Thomas Sainsbury does a brilliant Paula Bennett. Photo / Facebook
Thomas Sainsbury does a brilliant Paula Bennett. Photo / Facebook
This election campaign is getting serious - with rising aggression and fear in the campaign over the last day or so. Political satire not only provides a welcome relief from some of the more worthy and earnest parts of the campaign, but often makes some serious points. So below are some of the most humorous parts of the election campaign so far.
Satirical impersonations
The most interesting new satirist of the 2017 election campaign is impersonator Tom Sainsbury, who has been putting together short "Kiwis of Snapchat" video clips throughout the campaign of some of the politicians and political events. Particularly recommended are Post-leaders' debate debrief, The voters speak, and Meet Mr Jacinda Ardern.
Jeremy Wells continues his "Like Mike" impersonations of Mike Hosking, and in his latest video, Mike is disillusioned with all the political parties - see: Election Golden Showers.
Political theatre and stories
Communicating politics through theatre and story-telling is in full swing at the moment. In Wellington, for example, Anya Tate-Manning is producing the latest instalment of the "Public Service Announcements" series at the Bats Theatre - it runs until the 16th of September. This series, called "Stranger Politics" is profiled by Amber Allott in her article, Capital's longest running political satire show back in time for another election.
Another Wellingtonian, Robbie Nicol, recently had his White Man Behind a Desk show running at the Q Theatre in Auckland, in which different politicians would participate on stage - you can read Glenn McConnell's background on this: Political performance: White Man Behind A Desk turns monologues into theatre.
Wellington theatre group Barbarian Productions was also demonstrating how politics can be done differently, operating a free haircutting salon last week - see Giles Dexter's Election debate a cut above at Wellington hairdresser. In this article, theatrical hairdresser Jason Muir explains: "At hairdressing school, you were taught not to talk about politics, religion and sex, so we were like, 'Hey, why don't we break all those rules and make a whole salon about politics, at least?"
Paula Bennett gets nicely parodied by Andrew Gunn in her hunt for law and order votes, with him explaining why she "doubled down on a controversial new policy that will enable police to enter properties without a warrant to search for redneck National votes" - see: Emergency delivery of smug for the Beehive.
There's been so much news, but too few jokes about Jacinda Ardern, so far. But satirist Andrew Gunn brings you both, in his column, All the Jacinda news you had somehow missed.
Gunn's best part is about the gender issues surrounding Ardern's rise to power: "Celebrity non-journalist Mike Hosking has tweeted from his bathtub this morning that if Ardern does become Prime Minister there is no reason she should automatically be paid the same as her predecessor. 'Never been in government, never been in Cabinet, never run anything - why should she expect the same money? Not sexism, just reality' read Hosking's tweet. Hosking added that until Ardern demonstrated the same sort of credibility as Bill English, a pay gap of, say, 12 per cent should apply to the young slip of a thing, and concluded by expressing relief that 'At least finally now we can stop celebrating women's achievements'."
But perhaps the funniest thing about Jacindamania has been watching the reactions from rivals, and Toby Manhire parodies these in his column, Arden up! Strategies for Jacinda effect. Here's what New Zealand First was supposedly strategising: "We must accuse her of a plot to Jacindarellarise the regions. And we must buy up all the toothpaste in Grey Lynn. And if none of that works, offer to cover the maternity leave."
National's strategists were trying to come up with a new catch phrase to deal with her: "The insult branding unit has been up with the focus groups for days and the truth is they're struggling. Nothing close to the Angry Andy triumph yet. Jacindistinct? No. Blahcinda? No. Arden Up? No. Ja Rule? Too Eminemesque. The best we've got is Flakey Jacey, and that just sounds like a delicious tribute chocolate bar."
Of course, that debate turned out to be rather boring, with the two leaders failing to shine. As Ben Uffindell wrote, "Ardern closed the debate on a positive note, reinforcing her theme of "relentless positivity" by saying she agreed with "everything Bill said" - see: The Great Hosking Debate: A Debrief.
This parody has plenty of great lines about Ardern: "Jacinda Ardern spent the day with a working group that has spent the last several years producing a detailed report on what she should say tonight. In the end, it determined she should propose a working group"; and "When asked how she would ensure she was bringing in enough migrants to build a sufficient number of affordable homes, Jacinda Ardern promised that, under a Labour Government, migrants will be selected on the basis of whether they have carpenter-sounding names."
And watching the leaders debates was lightened up by the bingo cards created by Katie Parker and Susan Strongman - see: We made leaders debate bingo cards.
