Memo To Labor, Your Advertising Sucks

If Labor do actually get over the line this coming election it won't be thanks to their election advertising. In short, it's shit. Every time a program is interrupted by that whining housewife complaining about this, that and everything else I cringe and (for some weird reason) hope that whoever else is in the room has tuned out and isn't really paying attention.

Don't get me wrong, I think all election advertisements are shit, but while we all accept this, we can still rate them in order from the shittest to the less shit and the whining women, this year, rates as the shittest by far. She makes me pine for those glory days when Latham would appear on the screen preceding every sentence with "Labor is ready..." (and I found THAT annoying).

When they call her 'Whinging Wendy' they aren't lying. Thinking about it has put me in the awkward position of agreeing with Janet Albrechtsen today:

'The perception, however, is governments are somehow responsible for "mortgage stress" and the so-called housing affordability crisis. But let's face it. The price of continued prosperity is that many people have simply abandoned financial responsibility, racking up debt to buy bigger homes than they can afford, pumping more money into the housing market and driving prices higher.'

'It won't win you votes to say so but notions of financial restraint and thrift have been replaced with a "have it all now" mentality driven by easy access to debt. The Howard Government has only fuelled that mentality. As The Sun-Herald reported on Sunday, the Government's original first home buyers grant of $7000 is being accessed by those buying million-dollar houses. And then, when interest rates rise off the back of a booming economy, those ungrateful sods cry foul.'

When the Saturday Age runs a profile on a "typical" family previously on a combined income of 140,000 now "struggling" after the arrival of kids on just one income of 120,000 you know something is up. I found it particularly hard to sympathise with the fact that they were forced to sell the Porche for a RAV4. During a boom as large as this where most people's troubles are that they have too much I find Whinging Wendy a bit hard to swallow. Give me the dodgy profiles coupled with slamming door noises are dark music any day.

(On a side note Albrechtsen completely contradicts herself when she later attacks Clive Hamilton's criticisms of today's mentality, they're very close to her above comments)