The marketing guru behind the Iwi/Kiwi billboards and the new Act Party adverts has attacked “white cowards” for not standing up against the “Maorification” of the country.

Act Party creative director John Ansell said Maori were taking advantage of New Zealand’s fear of appearing racist and he wanted the Act Party to speak out.

I agree with John that one should be able to say you think the Maori seats are a bad idea, and not be called racist. But likewise one should be able to say all teachers should know basic te reo, and also not be called racist.

He said: “These guys (Maori) have gone from the stone age to the space age in 150 years and haven’t said thanks. That’s the nature of the thing. In Maori world, if one tribe conquers another you eat the guys eyeballs. The Brits were pretty civilised by that standard.”

And Germany 70 years ago was trying to exterminate entire races. Not quite sure the relevance.

But last night, Brash distanced himself from Ansell’s “extreme statements”.

“I don’t want to associate myself with those kind of views at all,” he said.

Asked if Ansell would continue as an employee, Brash said a decision on that would be made today and “may already have been made”.

Sounds like it has been made indeed.

Brash and Ansell were supposed to be sharing a stage in Palmerston North yesterday but the creative director pulled out citing problems with the party.

Ansell said “white cowards” were scared to “tell the truth about this Maori issue”.

“If you don’t agree with the Maori radical perspective you’re branded a racist.”

Again, that is wrong, but so is calling people racist for saying teachers should have to learn te reo. Personally I think emotive terms such as racist should generally be reserved for those who clearly are – such as the National Front.

Ansell said Boscawen had interfered with the creative direction of the adverts because “John wants to be popular” and the polarising line was likely to attract the label “racist”.

“When push comes to shove I can’t do my job the way I want to do it. If you’ve got a creative director then the creative director should direct the creative. Not the fundraiser. Not the deputy. I’ve asked them to work out who decides these things.”

My experience with political parties are that politicians are very loath to surrender creative control of the campaign to staff, as it is the party’s brand and the politician’s brands that get associated with the advertisements – not the staff’s.

Ansell said Act should be polarising debate with 20 per cent of the public having the potential to vote for the party.

“It’s a men’s party. I can’t get them to agree to that but it’s a party for men and women who think like men.

I’d be fascinated to hear why ACT is not a party for women who think like women.

Some bloke has done a video attacking John Ansell for his campaign against the repeal of the Foreshore & Seabed Act. The only problem is he’s used a photo of me, instead of John!

The Government is about to be hit by an advertising campaign modelled on the iwi/Kiwi National Party billboards that stirred racial tensions in the 2005 election.

Now Prime Minister John Key and the National Party are the butt of the campaign being mounted by the Coastal Coalition, a group formed out of concern the Government’s move to change the Foreshore and Seabed Act may give control of beaches to Maori.

Coalition organiser Hugh Barr, secretary of the Outdoor Recreation Association, said the campaign was set to be launched with its first six-metre-wide billboard going up in Wellington today.

The association was going to put up as many billboards as it could afford with money raised from the 8000 people who had signed up to the coalition’s website, he said. Supporters included former ACT deputy leader Muriel Newman and former National Party members, chambers of commerce and boating, fishing and marine charter groups..

The signs were designed by advertising executive John Ansell, who produced the hard-hitting billboards for National Party leader Don Brash in the 2005 election campaign.

Somehow I suspect these billboards will not be condemned by most of the left, as the Iwi/Kiwi ones were.

I’m not sure which billboard designs they finally went with, but John Ansell blogged the designs under consideration, such as:

They will certainly be noticed.

Why should the Left have a mortgage on talking to the heart?

The big problem with the Right is that they don’t understand the emotional power of a few short words and pictures.

Especially pictures.

They think the force of their logic should be enough to persuade people to make sensible decisions. Logic laid out in longwinded articles, speeches and press statements.

Maybe it should be. But clearly it isn’t.

Our long history of socialist governments making shortsighted decisions (both Labour and National) shows that.

I’ve made the above poster to show how a punchy pictorial message can trump the most elegantly-crafted 1000-word article on the same subject.

Imagine the effect of this in your daily paper. Which would grab more readers: the poster or the article?

Not hard to work out.

OK, so what does this suggest about the way the Right goes about its job of converting the convertible (as opposed to preaching to the converted)?

It suggests to me that it needs a retail arm to distill and showcase the excellent work of its many policy wholesalers.

(Think the Business Roundtable, the Centre for Independent Studies and the Centre for Resource Management Studies – all of whom, despite their diligence, reach only a tiny fraction of the population.)

What these think tanks need to get their messages out to the 99% of people beyond the beltway is a teach tank.

A teach tank’s sole job would be to distill the essence of all that world class research into easily-digestible, posterised morsels that can be fed to the general public one bite at a time.

I am a huge fan of this concept. The above groups are all excellent think-tanks, and the like, but what is needed is a “retail” lobby group to complement them, and use their work.

The bites could be ‘nutshell’ newspaper ads, or posters slapped on walls (again, why should the Lefties control the streets?), or emails – whatever works best for the subject of the day.

Each nutshell ad would contain one fascinating factoid. Just one.

As they roll out day after day, naturally-curious people would come to trust the brand for giving them new insights into the workings of the world.

Factoids are powerful.

John mentions that the “right” does not in fact have unlimited resources to throw at good ideas, and he is seeking supporters/funders for the concept.

I’m not cash rich, but have offered my assistance for free on the “factoid” side.

If you think this is an idea worth supporting, contact John. As people have seen in the US, grass roots activism can be very powerful.

And when I say “fly” and “over” I mean it literally. They want to have a chopper fly it over the bridge. Now of course a normal sized flag is hard to see up in the air, so their flag will be 10,000 square feet in size.

However making and flying a flag costs money – $20,000 in fact. But for those who want to change the flag, it is a great promotion and will get great media attention. So if you are willing to contribute towards the cost, email john@johnansell.co.nz.

And if you have a preference, for which fern design gets flown, if enough money is raised (pledges will be returned if not enough is raised), feel free to comment on John’s blog.

UPDATE:

Who knows what this is?Answer over the page.

This awful flag was the Canadian flag before they ditched it for the maple leaf flag. Hopefully we’ll look back one day also, and wonder why it took so long to swap, and why didn’t we do it earlier.

Incidentially, John A says that the maple leaf design at the time was criticised thus:

There is no recognition of history; no indication of the existence of French and English Canada; the partnership of the races; no acknowledgement of history. It is a flag without a past, without history, without honour and without pride.

A flag should not be a history book or an essay. It should be a symbol. A fern flag would one day I am sure become as iconic as the Canadian maple leaf flag has become.

FLAGS WERE in the air last week, and so was nationhood. Maoridom chose its Waitangi Day Flag by a big majority, but discontent with the New Zealand flag, with its conspicuous Union Jack in one corner, has been simmering for years.

So the Sunday Star-Times asked a handful of experts to design a new flag. Today we reveal fascinating new designs by artists Billy Apple and Dick Frizzell, by former ad-man John Ansell, who designed the famous “IWI/KIWI” National Party billboards in 2005, and by Wellington graphic design company Base Two.

Now John has six different versions of a fern flag on his blog site, and you can vote on your preferred designs.

My favourite is the classic black. Second equal would be versions E and F. The split colour looks quite good.

I’ve just voted, so go over to John’s site and have a vote also.

As a teenager in the 80s I read all of Bob’s books and loved them. His “Letters” are a priceless read. I have only met him once – in 2007.

I was asked to come over to his office to join a discussion over the Electoral Finance Bill, and ways he could contribute to a campaign against it. I went over at 3 pm, expecting to be back at my desk by 5 pm. I staggered out of Sir Bob’s office, along with John Ansell, at around 4 am. During that 13 hours we drank many bottles of superb wine, and the only food we had was potato chips. I really could barely walk.

Anyway back to the profile:

“I had two MPs in my office last night but, unusually, we didn’t drink much because they left early. So-and-so and what’s-his-name? The duck?”

“Trevor Mallard?”

“Yes, Mallard. Only one glass each.”

Heh.

Certainly, there has been a vigour about his family life. Last month he told M2 Magazine: “I have vast numbers of children ranging from 4 to 40 years of age. All have been produced by diverse women without my consent, my participation having been fleeting.”

His correspondence with their various schools is one of the best parts of his Letters books.

Then there are some who painfully remember Jones’ own pugilism, including the time television reporter Rod Vaughan, determined to get an answer from Jones about the future of his New Zealand Party, flew by helicopter to Jones’ trout fishing patch at Turangi. Jones moved like lightning out of the undergrowth and punched Vaughan on the nose.

When fined $1000 in court, Jones asked the judge if he paid $2000, could he please do it again?

Never had a country been so united behind one man. I recall even the Governor-General was over-heard saying how much he approved of what Jones did. The video of the assault was wonderful theatre.

But the charmer also loves to shock. A few months ago he invited me to join him for lunch with Wellington lawyer Mai Chen. When Jones was informed by Chen that she doesn’t drink alcohol he claimed to be horrified: “You poor bastard. Tom Scott’s coming along. Deborah’s got no pants on (not true). There’ll be an orgy later (also untrue). I feel sorry for you.”

Heh.

Jones also has a thing about dark glasses, especially when worn on the top of the head. As if on cue, this bete noire popped up near the end of lunch.

As we filed out of the Arbitrageur restaurant Jones spied a woman sporting a flash pair of sunnies atop her blonde mane, and started muttering about people wearing sunglasses on their heads. I recognised the wearer as Wellington blogger “Busted Blonde”, and guessed, correctly, that Jones would be repaid the next day on her Roar Prawn blogsite.

The blog post is here.

But Jones enjoys fomenting mischief and critics should ignore him. He’s been insulting me for nearly 20 years and I’m not particularly thick-skinned. When he decided I should meet Colin Carruthers, I was instructed to not “dress like a whore, none of that paint smeared on your face, just lipgloss”.

When the progressing relationship pleased him, this unlikely Dorothy Dix offered more advice: “Don’t let him take you away to an island resort. At your age, you can’t be seen prancing around in a bikini. Get him to take you skiing so your body’s well covered.”

So how, my feminist friends ask, can you remain close to someone so obviously sexist? The Listener’s Jane Clifton, who has been his good mate since she was a “baby journalist”, gets the same queries and laughs them off.

“Way back before I even knew him well, someone wrote something spiteful and gutless about me and Bob wrote me this letter which was not just of comfort but which said, ‘the problem as I see it is that **** is a conspicuously hideous beast and you are not’. It was bloody useful and restorative to be told that. Bob saw an injustice, and was extraordinarily nice about it.

I love the story of how he paid his receptionist to change her name by deed poll.

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.

Today we officially welcome John Ansell to the blogosphere.

John makes some good comments on the various campaign billboards to date.

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.

An in depth interview with Sir Roger Douglas by Salient. Extracts:

Are you not concerned at all about any bad blood in the house?

(Laughs) What kind of bad blood is there?

Tensions between various other politicians…

Like who?

Well for starters Helen Clark and Michael Cullen…

Oh look, im not worried about Helen Clark or Michael Cullen, we are not going to agree anyway. How can I agree with them anyway! They are tearing the country apart! They have reduced our labour productivity to a third of what it was, multifaceted productivity is down to one seven of where it was. I’m not going to worry about what Michael Cullen or Clark think. They think as highly of me as I think of them.

And productivity growth is the long term key to closing the gap with Australia.

What is the single biggest issue facing New Zealand at the moment and how would you remedy it?

The level of government expenditure. This government has increased government expenditure over and above inflation. That’s about 17 billion a year. But in more practical terms, that’s $200 a week per family in New Zealand. The lives of families in new Zealand would be dramatically changed if the government had not taken that money from them and flushed it down the toilet because that’s essentially what they did. They wasted it.

There’s a whole lot of families out there that I used to represent, in Otara, who would feel a lot better about their lives today if they could keep that $200. This is supposed to be a government that cares about those kinds of people. They don’t care. They are chardonnay socialists. And in some ways I have nothing but contempt for them. Because they have usurped the people they claim to represent. They don’t even mix with those people. I’d mix with those people a lot more than they would.

That’s fighting words!

Why has John Ansell left the ACT team?

Well, I still talk to John. I think John probably from his point of view found there were frustrations, he wanted to control from woe to go. The problem in politics is you’ve always got that fine balance about aiming for perfection and when possibly 95% will do, and sometimes 95% is enough, you have a trade off there between speed to market and perfection. …

Id see something and say its great, but in John’s eyes it could be perfected by doing this or that. I’m sorry to lose him, hes a genius. And im hoping – I spoke to him yesterday – that he can do things for us. But, the other factor, and I don’t know if John really recognised, is the issue of the best use of his time. When you have a creative genius – which he is, you want him to work on projects that matter. Little projects aren’t as critical. Your better to keep him away from them really.

High praise for John.

So the consequence of that, apart from the years of 1992 – 2000 our productivity has been relative to other countries abysmal. We had higher productivity than Australia in 1992 – 2000 largely due to the changes Ruth and I made. During those years we were catching up. But apart from that we are going backwards. One of the other significant reasons is that you’ve had a public who have rewarded politicians who have lied to them. And the students are a typical group. They might be bribed again. I dunno. I hope not. I hope they’ve learnt their lesson. And the public have responded to politicians who’ve scratched every itch. So Winston Peters goes up in the polls when he becomes a racist. And I hate that.

Not the only one!

It will be a blow to ACT as John is very highly regarded for his creative nous.

Ironically sort of good news for me, as John has done work for the anti-EFA campaign and we still have a wee bit of money left over which we need to spend before the election!

Yes that is Rodney, with his 15 year old co-star in school pantomime. This sets a new standard for what local MPs will do for their constituents

ACT have released a 20 point plan on an A4 pledge card. I have to say I think it is very smart work, and a good combination of the skills of Roger Douglas and John Ansell, plus of course Rodney. Sir Roger loves having 10 and 20 point plans for everything, while John’s use of plain language shines through. Each proposal lists other countries where the policy is working well (showing it is practical), spells out the benefits in clear language and estimates what a difference it will make to economic growth and the average weekly pay for a NZer.

I enjoyed that under their privatisation line, the countries they list as successfully implementing that policy are “Practically all except Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea”.

Their full list of proposed policies are:

1. Government waste. Cut state spending to Australian levels.
2. Tax. Cut and flatten rates.
3. Local government. Limit to core activities.
4. Public service: Close departments we don’t need, Reduce bureaucracy, Return bureaucracy to non-political role, Limit Cabinet to 12 ministers, Limit Parliament to 100 MPs.
5. Red tape. Get rid of all nutty regulations, Appoint Minister of Regulatory Reform, Pass Regulatory Responsibility Act to set checklist for good lawmaking.
6. Resource management. Reform the Resource Management Act.
7. Education. Create competitive market.
8. Healthcare. Create competitive market.
9. Accident compensation. Create competitive market — as used to work well here.
10. Welfare. Create competitive markets for sickness, invalid, and unemployment insurance.
11. Immigration. Welcome more good quality immigrants.
12. Labour. Allow freedom of contract to make it easier to trial new workers and replace poor performers.
13. Privatisation. Sell state businesses where private fi rms can serve customers better.
14. Infrastructure. Build better networks (e.g. roads, water, electricty). Replace user charges with tolls that reward off-peak use.
15. Tariffs. Cut remaining tariffs on imports. Strengthen bonds with the US.
16. Housing. Free up more land for homes.
17. Law and order: Bring back private prisons _ now best practice overseas, Let private firms free up cops for ‘zero tolerance’ policing, Speed up courts (e.g. night courts) to reduce unfair delays.
18. Climate change. Adopt saner policies. Low carbon tax better than carbon trading.
19. Constitutional framework. Strengthen. Adopt Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Pass Regulatory Responsibility Act _ to set checklist for good lawmaking. Return to Privy Council. Hold referendum on MMP voting system.
20. Families at risk. Appoint mentors to teach parenting and life skills.

Again congrats to ACT for putting up very clear policies, in an well articulated manner. Of course I do not agree with all of them, but there are certainly some that have wide support from the centre right.

Claire Trevett in the Herald talks to John Ansell:

He said right-wing parties internationally had difficulty portraying that they had “heart” – and his main job was to put heart into right-wing policies.

The strategy showed in a presentation he made to Act’s conference at the weekend, when he showed an ad depicting “the priorities of Labour.”

It said Labour could afford $25 million to save an endangered snail, but could not afford the same amount to fund Herceptin for women with breast cancer.

“We’ve got a default socialist country, but we are killing people with kindness.

“People think if you throw money at people, you’re caring for them. It’s not only incorrect, it’s immoral … ‘

I think people will be hearing more on the $25 million on snails instead of Herceptin.

Tracy Watkins says Sir Roger is being lined up for Cabinet. I think people should wait to see his list ranking before they get excited.

And finally Blair Mulholland gets so excited he wants to be ACT’s candidate in Mt Albert.

John Key’s move to the centre has opened up ripe territory for ACT. They should be able to at least get a third MP if they position themselves smartly.

They’ve also recruited the very talented John Ansell to help with their campaign. John will now have the distinction of having worked on a Labour campaign (1993), National (2005) and ACT (2008).

UPDATE: A very good article was in Wednesday’s Herald on ACT, by Geoffrey Miller who wrote his honours dissertation on them.