Treating the voters like children

• Steve Pierson
• 16 years ago
• Categories: john key, national, slippery, tax
• Tags: brand key

Keith Holyoake used to say “tell the people, trust the people”; be honest about the benefits, trade-offs, and costs of policies and trust the people to judge you in an adult manner. Central to Brand Key, however, is playing to voters’ baser desires, especially greed, and fomenting juvenile beliefs, including that it is possible to have ones cake and eat it. For instance, National would have you believe:

• The Government just takes tax and keeps it in a pile somewhere (which Michael Cullen swims in every morning, a la Scrooge McDuck)
• Public servants don’t do any work
• We can have massive tax cuts without any cost in borrowing or spending cuts
• We can improve health and education without spending any money
• We can boost money supply through big tax cuts and borrowing without boosting inflation
• We can reduce carbon emissions without anyone paying for emitting carbon
• We can reduce emigration without raising wages, only offering tax cuts
• We can improve productivity without spending more money on R&D and infrastructure

A responsible party has to argue for balancing priorities; for making the necessary sacrifices  (eg tax) to gain good outcomes (public services). It’s not sexy but it’s reality. It asks people to consider government as adults; National wants them to behave like children and believe in magic.

They think they can get away with it because, as Key claims, ‘the public can’t grasp … very complex things’.  I have greater faith in people. They will see through the trick.

[a useful side-effect for National of this strategy is that it lowers the sophisication of political debate to the point where media compare parties, like they are pepsi and coke, and only ask which is on special this week]