In 1999 National finished second to Labour with 30.5 per cent of the party vote compared to Labour’s 38.7 per cent. This was the worst result ever achieved by National and in the two years following the 1999 election “heads rolled” as the party sought to rejuvenate itself (Wood, 2003). Party president John Slater was replaced in the middle of 2001 by Michelle Boag, party leader Jenny Shipley was forced out of the leadership by Bill English in October 2001, and some of National’s longer serving MPs were asked to stand aside to let new “talent” emerge. Political scientist Antony Wood (2003) has observed that these changes “left scars within the party and it was not well prepared for the snap election of July 2002” (p. 254). The 2002 election presented National with another difficulty. Its traditional competition – the Labour Party and its leader Helen Clark – had been performing so well in public opinion polls that most commentators and voters, including National voters, were convinced well out from the campaign that Labour would win again in 2002.
Campaign Objectives
Like Labour in 2002, National never publicly announced before the election its numerical goal for the party vote. It has to be assumed that as Labour’s main competition, National’s goals would have been to try and win back the Treasury benches, or at the very least improve on its 1999 election result. After the election chief adviser to Bill English Tim Grafton (2003) confessed that, like most of the rest of New Zealand, the National Party had not expected to beat Labour in 2002 and admitted that National’s primary campaign objectives in 2002 had been to:
• promote its new leader;
• promote policy which had not been made public; and • establish relevance in voters’ electoral calculations.
Voter Orientation
National did not have a very broad target audience for its advertising messages. Eleven minutes of the twelve minute opening night address focused on Bill English speaking to a hall of largely indistinguishable people. The only voters English interacted with in the one minute opening sequence were a makeup artist, English’s wife Mary and one of his sons, and some well-wishers shaking his hand as he walked into the hall to address the audience (Image 4.2.1)
Image 4.2.1: Stills from National’s 2002 opening night address.
Only one television commercial of National’s eight televised political advertisements featured English meeting people that were not his family, staff or other MPs. In a television commercial conveying National’s education views English is seen visiting a school and talking to teachers and children (Image 4.2.2). He reflects:
As a parent I’ve had ten years of kids at school and I’ve got another fifteen to go. Teachers feel overworked and underpaid so we have a real problem for our children. We’ll put principals and parents in control of their schools, not politicians and bureaucrats. And we’ll reward hard work. We’ll pay good teachers more and we’ll increase bursaries because students deserve to have their aspirations encouraged.
Image 4.2.2: Stills from National’s Education television commercial, 2002.
Parents and teachers were one of National’s key target audiences in 2002. National’s target audience also included small business owners and people who wanted to get tougher on crime. In the opening night address English mentions that he had been listening to these groups of people:
And that’s why we’ve got a plan to get behind business. I’ve visited hundreds of them. I’ve run one myself. And if you haven’t done that you have no idea how much hard work it is ...
He spoke of sensing and responding to the needs of the police, having experienced a night out with them:
A couple of weeks ago I spent a night out with the police in one of just five cars covering an area with three or four hundred thousand New Zealanders. By half past eight at night they were having trouble finding a car to go to a house where there was a woman upstairs on the phone and an intruder downstairs. That’s why I’ve committed to 500 more police.
He also acknowledged the needs of those who voted for a tougher response on crime in the 1999 referendum:
Back in the last election, 92 per cent of us voted for action on crime. That was the clearest message the new government had, but they haven’t heard the message. And I’ll tell you what they have done. They’ve changed our parole laws so that a violent criminal can be back out on the streets after one third of their sentence. A rapist who gets nine years can be back out on the street after three, just three years, and that’s wrong. We will change it.
One early television commercial featured English talking on the phone to a small- business constituent (Image 4.2.3). His conversation on the phone (in italics below) is interwoven with excerpts from his opening night address address.
Who actually does the paperwork. Do you do all that yerself? Look we have a choice in this country. We can run it on envy, or we can run it on aspiration and achievement.
I mean you’ve got all these people out there who are running the business overdraft secured against the house.
We’re totally committed to our small businesses and to the people who work in those small businesses.
Well, yeah, that’s my job Dean, that’s my job. We got to sort some of this stuff out!
Image 4.2.3: Still from National Small Business television commercial, 2002.
The image of English on the telephone was a visual theme throughout the campaign. One featured on the cover of National’s manifesto, communicated in a magazine format under the banner National Times (Image 4.2.4). An extreme close-up image of English’s mouth while talking on the phone also opened the opening night address (Image 4.2.5). The images of English listening on the phone indicated National’s awareness of the need to be seen listening to voters, although it was a more impersonal response than, say, Clark’s more physical interaction with voters in 1999.