Labour Leader contenders’ ads

Grant Robertson on Labour's future from Grant Robertson on YouTube.

New Zealand has never had such an open contest for leader of one of the two main political parties as it has now with Labour. This explains why National is tyring so hard to trash the contest, the contenders and their proposals. If New Zealanders get a bit of a taste of democracy, they’ll want more, and National isn’t prepared to let them have it.

The video above is the campaign ad for Grant Robertson, one of the three contenders for Leader of the Labour Party and the current Deputy Leader of the party. At the bottom of this post is a campaign video from David Cunliffe, another candidate. The third, Shane Jones, doesn’t seem to have done a video, but Robertson and Cunliffe are considered the frontrunners, anyway.

In both videos, the candidates try and articulate what they see as Labour Party values and talk about how they relate to those values. I think they both do a pretty good job of that. Not surprisingly, they both say some very similar things.

I give the edge to Robertson because he also talks about specific issues, such as jobs and education. Also, Robertson’s ad is more visually interesting, and I particularly liked Robertson’s updating Norman Kirk (near the end of his video), giving Kirk “a modern voice”.

I haven’t been able to attend any of the candidate meetings, which I’d hoped to do. I was busy on Saturday, and my plans were made long before the meetings were announced, and I couldn’t change them. As it happens, the two Auckland meetings were held in spots that weren’t very accessible for me.

Nevertheless, the mainstream newsmedia has helped me see the candidates side-buy-side, and I’ve listened carefully to what they’ve said. I’ve also tried to read what they’ve said.

Voting for Leader is a little more complicated than I thought at first: Instead of voting for the one person I want to lead the Party, I have to rank them in order of preference. I know for sure who I’ll rank third, but I haven’t decided for certain who I’ll rank first and who I’ll rank second.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the show.


David Cunliffe on Labour values and legacy from David Cunliffe on Vimeo.