clockworkfish

hmmm, don't know if i agree with your detective work there Carla.
1- we like our honest, down to earth leaders? Only politician in NZ history I can think of that may plausible fit the bill is Bruce Beethan; we didn't seem to like him much.
Whereas Bolger embarrassed the hell out of us and offended every other world leader by doing poor impersonations of them, and we seemed to like him enough.

I agree though, that Brash's recent impersonation of competence has come to a crashing end. The beauty of it, is that National's policy of cannibalising the Right, normalising ACT policies into Centre-Right politics, rather than opting for a fight for the moderate Centre vote - has damaged right wing politics for many years to come.
ACT will not, unless by some miracle, win Epsom, thereby exiting parliament, and once out, as the Alliance can tell them, it's a hard road back in.
National will now lose this election, probably by ten points, losing those moderate conservatives who can swing either way, and will swing away from religious fundamentalism. In less then a year, there will be yet another National leadership coup, and the moderate backbenchers will rule the roost, and by next election we will have a diminished National sitting on 21 in the polls (just like last election), scuffling for the centre, and no effective Right left in New Zealand.

on a side note 1. am i the only one who is a bit bemused by Peter Dunnes call for common sense, after 6 years of a government running a fiscal surplus, and a soft approach to social reform? and after he called the Greens watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside, he practically screeched!

side note b. sadly, National's Telethon ad campaign is the best thing so far this election, best campaign since Muldoon's Super ad's and the notorious dancing cossacks.

I HATE that ad it gets stuck in my head.

Have you seen the United Future ad in which they have their own little worm, that just keeps going up?!

"National's Telethon ad campaign is the best thing so far this election"

I couldn't disagree more. That ad is a disgrace. It tells you exactly NOTHING about National's policy, and it is simplistic to the point of being insulting.

I still don't know *what* to make of that ad. It seems at such odds with Brash's normal style. It think anyone who votes National on the basis of that ad is going to be badly disappointed.

I think he hired some people to do something snappy and funny to get the young and funky vote, and that's what they came up with. In terms of policy and what National is actually about, it's virtually meaningless.

You're probably right, Eleanor. There's just one thing I'm wondering. The last Telethon must be over a decade ago, right?

So whose idea was it that "young and funky" means "a theme from a tv show that hasn't been on in over ten years"?

I guess we're lucky to have been spared an ad featuring Nats as The A-Team. Gerry Brownlee would clearly be BA Barakas, but would Don Brash be Hannibal or Murdoch?

Urgh.

My definition of young and funky might be a little broad. But if it's not TOO much over a decade that the last Telethon was on, everyone of voting age has a fighting chance of remembering it.

Cross out my comment about the A-Team and replace it with an image of Don Brash and Gerry Brownlee impersonating Run-DMC. It's more appropos.

When i say that the Telethon ad is the best thing this campaign, i certainly don't mean in terms of the quality of its message or what it tells you. i mean precisely in terms of catching audience attention.
National's marketing strategy has been entirely meaningless, but also remarkably attention-getting, from the Telethon ad, to the Iwi/Kiwi billboards - everyone is talking about them; finally the meme theory has entered NZ political campaigning.
What's also interesting about it, is it is a decidedly un-National type of campaign, and tellingly, it talks very little policy and shows very little Brash.

The last Telethon was in 1988, so it clearly isn't a "youth" grab; it's a nostalgia grasp.
The irony is that a party whose primary policy is tax-cuts for upper-middle-incomers is using a tagline from a charity drive to get money from that same demographic.
It was the then Labour governments demand that TVNZ be profit-driven, forcing it to charge the Telethon organisers close to market rates for the time and insistence on ad breaks, that saw Telethon become unviable.

"The last Telethon was in 1988". State your source!

Last May there was a NZ music telethon. And the US just had one to raise money for hurricane victims, since the Sept 11 one was so successful.

Having said that, I've only seen the print version of the taxathon ad, and it does look very dated. But isn't that the point? To make Labour look dated? (Amongst other things)

"but also remarkably attention-getting, from the Telethon ad, to the Iwi/Kiwi billboards"

Exactly: If you're looking for intelligent political debate, they suck. But from an advertising/marketting/design perspective I think they have done the best job - and they've got people's attention, even if it's not always positive attention.

clearly there are "telethon's" all over the place - but we're meaning the narrowly defined TVNZ Telethon that National is referencing, the last of which was in 1988 (after a break, as there was no Telethon in 1987). My sources are the Film Archive and TVNZ.

funnily enough, a friend I was talking to was surprised that it was a National advert - while she had seen it several times, she hadn't particularly listened to the words, singing along with the old lines, and all she saw were cartoon Labour ministers. She thought Labour had made a wonderful campaign!

Hee... that's cute.

I always wondered why they had a puppet Brash at the end. I thought it risked making him look like a puppet. Mind you, I suppose anything he could have done as an actual clip would have been even more puppet like, and seemed dull by comparison.