COMMENT:
Chances are that no one would have noticed the latest online ad from the National Party over Kiwibuild if it wasn't for the characters it portrayed.
Today it's the talk of the town, mainly because these days everyone's so politically sensitive, careful about what they say for fear of causing offence and National knows it. Which is why the ad's had the impact it has.
A young blonde woman holds a bottle of beer, talking at a BBQ to a young bloke with a bad beard.
She nods blankly as he tells her that's 33 houses a day for the next 10 years.
Being a bloke of infinite knowledge, he smirks, and shaking his head says nope before she asks now many have they built so far.
He tells her, in total 33 in the first 400-plus days of the Labour Government, and the camera cuts back to her - wide-mouthed, trying to process the arithmetic before having a sip of her beer.
Labour promised to build 10,000 houses in the first year of its flagship housing programme. Like many of its policies, KiwiBuild has failed to deliver. If there’s one thing we’ve learned with this Government, it’s don’t believe the hype. pic.twitter.com/C7DzirO5bz
— NZ National Party (@NZNationalParty) February 12, 2019
The fat man, cooking at the nearby BBQ, declares Labour's all sizzle and no sausage.
It's brilliant and it's had the desired effect: getting everyone fired up and the public talking.
It's a hark back to the sexist 70s, she said.
Pure as the driven snow, Paula Bennett was at a loss when she was asked whether blonde women had to have Government policy explained to them by a man.
No more than fat brown ones, or any male that she might know, it's got nothing to do with gender or hair colour, she insisted.
Doesn't say much for the company she mixes in and perhaps she should have attack advertising explained to her.
Many in Parliament wouldn't remember National's most infamous ad ever, the dancing Cossacks, which would never screen today.
It talked about Labour's compulsory superannuation scheme and if you did the Muldoon maths at the time, you'd be impressed.
It told us the scheme would, in eight years, be able to buy all the shares in listed companies, a short time after that there'd be enough to buy all the farms and it'd be only a matter of time before the Government could end up owning everything, and you know what that's called, the announcer posed before the Cossacks began dancing.
The message was scary enough for Labour to be swept out of office and for Muldoon to come in and scrap the scheme, which if left in place would have made this country one of the wealthiest in the world.
Perhaps Muldoon was right, the public wouldn't understand a deficit if it fell over one in the street.
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