How strong is a party with too few activists?

The Green Party likes to paint itself as the party of principle but how principled is it to use taxpayer funds to do the work normally carried out by volunteers?

Keeping Stock blogged yesterday on the party  advertising for students in Christchurch to solicit signatures for its petition against the partial float of a few state-owned energy companies.

He followed up that post today with more on rent a petition showing advertisements for six out-of-parliament staff whose primary role is to collect signatures for the petition.

That looks a lot more like party political activism than legitimate out-of-parliament support for MPs.

Such work is normally carried out by members, i.e. volunteers not paid staff.

What this suggests is the party doesn’t have many members.

Another clue to the parlous state of the Green Party’s membership is its campaign donations’ return which shows most of its large donations came from its MPs.

Their money is their own to do with it what they will. But they might not need to be this generous to the party if it had a lot more members paying subs.

Lots of people paying a little maes a stronger and more representative party than a few MPs paying a lot.

That is the way parties ought to get their base funding and it is why I believe that organisations must have at least 2,000 members before they can register as a party.

Democracy requires active participation of the people. Publicly funded employees can and should not replace that.