National’s attacks on Chlöe Swarbrick have gone too far – Heather du Plessis-Allan

“Three years of this?” captioned over a photo of Swarbrick on the brink of tears.

An unflattering photo inserted into a fake LinkedIn job advertising her as open to work as New Zealand’s Finance Minister.

A mock Halloween movie trailer that name checks her before any other members of the Opposition, before she emerges from the floorboards to rob a till.

The attacks seem to have ramped up in the past 10 days. In one day this week, seven posts warned against her. Two out of every five press releases mentioned her.

She says she counted 13 Instagram posts about her in one week, while the party’s own finance spokeswoman Nicola Willis only featured twice.

National’s instinct to warn voters against Swarbrick’s fiscal policies is right. Those policies sit somewhere on the spectrum of radical to cooked.

And it is probably driven by polling that suggests even Labour Party voters are wary to some degree of the leaders of their potential coalition partners in a way that is not mirrored across the aisle.

But the Nats have very much crossed the line from playing the ball into a barrage of targeted attacks that no one involved in that campaign should feel proud of.

There is no “Chlöe has bad policies”. It is just straight “Chlöe is bad”. The difference is massive.

Of course, personal attacks are nothing new in politics. The Council of Trade Unions took out a full-page ad in the Herald in 2023 attacking Christopher Luxon for being out of touch.

Former Labour Party president Mike Williams famously flew to Australia to try to dig up dirt on then National leader Sir John Key.

Personal attacks have been a feature of this campaign. Nicola Willis called individual opposition leaders “liars”. A Taxpayers’ Union ad featured an AI version of Chris Hipkins stealing cash from households. Labour ran a fumbled “Cost of Luxon” campaign featuring an unflattering shot of the man.

But nothing has been as sustained and outright nasty as what Swarbrick is being subjected to on the National Party’s Instagram account.

There must be some sense within National that the attacks are working and freaking out undecided voters.

But what National may not be able to measure as clearly is the impact this is having on perceptions of itself.

It looks juvenile and desperate from a party that has pitched itself as the sensible adults in the coalition.

It is the opposite of statesmanlike.

That space is now occupied by the Act Party leader David Seymour, who has clearly quite deliberately toned down the controversial rhetoric and quietly lifted his party from around 7% in the polls to 10% or above.

Following this campaign, National will have to reflect on whether this negative, mean-girl strategy has worked for it. In fact, whether the entire campaign has worked for it. From saying “nine new taxes” on repeat to warning about Swarbrick as Finance Minister on repeat, the campaign has had all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

And for what? Apart from a brief blip into the threes, the Nats remain in the 20s.

That suggests that while fear is a powerful motivator in campaigns, it doesn’t give the voter a reason to necessarily choose the party doing the fear mongering.

Of course, there are still six days left, and perhaps laying into Chlöe Swarbrick will bear fruit. But it’ll be the kind of fruit that leaves a sour taste.

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