Campaign ‘relentlessly positive’
WELLINGTON: With election day looming tomorrow, National leader Judith Collins has borrowed a famous phrase from her political rival’s first appearance as Labour leader in 2017.
Ms Collins said yesterday her campaign had0 been ‘‘relentlessly positive’’.
This comes after a week in which she called Jacinda Ardern a liar, attacked the media, called Green MPs ‘‘unemployable’’ and rival parties ‘‘miserable’’.
Ms Collins made the comments soon after being welcomed by a man who once planned to build a ‘‘super brothel’’.
The National leader would not be drawn on Michael Chow’s sex industryrelated ventures.
However, she did reiterate comments she made about rival MPs being miserable.
‘‘They are though, aren’t they?’’ she said.
‘‘I am having a good laugh about it,’’ she said later.
Ms Collins was speaking at what she said was her sixth media engagement of the morning, and characterised her campaign ‘‘relentless. Relentlessly positive’’.
‘‘That’s something that I just actually am.
‘‘Thank you . . . do you know I think it’s great to be a really positive person . . . I never give up. See, I’m just not like that.’’
She then went on to describe Ms Ardern’s campaign as all ‘‘love and hugs’’.
‘‘I want New Zealand to be the tech centre of the Pacific and I want people to say ‘hey, it’s not only the most beautiful place in the world, but guess what, you can get great jobs there and get paid twice what other people get paid’.
‘‘We don’t want to be the poor cousin of the rest of Australia, as such, as poor Tasmania is.’’
She said her party’s policy to have the bright line test — which requires income tax to be paid on gains from residential property sold within five years of purchase — reduced to two years would not further pump up housing prices.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB earlier yesterday morning, Ms Collins took aim at the media, suggesting press gallery reporters were not impartial.
She said sometimes it feels like she’s getting questioned by ‘‘Ardern’s press secretary’’. — The New Zealand Herald