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The Debate – Judith comes out swinging and crushes Jacinda
We finally saw the first leaders’ debate on Tuesday night and boy was it a real doozy.
It was very telling in many ways, but the overriding impression, for me, was that it was a battle of slogans against substance.
Jacinda Ardern came to the battle ill-prepared and schooled up with a kitbag of slogans and a strategy of presenting a small target.
She looked grumpy and ill at ease, it was almost like she’d been told her partner had been caught playing away, such was her demeanour.
That aside, it is, of course, easy to present a small target when your list of achievements in government can be written on the back of a postage stamp…that’s if you could, in fact, find such a thing.
Postage stamps being a thing of the past like Ardern thinks farming is.
The sloganeering from the Prime Minister failed.
It failed because of the sloppy diction of the Prime Minister, who simply finds herself unable to enunciate ‘t’ sounds.
That was why everyone was confused when she started blathering on about ‘Double Judy’.
‘Double Judy’? People screamed at their television screens. ‘What the hell does that even mean?’
She was actually saying “Double Duty” and, bizarrely, the only examples she used to elucidate the idea is that when Dunedin Hospital is built sometime in the future, they will use some new apprentices that will have been trained locally and apparently 2000 jobs are created making school lunches for lazy parent’s kids.
Yes, she really said that. It’s bull dung of course, as is any promise that ‘shovel ready’ projects are going to create hundreds, if not thousands of jobs.
They don’t. Infrastructure contracts are awarded to the same big multi-national companies that always win the tenders. No new jobs are created.
It’s a lie, a big lie, told by politicians.
But if you are going to choose a slogan it pays not to pick one that is a brand of kitty litter that supposedly kills the odours of urine and feces.
Which is ironic as Ardern claiming to want to “keep moving” is really taking the piss.
And the problem with slogans is that they are only as deep as the material used to create bumper stickers.
Ardern loves slogans.
It is a charge I have levelled at her for years, ever since I met her in person, in Morrinsville, in 2008. All she has is slogans and sloganeering.
When it comes to delivery, she and her government have been found wanting.
None of the big slogan items from the last election have ever come close to being delivered.
They missed their target for Kiwibuild by failing to build 15,400 houses out of a target of 16,000.
They missed their target for building light rail to Mt Roskill, with not even a single millimetre of track being laid out of 12km.
They missed their child poverty targets and in actual fact have made them worse.
They missed their target on the electric vehicle uptake in the government fleet by so far that it looks like they put their shots on neighbouring targets.
No major policy platform or slogan from the last election has been delivered and so presenting a small target is easy, but also a massive danger for Jacinda Ardern.
Now they’ve introduced a new slogan, which is diminished firstly by the fact that no one even knows what it means and, secondly, because the Prime Minister can’t even pronounce it.
On the other side of the debate was a no nonsense, practical Judith Collins who spoke plainly and directly.
She at least knew which camera to speak to, which again showed her experience over Ardern’s ineptness.
It took John Campbell in the final speech of the night to actually direct Ardern to the correct camera.
Collins didn’t pull her punches and even landed her soft jabs flush on the unguarded face of Jacinda Ardern.
Every time Judith spoke it hurt Ardern.
She made Ardern look like the very average politician she is.
That’s why she was seen begging and simpering to speak.
It was weak and pathetic.
Judith should have retorted to the repeated “If I may” requests with “No you may not”.
Ardern is used to enjoying protection.
The reason Ardern goes on about bringing kindness and fairness into politics is because she can’t handle the rough and tumble.
She knows she will crack, those around her know she will crack, so no one is allowed to be mean.
That’s why Trevor Mallard runs interference in parliament.
That’s why various men jump on people who ruffle the immature feathers of a woman who can’t handle the hard stuff or more importantly the truth. The men around her protect her. She is their bread and butter.
The debate finally exposed the truth about Jacinda Ardern and her abilities.
She was found wanting and she knows it
Ardern now has a big problem. She can do more of the same and get slaughtered, or go toe to toe with Collins, destroy her kindness schtick, AND still get slaughtered.
She knows it, Judith Collins knows it and now the general public know it.
Playing the small target will fail, as it lets Collins hammer her on the extensive failings of her government.
This will all now prey on Ardern’s mindset, and her natural disposition towards fretting and panic will start to take over.
That debate showed Ardern she’s got a fight on her hands with an opponent who can not only box, but is adept at grappling and MMA and is handy with a knife as well.
You could see it in the body language during the show. Ardern knew she was broken from the very first round. It hurt, and sadly she failed to lift her game.
The election is now very much game on.
The last comment on the details of the debate I will make is on the insistence from Ardern that she has a plan.
There is scant evidence that this is so.
Simply saying you have a plan does not mean you actually have a plan. Ardern fails to plan, and in doing that she is planning to fail.
If Judith Collins really wants to pay out the hurt on Jacinda Ardern she simply has to demand to know what the plan is that Ardern Ardern says she has.
So far she’s got nothing but slogans and that ain’t a plan.
Were any votes changed by the debate?
When I look at debates I always ask myself if any votes were changed.
I wasn’t sure any had by this debate, but the more I read and watched with commentary around the debate the more I believe votes have actually changed.
There are persistent rumours that both UMR and Curia, the pollsters for the Labour and National parties respectively, have picked up a substantial down turn for Labour the day after the debate.
The amounts vary, but have been said to be up to a 9 point drop in Labour’s score. That’s huge, and after just one debate.
Labour is probably now in the danger zone, sitting in the low 40s, whereas National is probably now in the mid to high thirties.
As we saw in the Colmar Brunton poll the undecideds are large, between 14 and 20 percent.
What that means is that Judith Collins has tarnished and in many respects smashed Jacinda Ardern’s halo.
In fact, she used the halo to choke out Jacinda in several segments of the debate.
Labour’s support has come off the boil and whilst voters may not be now thinking of voting Labour they haven’t yet committed to supporting a party.
On the other side of the equation some soft National voters who were turned off by Simon Bridges, and less than impressed by the wet take over of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye hadn’t yet see any tangible change from the Collins leadership.
They were looking and thinking that New Conservatives and Act might be better options.
The debate changed that.
Here was the Crusher Collins they’d been hankering for.
The gloves were off and the Labour leader was spitting her teeth out on the canvas.
The biff was back in politics and it was glorious.
So, I think that National’s vote has been shored up and they are now in striking range with four weeks to go.
Game on as they say.
Losers Rationalisation
Which is why you are seeing what my good friend Brian Edwards described as losers rationalisation from the Media party, who saw their saint’s balloon popped, and Ardern sycophants.
Here’s what he said on Facebook.
“So here’s what this outpouring of hysteria comes down to: someone involved in the TVNZ production of the first TV leaders debate between Judith Collins and Jacinda Ardern deliberately manipulated the camera positioning and the shot selection to make Collins look good and Ardern look bad.
However, this was done in such an amateurish way that it was patently obvious to every left-wing viewer in the country and probably to every fair-minded viewer on the right as well.
To pull this off successfully the programme producer, its director, its host and every member of the production crew would have had to be on board. This is a secret that could not possibly be kept.”
He goes further adding:
“What’s more, to succeed it would require a viewing audience largely consisting of mental defectives: tens of thousands of Kiwis, most of them strong supporters of one or other of the combatants in the debate, but all totally unaware of the skulduggery going on right in front of their eyes.”
He finishes with:
“Give me a break! You’re much too smart to swallow this garbage.”
And Brian Edwards is spot on.
The simple plain fact, when you strip away all the flannel and all the bluster and all the puerile claims that politics shouldn’t be a blood sport, is that Jacinda barked like a dog in that debate.
She was soundly spanked and we know she knows that from her body language and the fact that she has proved our meme by becoming the incredible sulk.
Having only two engagements on the West Coast, the birthplace of the Labour party, the touch stone centre of the labour movement, says it all really.
And then sitting in your crown limo while waiting for the plane, sulking, instead of speaking to those waiting at the airport just sheets it home.
Jacinda Ardern was beaten and worse, now she is afraid.
Brian Edwards commenters have been echoing failed British MP Bryan Gould’s witterings about media bias.
Gould lacks the same self-awareness that saw him soundly defeated when standing for the leadership of Britain’s Labour party.
Brian Edwards gives those excuses short shrift also:
“I really can’t believe you could have written this.
What we’re seeing in this post is what you might call loser’s rationalisation. ‘Collins won the night’. Someone must have been cheating.’ Or ‘This is an unfair and discriminatory format’.
What should be happening is solid diagnosis by the Left on what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the next debate.
Whining and whimpering won’t cut it. It’s pathetic and counterproductive.
As media advisors to Helen Clark for 13 years, Judy Callingham and I know a bit about what works and what doesn’t work in election debates.
Clearly what Labour is doing now isn’t working.
Stop whining and concentrate on what’s needed to get Ardern back in the race. At the moment it seems that none of Jacinda’s advisors have a clue about what that is.”
My old maths teacher, Tony ‘Buster’ Keegan added in the comments on Brian’s Facebook post:
“How on earth can someone who looked flustered, unkempt and awkward – and who was vague, gushing and waffley hold a position which should be reserved for a person with reassuring self confidence, clarity of expression and precision in understanding get to be a PM in NZ?”
And that my friends is as honest an assessment of the debate that you will ever see.
Labour’s attack on free speech set to ramp up
Free speech is again under threat from the left.
Both Labour and the Greens are milking the tragedy in Christchurch to try to shut down speech and debate they don’t like.
Jacinda Ardern has promised to introduce a tough new hate speech law making ‘offensive’ and ‘insulting’ language unlawful.
She’s particularly mentioned ‘offensive’ and ‘insulting’ language towards religion and religious beliefs.
What is ironic is that it is Labour who rightly repealed laws that penalised people for ‘blasphemy’.
But now they are set to bring in an even more harmful regime.
The answer to offensive’ and ‘insulting’ language is not laws banning it, it is MORE speech that challenges those views.
New Zealand is heading down the same slippery slope as the UK where people are visited by police for sending tweets.
While threatening or inciting violence should be an offence, and they are, you should never be punished simply for expressing an opinion.
It’s bad enough that people like Nicky Hager use their bully pulpits to attempt to silence people, but by now trying to use the law is just beyond the pale.
New Zealand was founded on rights such as the ability to speak freely.
We must fight this, hard.
Just what the economy needs, more bans
Labour announced yesterday that one of the important areas they want to focus on is banning stickers on apples.
Yep, you heard right.
Not just apple stickers but also plastic cutlery and single-use coffee cups would be banned if Labour wins the election.
I’m not sure about you, but I rather think that there are few voters, if any, clamouring for apple stickers to be banned.
Our economy has been trashed for 20 years by the inept and pointless lock downs imposed on us by student politicians and Labour’s solution for getting us out of this mess is to ban plastic cutlery, apple stickers and throwaway coffee cups.
Is that all they’ve got?
I know they are aiming for a small target this election but this is just unbelievable.
Summary
The election campaign is now very much alive.
It all came from the first televised leaders debate.
If you could make a 15 second satirical video to describe the debate it would show Judith Collins striding out onto the stage where a timid and beaten looking Jacinda Ardern is standing there.
Collins would then slap John Campbell a couple of times and turn around and head butt Ardern flush on her nose.
Judith has nothing to lose and everything to gain in this election.
National have been written off as the foolish middle praised St Jacinda of Covid.
She grasped the opportunity of the debate to grasp control of campaign and to give Jacinda Ardern a bloody nose.
But she did more than that. She comprehensively walloped her. She turned a debate into a full no holds barred MMA bare knuckle fight and kneed Jacinda repeatedly in the face from the grapple on the canvas.
Ardern knows she was in a fight. When she claimed that politics shouldn’t be a blood sport she did so through metaphorically black eyes, and was wiping away the blood from her battered body.
We now have an election campaign and the result is now going to be a hell of a lot closer than it was just one week ago.
The indications are that the fight has gone from Ardern.
Worse still, she appears to be actually afraid.
It was one thing to “beat” Bill English, it is quite another thing to best Judith Collins.
Jacinda Ardern’s election slogan is “Let’s Keep Moving.
Judith Collin’s should be “There IS a better way”.
I’m Cam Slater and this was Insight: Politics.
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