August 28, 2014
University of Otago politics specialist and election commentator Bryce Edwards informed an audience of around 80 people regarding scandal in the New Zealand election process, in Queenstown’s first University of Otago Winter Series lecture.
Bryce covered political campaigns over the last 30 years, giving multi media examples of scandals past and present.
He concluded that there appear to be more scandals broadcast in the media this election than previously. However, he said, this is not necessarily a bad thing as exposing scandals is a means of controlling poor behavior by politicians.
The audience asked numerous excellent questions, including a poser on whether corruption and dirty politics extends into local body politics.
A particularly interesting plot provided by Bryce showed that all our political parties are right of center … is that why it is so hard to pick between the parties in this election?