,” he said.
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