The Nationals’ New Election Ad Is A Salacious Soap Opera Starring Tony Windsor

What do you do when your standard zoom and doom campaigning tactics feel stale? When belief in the major parties is at an all-time low? When an independent candidate might just snatch that vital seat from your deputy prime minster? You produce a salacious new suburban soapie of course! At least that’s what The Nationals have done.

Yep, as the battle between Barnaby Joyce and Independent MP Tony Windsor for the crucial NSW seat of New England gets tighter and meaner (with the latest polls showing Windsor slightly ahead), The Nationals have upped the stakes by releasing a deeply strange campaign ad that looks like a cut scene from Channel Ten’s Offspring and casts Windsor as a lecherous creep who’s harassing a woman for another chance. And he’s not too pleased about it, telling The Age via a statement that it has left him and his wife Lyn “deeply upset”.

Hmmm…. the weirdest thing about it is there’s a deeper sense of pathos to this ad than you’d expect. When the concerned friend/confident National Party Voter asks, “Do you miss him?”, and the scorned woman/swing voter replies, “Sometimes, but things have changed and I’ve moved on”, you almost find yourself thinking: can’t they just work it out! So what if he ran off with Julia? He told you all along he wanted a more fluid and open sexual relationship. Don’t close yourself off like that scorned woman/swing voter. Love and trust takes compromise and forgiveness!

I’m totally tuning in next week. Need to fill the GoT-shaped hole in my life with something.

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h/t The Age