OPINION: Michael Swanson
After regularly producing three substack posts every week since about April this year. This week was different…I reached a point in the election campaign where I was just over it, and I figured out why. This campaign has been negative at its core.
I don’t mean its been constantly negative, but the guts of it has just had something rotten in it. Most parties dabble in negativity – politics inherently has a negative element to it – but this campaign has just had a series of bits and pieces to it that have brought negativity to the centre of things. In particular, National’s strategy has relied on the negativity when the positive was struggling for air.
Negative National
While most of the parties have had varying shades of negativity during this campaign, none of the parties have lapsed into that mindset more than National, even though part of their campaign slogan is a positive framing. But from the outset, the framing of “fixing the basics” implies that in the three years National have been at the centre of the government, they haven’t fixed the basics already.
It all started under the leadership of campaign chair, strategy supremo extraordinaire, Simeon Brown. Brown took over the role in April after Chris Bishop was “reshuffled” away from the role after all the leadership kerfuffle that had happened in the preceding months. Brown’s big shift was to focus the campaign in a much more negative framing that focused on the legacy of the previous Labour government, particularly the handling of covid-19 and the flow on issues.
Brown’s strategy didn’t stop there. The campaign kick-off in July didn’t just have a crack at Labour, but also went after both coalition partners, framing Winston Peters and David Seymour as arguing children, and calling NZ First irredeemably untrustworthy. While National backed off it’s partners in due course,
The campaign outright has seen a continuation of much of this strategy. National have tried the “judge us on our record” angle, with ad’s and lines focused around cracking down on inflation and lifting economic growth, but they haven’t really hit the spot. So, the focus quickly turned a much more negative framing – “no new taxes” in and of itself is an inherently negative tone to take, it limits choices for their own policy platform, and frames any suggestion of new or different taxes as a bad idea to begin with. This then flowed into their attacks, primarily on Labour, around “9 new taxes” that they know aren’t realistically going to happen anyway.
The negativity also got personal very quickly – National made a specific decision to identify leaders and candidates to zero in on them quickly. Chloe Swarbrick has worn the brunt most of all with targeted marketing and social media attacking her being a potential option as Finance Minister. Other leaders such as Rawiri Waititi and Qiulae Wong have also been prominently featured in campaign billboards framing them as potential Ministers, and bad options at that.
The entire campaign has struggled to cut through with anything to do with their record, so the “don’t risk the other guys” line has been the default. This is not the normal way for National to behave at the end of a first term in government. Is it the people running things? Quite probably. Christopher Luxon is actually a very energetic and vibrant guy off camera, but when he’s on camera and sticking to lines, its just not working. Simeon Brown also has also shown himself to be one dimensional – he seems to believe all out attack is the only way to operate, despite it having no impact on polling. The entire National campaign has felt disjointed, negative, and very dated. Fear of the other guys is not a campaign strategy, but it’s what National decided was most effective for them.
Third-Party Negativity
I might come back to this at a later date, but the actions of several third-party groups has had a crazy impact on the nature and tone of the election, and I’m not even talking about the Mowbray excursion into match-fixing. I’m talking about billboards in cities, full page ads in newspapers, and TV ads on mainstream media. We’ve seen involvement on varying scales before from third-party organisations, but they’ve gone feral this time.
The usual suspects have been front and centre. The Sensible Sentencing Trust, the Taxpayers Union, and the gang behind Reality Check Radio, have all piled into the campaign with attack after attack on parties, candidates and leaders they deem detrimental to the things they believe in.
It all feels incredibly American. The ability to openly attack parties with little-to-no grounding in reality is something we all probably hoped would never become so prevalent, but here we are – again. I say again because this isn’t necessarily knew, although this time feels more aggressive, thanks largely to be ing powered by terrible AI generated designs.
The actions of these groups needs greater attention. The rules right now seem ok on the face of things, but the ability for groups to launch ad campaigns that feature the billboards above. There will need to be a massive review of what these groups can and can’t do, and of course how much they can spend on it. But I’m not optimistic about real change happening quickly, especially if the right-bloc returns to government. I’ll revisit this post election and do a deeper dive into the actions of these groups, and potential solutions
An Exhausting Campaign
The negativity, underhanded tactics, outright gaming of the system, and actions by certain groups is just plain tiring, pathetic, and draining. Honestly, I’m buggered by this campaign, and I can’t be the only one. This campaign has felt completely uninspiring, and a campaign built around “don’t trust the other guys”.
While I’ve focused on National, much of this campaign has centred around why others shouldn’t be trusted, rather why you should trust them. Again, not all parties have been like this, but the dominating tones have been negative, and I put the responsibility for that on National and several adjacent groups. This may be harsh, but the internal decisions by National and it’s campaign advisers lowered the tone, and others fed off it.
I can’t wait for the whole thing to be done.
