#Watching the TV3 election debate with leaders from TPM, Greens, Winston First and ACT:
https://piped.video/watch?v=db6k68wgwHA
It annoys me that the news media elevated the leaders of the legacy parties to their own private Chrisfest, instead of having a leaders debate that included these 4. That would have been a much more robust and insightful debate than listening to two sheets of human wallpaper dribble talking points at each other.
(1/?)
More importantly, the news media have no right to be picking winners in advance. Regardless of what politics geeks know is likely and unlikely, in theory any of the party leaders could be PM (or co-PM?) after an election. So any leaders debate should be inclusive of all of them, to avoid prejudicing the result.
Sure, they can't include every registered party, they wouldn't all fit on the stage. But they could set a reasonable cutoff, like polling over 3% in at last 3 election year polls.
(2/2)
Strypey