The week ahead: One thing is for sure, you will be blitzed

By COLIN JAMES

How do we get the economy up as an issue?" moaned a Labour strategist last week. "The media won't cover it."

National has the same problem. It can't get its message through that growth is going to slow.

Why? Because the economy is going along nicely and most voters are not agitated about it. There are not many votes either way. More media talk of the economy would be unlikely to push more votes to Labour than the reality of household finances has already given the party.

So the election campaign has been pushed on to other issues, on which Labour has lost some ground. National insists that it leads Labour on law and order, education and small business.

But National says it has not been able to get the media or the electorate to assess these issues on a Labour-on-National basis. Only this week will television leaders' debates come down to Helen Clark v Bill English.

So small parties, not National, have collected the fallout from Labour on those issues, on genetic modification and trustworthiness.

This week National will try to counter that with straight-talking ads by Mr English. That will be a shift from the grainy, indirect ads of the early part of the campaign. The aim is to get him, and his issues, talked about.

Labour has a different problem. Because the Greens are intransigent over GM and Labour cannot give ground on New Zealand First's three big promises, especially on immigration, Helen Clark desperately wants a majority with Jim Anderton.

So last week she started name-calling. At the weekend, Labour's advertising went heavily negative.

Will that work? Not with Labour supporters I have come across who want her as Prime Minister but not with untrammelled power, and who therefore are declaring for the Greens.

Labour strategists acknowledge that voters do not like negative advertising. But they say it worked with the focus groups. Part of the aim is to frighten potential stay-away Labour voters out to vote.

There will also, Labour says, be positive messages on the "real issues" which Helen Clark in speeches last week claimed (wrongly in the Herald's case) the media had ignored.

One thing is for sure: you will be blitzed this week. The parties have hoarded advertising time and resources for one last heave.

But that will not help voters through the tactical voting maze that MMP has become.

Do National supporters cast their party vote for Act to make sure it gets over the 5 per cent hurdle, Labour to finesse the Greens, National because it might otherwise be humiliated or National because they believe in its policies?

Do Alliance supporters vote Alliance because they believe in its policies, although their vote will likely be wasted, or Green because the Greens are nearer Alliance policy on social justice and GM and might nudge Labour in an Alliance direction, or Labour because that is a less bad option than National?

Do Labour leftists vote Labour for a majority or Green because a Labour majority will by definition owe something to centre-right crossover voters?

Do worriers about safe food vote Green to stop GM, regardless of their beliefs on other matters?

MMP is marvellous.

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