Heather du Plessis-Allan: Greens' water balloon was off-target

National Party leader Simon Bridges' accent was the subject of an off-brand advert from the Green Party. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

It wasn't really an attack ad was it?

It was more like a water balloon lobbed from behind the fence. Or a hand inside a jacket pretending to be a gun.

It wasn't very funny and it wasn't very clever. It was supposed to be meta but, if you google what meta is, you'll know it wasn't meta.

So, for an ad that was neither effective nor cruel, it drew a strong response. It upset a lot of people.

Which tells us two things.

First, we're not going to become like the US. In the US, the political ads on TV are brutal. They call Hillary a crook. They say Donald can't be trusted with the nuclear codes. The worst one ever had Paul Gosar's six siblings explaining why he shouldn't be a congressman.

As much as political scientists and pundits might warn us that we're heading exactly that way, we're not. There's no appetite for that brutality here.

The rules around political advertising loosened up just before our last election and we all waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened.

Since then we've had about two dodgy ads. This one and the National Party one featuring two men barbecuing sausages and "mansplaining" tax to a woman. Both those ads drew heavy criticism.

The second thing it tells us is that the Greens leadership should fear their supporters.

Green supporters are the reason this ad blew up into a news story.

At first, the advert was just one of a trillion stupid videos on the internet. Then the supporters spotted it. And they started leaving comments under the video on Twitter. They called it petty and said they expected more of their party. They told the party to pull it down. The Greens at Victoria University Twitter account said "delete this".

Pity the Green leadership. Their supporters are ruthless. They're generally opinionated, articulate, up with the news and able to make themselves heard.

Other parties don't have to fear their supporters quite as much. Maybe their supporters are more polite, more reserved, more relaxed, more interested in Married At First Sight than Question Time, less vocal.

Not the Greens, though.

This is why there are consistent rumours that the Green Party is only moments away from tearing itself apart. Add to this mix, the fact that there are two distinct camps in the Greens, and you've got a recipe for a show down. James Shaw's environmental enthusiasts versus Marama Davidson's social justice agitators.

All it would take is one camp feeling the other is notching up more political wins, and it's on. We're just waiting for it to kick off. We're already in our seats and halfway through the popcorn.

The Green supporters were right to hate the ad. It was off-brand for their party. The Greens like to paint themselves as more principled and less petty than the others. They like to debate policy not people. They took Dirty Politics to the police and included National in the team working up the Zero Carbon Bill.

They were being serious and telling us they were being serious and then they water ballooned Simon Bridges from behind the fence.