Boring campaigns in times of a pandemic (Patreon)

Everyone agrees, 2020 is a shitter. It's been madness, Australian wildfire, murder hornets, pandemic, United States wildfire, I'm sure something exciting happened on Shortland Street, feeling the Bern 2.0, Bernie losing again, malarkey.

And then along came New Zealand's election campaign and boy it's weirdly dull right?

Maybe it'll get fun when  the debates start. But today National released an ad and crikey, it's ... an ad. 

You can go and be whelmed right here.

One National MP messaged me when it came out: "That TV ad is a disaster". So morale is good.

It seems like National has just given up. And maybe that's because they've become all but irrelevant. In fact everyone seems a bit irrelevant at the moment with the only real tension whether the Greens get back over 5% or not.

Over the week there was a UMR Corporate Poll that was reported on that had them on 3.2% which caused all manner of panic and sadness internally at the Greens, but then I'm told that they were shown other internal Labour polling numbers that had them just up over five and people felt a bit better.

Still a lot of work to do.

Then Labour came out with their tax policy. I say "tax policy", but even Labour knew it was a nothingburger. They called it a "revenue policy". And boy was it ... a policy. A new top tax rate at $180,000! Crikey! 

I'm not a fan of continually putting the tax burden on salaried folk. For a party that says it's for the workers, Labour sure does like saddling them with tax, instead of assets like land, or property, or wealth, or, oh I dunno, capital gains.

One of my friends who would be described as pretty right wing said he's considering voting for Labour as they're the perfect conservative party that looks friendly to the left, so we get nothing scary.

It's very much a "do nothing" strategy, designed not to scare any voters away in the hopes that they can get over 50% and do ... what? We on the left complained that National seemed hell bent on power for power's sake, and yet has there been anything from Labour to counter the idea that that's what they're doing?

I asked a question on twitter of people who consider themselves left wing, why they were voting for Labour. A lot of the answers were because people desperately didn't want National to get in which suggests we haven't quite reached a mature MMP state yet. Others liked the incrementalism, others did it for historic reasons. Some believed Labour were a left party.

People's reasons for voting for the party they do are complex. You can't hit someone with a barrage of facts and figures to win them over (I'm looking at you TOP voters), it's all about making them feel something. And Jacinda Ardern is A fucking Plus at inspiring us  and making us feel good. 

When I worked in the Greens I wanted to turn us into the Party of Hope, because I believe that hope is the biggest driver of behaviour. They weren't keen on my idea then, probably why I didn't last too long. But I still think it's the way to go. We should hope that every New Zealander has enough money to live a life worth living. That every child has shoes on their feet and a full belly and a house with love, warmth and books in it. We should hope to do something fulfilling with our lives and have the opportunity to do so. We should hope for dignity.

New Zealand is a wonderful country, but it's more wonderful for some people than it is for others. We should hope to make it a wonderful country for anyone who calls New Zealand home. 

We should hope that our politicians have the courage to do the right thing, and do it for the many and not the few. We should hope for better.