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Compare the policies of the parliamentary parties contesting the 2014 Election with our new extensive comparison resource

Compare the policies of the parliamentary parties contesting the 2014 Election with our new extensive comparison resource

The General Election on September 20 is now just 77 days away.

Our coverage of the issues will be though two projects.

Firstly, Bernard Hickey is publishing a daily (weekday) diary of political events and news items that readers should know about.

And secondly, we are reprising our agnostic comparative pages of party policy.

Scott Palmer is our analyst on this project and he is releasing some 115 separate pages that summarise and compare party policies across a wide range of issues.

We have released 48 of these pages so far and you can find them indexed on this handy page.

Easy access to this page is also available on our News section page here, in the right-hand "In the section" sidebar menu.

Not all parties release their policies at the same time, so this is a work in progress and Scott will be updating pages as new releases available from the Parties.

Our comparisons only use the words contained in a policy document published online by each party.

We do not source any information from candidate press releases; it must by official party policy to be used in our pages and it must be available to link to online.

Nor do we use Government policy documents. Our current government is a coalition of various parties; it is only the parties policies themselves that we are comparing.

Our pages are limited to five key points from each party. In all cases we provide a handy link to find the full policy release on their website

We only cover parties currently in Parliament.

Each policy comparison page is open for Comment. Please keep them civil, and relevant to the policy issue of the page.

Our approach is different to others. We are not 'summarising' or using our interpretation of the policies; we are only recording what they say.

What political parties say is one thing; what they do can be another, especially when they enter MMP negotiations. You are on your own assessing those implications.

In addition to the policy comparatives, we also have a handy page comparing the Party Lists, here.

And we have Government budget data analysed in a convenient format here and here.

We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.

Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.