Kiwiblog

Heh.

ACT have put up six of these billboards, playing on the Labour ones.

The Greens have a facility to create your own Green billboard. I have not used it, but a reader has been, and sent me these:

I’d say Blanket Man is definitely a Green voter.

What may happen if Keith Locke is Minister of Finance in a Labour-Green Government!

So if the one on the right is meant to represent Jeanette, does that make Russel the one on the left?

The Winston billboard is on TV3 tonight and if you want a laugh, you can see me looking terrified in a cherry picker as I actually got to do some of the stapling. I couldn’t resist giving Winston an eyebrow piercing while up there

Half the time I was smiling at the thought of Winston driving past this. Half the time I was not enjoing strong gusts of winds and looking semi-petrified. Me and heights don’t go well together.

There were lots and lots of waves and toots of support as it was going up.

The image above is being erected onto a billboard on Hewletts Road, Tauranga at 10 am this morning.

We hope the residents and visitors of Tauranga and Mount Mauganui enjoy it.

It has been planned for some time. It is pure coincidence that it goes up the day after television reveals that Winston aggressively lobbied for Owen Glenn to be appointed Consul to Monaco. But we are very happy with the timing.

Need more be said!

No doubt the young Labour supporter achieved NCEA Level 1.

The Electoral Commission has saved me from becoming the most hated man in NZ, and found that the Tui billboards are not election advertisements – but only just!

I asked the EC to rule on the Tui billboards after reading their determination that the EMA ads against KiwiSaver were election advertisements because they can not take into account the intent of the ad – only the impact.

The interesting thing is how close a call they say it was:

As a result the Electoral Commission formed the view that the billboard in question sits just outside of what could reasonably be regarded as encouraging or persuading voters to vote or not to vote in a particular manner, and is therefore not an election advertisement for the purposes of the Electoral Finance Act.

They went out of their way to say the billboard sits “just outside” being an illegal election advertisement. I think it shows hiw far reaching the EFA is, even though it has stopped just short.

Also the EC seems to suggest that Tui escaped only because of their unique place in NZ society:

While there is no exemption for humour as such, because of the long-standing and unique
background of the Tui advertisement series, the Commission does not consider that the billboard in question is likely to have an abiding impact on the thinking of members of the public.

In other words this is not much of a precedent for other satire.

A while ago we realised we had a bit of money left over in the Free Speech Coalition coffers, plus a bit more had come in during the year, and we are morally obliged to spend it before the election.

The hypocrisy of Labour and NZ First voting for the Electoral Finance Act on the grounds of transparency around donations, and then having NZ First revealed as having filed false donation returns is too much to ignore. And Helen keeping Winston in the baubles of office despite the Privileges Committee finding that he lied about the $100,000 Owen Glenn donation shows that Helen’s rhetoric around the Electoral Finance Act is as false as Winston’s rhetoric.

So using the very fine creative talents of Mr Ansell and others, we took what had just been a blog billboard, tidied it up, and turned it into a real life one.

And there it is proudly on Ponsonby Road.

There will be one going up in Wellington also, and we have a slightly different one going up in Tauranga which we think will be popular! Stay tuned.

Someone has done well, especially as the billbpoard is a fair way off the ground.

Incidentally doesn’t the Churchillian pose just come across as so pretentious as to be odious?

Labour’s official billboard.

Labour’s new billboard done by Whale and myself to reflect the citizenship scandal

Is there anything not for sale by Labour? Taito Field was allegedly selling off immigration permits in exchange for free work on houses, and now we have allegedly privileged treatment given to an applicant for citizenship who was a Labour party donor.

Keep them coming!

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

I am sure most have seen this on other blogs, but somehow I feel the need to have it here for the record.

Hat Tip: Big News

This is great – they even got the font!

I’ve been leaked an exclusive copy of the campaign billboard for David Benson-Pope for Dunedin South.

He does have a point. Helen has let Winston away with lies to the media, lies to her, lies to the public, lies to the Privileges Committee and he is still there with all his baubles. While DBP got chopped down for far far less – not only losing his Ministerial baubles but also deselected.

Once upon a time I would have said Benson-Pope would have no chance ofkeeping his seat as an Independent. But I am hearing there is real anger at ths disparity of treatment between Peters and Benson-Pope. It will be interesting to see how many activists stay with Curran and how many leave with Benson-Pope – if he stands.

MacDoctor proposes an alternative billboard for National

Campbell Live had a very amusing segment on election billboards (and incidentially in the main TV3 news bulletin they twice showed the online billboard showing Helen and Winston holding hands together). Well worth viewing.

John Campbell’s comments in summary were:

• National billboard disguised as an Air NZ ad, or spend your tax cuts on air travel
• Labour billboard modelled on North Koran campaign with President Helen, the great leader herself. Joked they removed “or else” after the words “Party Vote Labour”
• Greens have best billboard so far by a mile

Mike Hutcheson’s comments in summary were:

• Nat billboard was written by an undertaker – wave goodbye to higher taxes, not your loved ones!
• Hutch suggested better billboard would have been “Hi Tax, Hi Oz” and the health one should be “Beds not Bosses” or “Beds not Bureaucrats”
• Campbell said Labour’s billboards do not seem to be as airbrushed as normal, and Hutcheson says it is stupid that they take the public for fools by putting up an image that doesn’t look anything like the Helen Clark people see every day. Why would you say the campaign is about trust, and then have billboards which don’t look like you.
• Also loved the Greens billboards – very professional

John Ansell requested a billboard yesterday, so the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy leaped into action. First we had this excellent response from Whale Oil:

Now who wants to donate some money to get that up on a billboard?

And an overseas based reader sends in another version:

Also an excellent effort. Feel free to promote these via blogs, e-mail etc.

As for why the PM declared this election is about trust? Leftie blog Adding Noughts points out she is copying the John Howard playbook as noted by the Sydney Morning Herald:

THE New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has taken a leaf out of John Howard’s book, calling an election and immediately defining it as being about trust.

Miss Clark yesterday said the country’s future would be at stake on November 28, when New Zealanders would decide which party they trusted most. …

“I do believe the future of New Zealand is at stake,” Miss Clark said. “I believe that Labour has shown, through its record in office, that we can be trusted with the future of New Zealand.

“It is about which leader and which major party we New Zealanders trust our families’ and country’s future with.”

When he announced Australia’s 2004 election, Mr Howard said: “This election, ladies and gentlemen, will be about trust.” He asked voters to trust him with the economy and interest rates and in the fight against terrorism.

Speaks for itself.

Peter McCaffery designed this one:

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Hat Tip: Not PC

People seemed to like the billboard I put up yesterday. Another reader has done a similiar one:

Very nice. Note that the graphic is an election ad if you use it anywhere but on a non-commercial blog!

There have also been some amusing parodies of the National billboards. The Standard has some:

I quite like the “Choose a righter future”.

08wire also has a few – some funny, some less so. My favourites:

Heh. I also like the changed tagline. Humour is much more effective when it is funny, and not nasty. Let the billboard wars continue!

Whale Oil also has some new billboards but site seems to be down at the moment. I’ll try grabbing them later.

Sent in by an offshore reader. Note that to avoid confusion, this is not a real advertisement for Labour or NZ First, and has not been authorised by them!

Colin Espiner also has some good insights:

I am going to criticise the Prime Minister for something else, however. Her decision yesterday to launch into the Serious Fraud Office and claim the agency tipped off the National Party about its pending inquiry into donations to the New Zealand First Party was extraordinary. I don’t think a prime minister in this country has made such an accusation against a law enforcement agency before. …

It’s difficult to see Clark’s outburst as anything other than a deliberate attempt to undermine the credibility of the agency investigating one of her ministers, whom she clearly wishes to be cleared of wrongdoing as soon as possible. She has gone out on a limb on this one. The attack looks desperate, unwarranted, and unfair.

As Colin says, one can’t even recall Muldoon at his worst attacking law enforcement like Clark has.

Asked whether any of his MPs had met Lord Ashcroft, Key said: “I think so, yes.”

Here’s what Key should have said to Duncan Garner’s first question: “Sure I met Lord Ashcroft. Why wouldn’t I? He’s close to a friend of mine, David Cameron, and I always take the opportunity to meet my counterparts from like-minded parties overseas, as does the Prime Minister.”

It’s this automatic first instinct to avoid an issue that has got National into trouble before. Why wasn’t Key’s meeting with Lord Ashcroft in his diary released to the media? Why not offer journalists the opportunity to talk to the pair? I’m sure he’s an interesting fellow. If the meeting had been released, I could almost guarantee the media would have ignored it.

I agree strongly here. I guess it is easier with hindsight, but the meeting should have been in the diary. It would have prevented any suspicion, by front footing it. Clin provided the perfect response to any questions.

Finally a word on the billboards. So far: Lame. National is missing John Ansell, the man behind the party’s wickedly clever 2005 billboards terribly. Apparently National isn’t Right-wing enough for Ansell these days, and he’s gone off to support ACT – so look out for some clever billboards from them.

Colin must have missed the news that John parted ways with ACT.

There does seem to be a consensus that the first National billboard isn’t particularly good. The most common complaints is it has too many design elements, and is not clearly a National billboard.

National have released their first billboard. The PR says:

The billboard, on taxation and migration, was launched in Auckland this afternoon. The same billboard is going up at sites in Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, and Tauranga.

“Our first election billboard promotes our intention to introduce an ongoing programme of personal tax cuts. It will be a responsible and a transparent programme,” says Mr Key.

“National will build on Labour’s planned October tax cuts. We will treat those as the first tranche in our tax cut programme. There will be further tax reductions on 1 April 2009, and again on 1 April 2010.

“The billboard also highlights Labour’s failure to stem the tide of people voting with their feet and leaving New Zealand.

“The figures are sky-high. Recent statistics show that more people than ever are leaving. In the year to July, 80,872 people packed their bags and headed overseas for good.

“That’s the highest loss for a year ended July since 1979, and the second highest loss ever. The figure equates to more than 1,500 people per week.

It’s election time alright!