Hello. My name isnât arleeshar. I usually post sporadically over at stoush.net, but am over here for the purposes of the NSW election. My hobbies include television and democracy. I enjoy false dichotomies, and can be described as a do-er rather than a thinker. I also like to watch.
Last night, as I was enjoying The Biggest Loser with my partnerâs family, the Labor Party launched its latest foray into the world of expensive television advertising, putting me right off my dinner. As I watched the ads I couldn’t help imagining faceless apparatchiks clinking champagne glasses in Sussex St, gobbling the mint slices that they denied me when I worked for their internal polling company, and generally making merry as they contemplated Four More Years and performed Loyalty Dances or something.
The sheer volume of advertising alone was breathtaking, but what struck me was that these ads seem to be centred squarely upon the theme of Frustration.
There was the policy framework, centred around a set of issues that need to be addressed â hardly the proud boasts of a Government of twelve yearsâ standing, and very different to, say, the Howard approach. There was the slogan â âMore to Doâ? â overtly indicating a sense of non-completion. There was the elevator music in the background, evoking an irritating sense of journey and the faint whiff of smelly armpits. And there was the very purple colour scheme, echoed on his personal website, which (with all respect and a humble apology) any bogan in the street will winkingly inform you is the colour of sexual frustration.
(There was also a very bold shot of Iemma in his youth sporting long, greasy hair and cutting a cake, obviously in total disregard for hygiene and taste. This made me sad and fearful and lead my partnerâs father, a person I would describe as an opinion-maker within his community, to bellow that this was in fact the worst political advertisement he had ever seen and that we must watch cable instead.)
All in all, it seemed to be an expensive subliminal attempt to align the Government with the public sense of frustration about the state of public transport, health, dentistry, water restrictions, and the lack of any proper Opposition to vote for. Interestingly, Iemma Labor appears to be positioning itself as a de-facto Opposition â a party in opposition to the Problems That We Face, standing in solidarity with pissed off commuters and families, waving the standard of the people from above while wearing boxy suits.
This is a very odd sell indeed, and one that Le Deb has in fact picked up on with his recent Friday Night Rant to the effect that Iemma has been trying to pretend that he wasnât a part of the Carr Government. It is also an interesting counterpoint to Le Debâs efforts, which fruitlessly attempt to convey the poor man as relaxed and comfortable as he rants about Labor and wedges without aplomb. The New Look Iemma telly campaign is, at this stage, entirely self-contained, making no reference to the Liberals – while there is a whole other website devoted to ridiculing Le Deb, the new campaign focus ignores Debnam as irrelevant.
Which, sadly for the state of healthy democracy, he appears to be.
I have just returned to sane Melbourne after a weekend in SIn City and caught those ads last night also – they made me puke. Mien Gawd the ALP is a repository for the political class of no good teachers and public servants who cant do anything except lust for power – the fools who vote for Iemma and his suited minnions deserve what you get, just like we endure in Victoria: innane leadership from a cabla of duds without any principles besides the pursuit of their own enrichment.
Thanks, Arleeshar, and great to have you on board.
It’s a funny thing. I could have sworn that Iemma was a Cabinet minister in the Carr government he is running a million miles from , and which necessitates his making a fresh start, with the job not yet complete.
The ads and the purple Morris website, with not even a hint of mention of the Labor Party (except in tiny print at the bottom, a necessity forced by the electoral laws) are completely and utterly shameless. The chutzpah is breathtaking.
And the electronic shit sheet on Debnam is quite something too.
And yet, and yet, as God-awful as Iemma and his goverment are (Tripodi, Costa, Sartor – there seems to be an Italian theme here), do the people of NSW deserve to have the sepulchural Peter Debnam as their Premier? And especially, do they deserve David Clarke and the far right crazies determining social policy? The opinion polls suggest that the NSW voters are going to hold their noses, vote Labor (either primary or by second pref), then vomit and beg forgiveness from a higher authority. Really, what else can they do?
Actually, there’s a fairly interesting article in the smh today that I hadn’t seen when I wrote this post, on the subject of Iemma’s setting up some kind of purple personality cult in order to abrogate his role in the Carr Government.
Wow. I like the colours. They’re a bit like a tampon ad. They must think they’ve got the bloke vote all sewn up.
Leaving aside the entirely justified comments about the cabal of duds, I don’t thinks the site’s too bad, and at least indicates some growing level of maturity within the ALP about how they might use the web as a campaign tool. Not yet reflected at federal level, I might add.
It’s an interesting contrast to the Peter Debnam ‘blog’ (the one made up of a series of lame press updates and where, you know, you can’t actually have a conversation with the candidate) wherein we read breathlessly about Pete and Deb’s most recent weekend adventures.
Also loved Morris’ bit about “Family and Faith.” Priceless.
Purple the colour of sexual frustration? Really?
“And yet, and yet, as God-awful as Iemma and his goverment are (Tripodi, Costa, Sartor – there seems to be an Italian theme here), do the people of NSW deserve to have the sepulchural Peter Debnam as their Premier?”
“Calabrian choirboys” as Bob Carr called them…..though what exactly is so terrible about Frank Sartor?
But no, the people of NSW don’t deserve to have Debnam as our premier and any thought of him being so should have evaporated immediately as soon as he tried to fit Bob Debus up as a paedophile. It was the filthiest – not to mention most inept – piece of attempted political traducing in years.
If I was the ALP, I’d run Bob Debus’ parliamentary denunciation of Debnam every night between now and March 24th. Debus’ righteous fury matched with Debnam’s white-faced terror as he sits surrounded by front-bench colleagues, silently evocative in their contempt for their leader’s ineptitude and vileness, would be a powerful campaign message.
Frank Sartor was a perfect choice for Minister for Planning. His former role as independent Mayor of Sydney City Council, where he ordered all positions be declared vacant, readvertised and re-salaried, was just the sort of ruthlessness the ALP wanted and got for the Minister who now oversees countless community and environmentally destructive big business developments and a concomitant lack of concern and priority for the provision of desperately needed infrastructure, above all public transport.
When he first ran for the NSW Parliament he asked for a meeting with the Greens candidate for the state seat and thuggishly tried to dissuade her from running against him. Fat chance.
The unpicking of the environmental planning and assessment laws under Sartorâs stewardship has caused an uproar in communities across NSW. Organised opposition has come not only from environmental and community groups but by the planning profession which now gives NSW the worst rating of all states on key criteria. The planning system under the ALP is now hopelessly compromised by money, politics, and far too favourable treatment for developers with close connections to the ALP.
The legislative amendments to planning laws have eradicated the need to consider the environment, heritage, coastal protection, local councils or residents’ wishes. They have been entirely for the benefit of developers, and developers have returned the favour by pouring what Paul Keating recently described as a wall of money into the coffers of the two major political parties. He said: âThe NSW planning minister âwhoever that may be from time to time: they do have a history of not lasting â is the Mayor for Triguboff, and the mayor for the other developers who’ve got projects over a certain value.â?
In the March election Labor will reportedly spend up to $20 million and the lion’s share of that money will have come from developers who have been gifted with more pro-development legislation in the last couple of years than at any time in the state’s history.
The NSW Greens produced âThe Developers Map of Sydneyâ? which identifies the major developments happening across Sydney. It shows the environmental impacts of the developments and those where developers have paid donations to the Labor Party.
http://www.nsw.greens.org.au/materials/reports/Dev Map.pdf
Yes, Mark purple has that honour. This site always made me wonder about how you feeled on the subject.
Oops – feel, not feeled. Sorry.
Purple is well known in pop culture as That Kind Of Colour. Upon reflection I have a feeling this is to do with a subversion of its traditional association feminine power by patriarchal casting of feminists as sexually repressed beings or something, in which case I feel even more saddened by the whole thing.
Or even “felt”, Andrew!
Reading the accounts of the launch today in the papers, obviously the Iemma just appeared out of the blue 18 months ago theme is a big one. How convincing will this be?
The launch sounded thoroughly cheesy. “The ordinary man” and his “friends”…
Ah yes, well I remember the grand days of the much maligned Barrie Unsworth. Where is the vision of those golden years? Redeveloping Central as the ‘Paris End’ of Sydney. Dragging the assembled media to show-off the shiny new Tangarras and then catching the wrong train to Parramatta. And, that’s about it.
Still, Johnny’s got his best people helping Debs and Debbo on the campaign trail, so he be should be a shoo-in.
He needs to keep that ‘blog’ updated though. Apparently he went to Cronulla on February 3rd and we’ve heard nothing since http://www.peterdebnam.com.au/main_content/blog/
Every premier is an ordinary man (or woman). Some are just more ordinary than others.
Looks like my tense structure needs a bit of work. Collapsing it is.
.
“f I was the ALP, I’d run Bob Debus’ parliamentary denunciation of Debnam every night between now and March 24th.”
The ALP probably has more to lose than gain by reminding the public about child sex allegations.