OPINION

Labour and their lickspittles like the CTU are committed to running a deeply negative campaign this election. They have to because they’ve got nothing positive to say, nor any material successes to point to.

But National is whining like a whore who’s never been paid. That needs to stop: just get on with the campaign, and focus on solutions instead of whinging.

Chris Bishop claims Labour is making 2023 the most negative election campaign in history, Chris Hipkins refutes this and says National is ‘thin skinned’

Bishop, who is his party’s campaign manager, has come out swinging against the Council of Trade Unions for its attack ads against National Party leader Christopher Luxon. The union has no formal link with the Labour Party but the two are closely associated. 

Bishop said the ads, which popped up on billboards around the country and on the front page of the New Zealand Herald, were “higly personal”. You can see a few examples of them at the bottom of this box. 

“It’s become very clear that, thanks to the Labour Party, this has gone on to become the most negative election campaign in New Zealand history.”

“People can see for themselves what the claims that they are making about Christopher Luxon. So we are not going to be making personal jibes and attacks on Chris Hipkins and other senior members of the Labour Party in our attack ads,” he said. “We’ve already announced I think 37 new policies to take New Zealand forward. We are not going to engage in personal attacks like Chris Hipkins and his mates in the union movement.”

The advert, which was on the front of the New Zealand Herald today, had an image of Luxon and read “Out of touch. Too much risk.”

Bishop also said the CTU had a number of billboard averts attacking National around the country. 

Stuff

Chris Bishop needs to pull on his big boy shorts and just ignore the negative campaigning. It won’t work, and talking about it just highlights it.

He’d be far better off plotting an utu bill that would decimate Labour Party membership by making affiliate memberships, like the CTU has, illegal, and allowing memberships of political parties to be available to natural persons only. And, to really turn the screws, make all expenditure by affiliates attributable to the party that benefits: in this case, Labour.

But what this really shows is that Labour has no campaign war chest; they are relying on the deep pockets of the unions yet again. Time to defund them.

Negative campaigning is perfectly fine, I love it, but it isn’t worth whining about: it almost never succeeds.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...