Terry Sarten: Empty slogans deserve our derision

Election slogans -- keep it snappy, keep it simple.

PONDERING events of the last few weeks, it seems a good time to check out the various parties' slogans.

These usually appear beside a large picture of the leader or candidate, with smiles that remind one of a piano lid being lifted to display the shiny white keys.

It must fire up the ego to see yourself 3 metres tall and nailed to a billboard. Maybe that's where the hubris, so frequently on display in politics, finds its fuel and its folly.

Labour is telling us "Let's Do This". It does not give any clues about what "this" might be. There so many things we could do.

We could vote for them, or for one of the other parties. We could stay in and brush the dog. We could give them a slogan - "Let's Do Something Like Introduce a Capital Gains Tax Instead of Just Avoiding the Subject".

National's slogan sounds like the call of a cargo cult with its "Delivering for New Zealanders".

It certainly won't be using fast post. I find it astonishing New Zealand Post did not see email come galloping over the horizon and move to set itself up as an internet letter provider way back when the market was wide open for such an innovation.

Bill English and Co seem intent on delivering New Zealanders a future in which the desk chairs will be rearranged on the doomed ship of state with women and children being pushed out of the lifeboats by market forces.

They have failed to deliver on any policy that will close the gap between the have lots and have nots. If they lose the election they may have to go to one of their boot camps to be rehabilitated.

The Greens' slogan is "Love NZ" but for many voters love is no longer enough. The sudden onset of the kind of hubris that they have criticised in other political parties has been disastrous.

To think they could champion the lot of beneficiaries by highlighting how a long-serving MP on a grand salary had never felt any need to pay back money owed to her fellow taxpayers was dim.

The New Zealand First slogan asks us to "Stand with Us".

They are confused - they are not us. They are a small bunch of divisive scaremongers.

Voters are not that easily "mongered" and may in fact want NZ First to stand with them, especially in Northland where Mr Peters seems to have done nothing about the social crisis hitting the children and youth of the region.

Oh, they are too young to vote.

The Maori Party slogan is "Get on Board the Waka".

This sounds great but Maori have always paddled their own canoes with a diversity of opinions and will no doubt get on the waka that carries their aspirations rather than follow a slogan.

ACT is touting the notion of "A Tax Cut for Every Earner" - a cash job sort of a slogan but devoid of any actual meaning.

United Future - all one MP - wants "A Better Deal for Future Generations". Does this refer to the better deal they have not managed to conjure out of their coalition deal with National?

The Opportunities Party has the best slogan/ instruction. "Care. Think. Vote". They have got the word sequence right. Most people do care, many think and some vote.

-Terry Sarten (aka Tel) is a writer, musician, social worker and orbiting slogan-naut - feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz