KEY POINTS:
Labour has called for less importance to be placed on opinion polls when decisions are made on the allocation of time and money given to political parties for their election-year radio and television advertisements.
The Electoral Commission yesterday heard submissions from political parties on how the broadcasting allocation should be made - a critical time for all parties, because theycannot buy broadcast advertising from their own funds.
Both Labour and National said they should be given equal amounts of the $3.2 million, which would give them just under $1 million each.
But under the law the commission must weigh up matters such as how well a party did in the last election, the number of MPs it has, and public opinion polls since then.
The criteria could potentially give National an edge over Labour, which has polled in the low- to mid-30s for the past year, while National has polled up to 50 per cent.
Although Labour supported extra weighting given to opinion polls in its 2005 submission, yesterday party secretary Mike Smith said polls were not as reliable as they had been, and should be of lesser importance in the Electoral Commission's thinking.
"It is true to say in the 1987 election, when everybody had a landline, when people answered their phones and weren't being rung from somewhere else and offered a free holiday, telephone polling was probably a lot more reliable ... I think the polls do tell us something, but not with quite the same degree of reliability as when the criteria were drafted."
The parties are also fighting for a share of a total of 72 minutes for one-off opening addresses and 30 minutes for closing addresses on each of TVNZ and Radio New Zealand.
The fight for airtime is tense among the smaller parties, which the commission has previously grouped together according to their size and success with the public.
NZ First and the Greens both asked to be treated on their own as "the third party" just below the two major parties, rather than included with other "small" parties.
The Maori Party asked for an extra allocation to allow it to broadcast ads in te reo and English.
Nineteen parties have put in claims for an allocation - including all current parties in Parliament.
