Better is ... impossible. The nonsense in a suit posing as political slogan – David Cohen
“Better is possible, and better starts now,” Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins declared when unveiling his party’s official slogan in Christchurch. Presumably he was announcing a political programme. Or was it a new loyalty scheme at one of the supermarkets he has promised to sort out? Deep into the campaign now, it remains hard to tell.
Virtually all political slogans and policy catchphrases promise everything and explain bugger all. Naturally, every campaign needs them. It needs to be short enough to fit a hoarding, mean whatever the passing voter wants it to mean and – a knotty one, this – sturdy enough to bear endless repetition. Supporters need to feel they are marching towards history rather than a shabby policy announcement.
Still, this year’s crop is mostly nonsense in a suit even snappier than the one Hipkins has since broken out for the hoardings.
National wants to sound like competent tradespeople working under the gimlet eye of a chief executive determined to fix the rot of a previously botched renovation. Labour has discovered urgency rather late in the piece. The Greens, with possibly unintentional humour, are reaching for an embrace of every voter, taxpayer, tenant, cyclist and anxious labradoodle in the country, while Act is trading on managerial austerity and Te Pāti Māori wants a constitutional reboot. And New Zealand First is selling memory as prophecy.
Oh, and if the Opportunity Party counts – still not a settled fact – courage, with a capital C, is getting a workout.
But what does any of this focus-grouped tosh actually mean? Looking at the parties’ slogans again this week, I found myself wondering more about the small print underneath. Also about the meeting where everyone nodded gravely and pretended the big words on the poster had done the job.
Start with National, whose “Fixing the basics and building the future” may be the most literal slogan in recent political memory, and certainly the one least worried about being mistaken for poetry. It promises economic fundamentals, infrastructure development and tightly managed public services, with not a dancing Cossack in sight: just a clean-shaven project manager turning up at the site with a clipboard and the expression of a man already shirty about the gib.
The only difficulty, of course, is that, after a first year spent blaming the previous crowd and a second cancelling infrastructure projects, “building the future” risks sounding less like a national mission than a promise to eventually shift the orange cones on State Highway 1.
Labour’s “Better starts now” has more zip. But it still sounds like someone at a dinner party declaring, after half a bottle of wine and the sudden arrival of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds on the playlist, that the night is finally rolling. Let’s do this!
I mean, really. After six years in government, Labour cannot possibly campaign as some kind of vestal virgin. So the party has to sell a fresh start without inviting too many questions about why the heck the start button was not pressed, like, nine years ago. Also, without getting too nitpicky, isn’t that the same slogan first used to promote Seiko watches? Talk about timing being everything.
The Greens, by contrast, are going with “For All of Us”, a catchphrase that may still cause voters of a certain age to recall, with a shudder, the 1987 America’s Cup anthem Sailing Away by the godawful celebrity supergroup All Of Us. Taken literally, that earlier proposition required fitting several million Kiwis aboard KZ 7 — possibly a cinch compared with the Green Party welcoming allcomers.
The Greens’ version arrived with a sheep’s cough from Chlöe Swarbrick and a call for an end to “bloodsport politics”. That’s a hell of a welcome mat for a party not always famous for letting everyone through the front door. Property developers in Auckland might want to bring some ID. Just to be safe. So might anyone who has ever thought New Zealand could do with a few more car lanes, or tried discussing the Middle East without wearing a T-shirt. Otherwise, yeah, it’s all a big green tent.
Act’s “Unlocking New Zealand’s potential” policy dispenses with poetry altogether. It sounds like a job performance review delivered by a $400-an-hour consultant who’s just discovered seven ministries, 18 working groups and a disused photocopier that needs to go on Trade Me. In the gathering darkness of Wellington, only one out-of-towner from Epsom has found the light switch – and a magic HR spreadsheet. Yay.
TPM’s ‘Candidate Vote Te Pati’ is ballsy, I’ll give it that. If the libertarians want to switch off several lights in the capital, the Māori Party wants to rewire the place altogether. Annoyingly, for them, even revolutions have to count seats. But is encouraging tactical electorate voting to bust the MMP system really the best way to go about it, with or without the adoption of stylish cowboy hats as a visual motif?
The Opportunity Party, meanwhile, offers a useful footnote: “Expect Better” is also, conveniently enough, bubbling under every other slogan here.
Which leads us, as all roads do, to New Zealand First’s “This is not our first rodeo”. Indeed. First trotted out in 2023, it is still a go-to for Winston Peters. Ever since he first arrived on the local political scene during the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, upbraiding William Hobson as a “woke liberal”, Peters has been bucked, trampled and revived (and re-elected) often enough to regard the horse as a personal acquaintance. At this point, it’s probably the horse with no name that ought to be seeking closure.
Ah well. That’s campaign catchphrases for you. The hoardings come down. The slogans get shoved into storage. Then, sooner or later, even the silliest of them wakes up to find it has become a Cabinet paper. Better is impossible.
David Cohen is a Wellington-based journalist and author.
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