Brian Rudman: Enduring a phoney war - all blimps and no bangs

A popular poster in my student days read "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" The first week of the election on television has been a bit like that.

Formal opening night was last Friday, with an hour of TV One prime-time for addresses from the big two, plus extras.

So did we gather around the screen like good little democrats to dutifully lap it all up? Not likely. Considerably more of us preferred to watch the TV2 reality show, Fear Factor, where volunteers share graves with maggots and the like.

In the ratings game, the politicians attracted 9 per cent of the population, the maggots got 12 per cent.

Even weatherman Jim Hickey is a bigger drawcard. In the same spot the previous Friday, 15 per cent of the population tuned in to watch him fly his plane to small forgettable towns.

Hickey fans don't know what they missed. If they'd followed Clark, they'd have seen her doing much the same thing, flying about the country, meeting and greeting. They'd have also got an extra - Clark playing the earth mother of the nation in her dark brown outfit.

Earth mother and stateswoman, that is. Towards the end of her broadcast it became a game of spot the world leaders. There was Helen with the American President, and the Japanese and Singaporean Prime Ministers and the leader of East Timor, twice. Not to forget US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying "very, very, very close friends". As I recall, he was referring to inter-country relationships, but what's a bit of poetic licence at election time. Where, though, was our nearest ally, Australia?

Bill English in turn tried the inspirational orator look and bombed. The shadowy lighting, the pulpit-like lectern and the backdrop of white funeral lilies suggested a funeral celebrant instead. I started to get spooked about the time an almost subliminal image of the former Reserve Bank governor and prize new candidate, Don Brash, started floating across my screen.

Mr English must have had trouble remembering his lines during filming - his show was a mess of little sound-bites clumsily - and distractingly - stitched together.

The Greens were next, trying to scare with images of bionic strawberries. It backfired. After Helen and Bill, the Greens' Monstaberries looked so scrumptious I wanted to reach through the screen and help myself.

Other minnows followed, spreading across into Saturday prime-time as well - and with as little impact. They came in third with 7 per cent of possible viewers, against TV2's Godzilla and the All Blacks on Sky - both with 10 per cent.

The next night, TV One's premier current affairs show Sunday curiously opened its coverage with soft profiles of two Nelson-based Green candidates. It was followed by an eccentric election panel of humorist Joe Bennett, who sounds uncannily like Sam Hunt on speed, curmudgeonly ex-MP Michael Laws and former PM David Lange. They soon descended into a contest about who was the biggest smarty-pants. Even Mr Lange, whose insights were worth the wait, got sucked in.

Holmes the next night couldn't resist the need for entertainers either when he made a visitation to Banks Peninsula to test the mood of the nation - old TV faces like Jim Hopkins and Bob Parker. Oddest aspect of the show was that the candidates were present but not allowed to say a word. Instead we had audience members shouting out their concerns, including an old lady, June, who was twice prodded into action to give us a cheap laugh with demands for a return of the air force combat wing.

When it was all over, you had to wonder why.

Holmes came good on Wednesday, though, with a grilling of leaders of the mysterious new anti-GM Sustainability Council of New Zealand.

I write this in the run-up to last night's first major leaders' debate. Hopefully, it will mark the end of the phoney war.

Lasting memory of the first week: Former anti-Vietnam war protester Clark using a former American general to bolster her advertising campaign.

Full news coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/election

Election links:
The parties, policies, voting information, and more

Ask a politician:
Send us a question, on any topic, addressed to any party leader. We'll choose the best questions to put to the leaders, and publish the answers in our election coverage.