The politics of billboard shenanigans

They’re everywhere – election billboards espousing the merits of the different political parties who will be contesting the September 20 election.

And already vandals have begun defacing some of the billboards, presumably because the culprits don’t agree with that party’s policies – or maybe, like climber George Mallory’s Mt Everest, because they are there.

National seems to be dominating the billboard landscape, presumably because the party is either better organised or better resourced – or both.

Unfortunately for the Nats their ubiquitous billboards are also the biggest target for defacement. According to National officials hundreds of their hoardings have been attacked.

In a way the party has been set up by National’s backroom team by pinning its electoral hopes on the slogan ‘‘Working for New Zealand’’, ornamented by a picture of a rather self-satisfied-looking John Key.

With the words ‘‘working for’’ on the top line the billboards are an open invitation to political opponents to obliterate the words ‘‘New Zealand’’ on the bottom line and incorporate their own interpretation.

Working for . . . my rich mates/ China/America/himself. Take your pick, they’ve all been added in the billboard makeovers. A variation on the theme has been where the wording has been altered to read ‘‘Twerking for New Zealand’’.

Someone has even set up a Facebook page devoted to National Party billboard ‘‘makeovers’’ – a polite word for defacement. At the time of writing it has attracted nearly 7000 ‘‘likes’’.

Strangely, a majority of submissions to the page feature billboards in Dunedin. Whether this is because the city is a hotbed of lefties, or whether the hoardings are creating an unmissable challenge for the city’s imaginative students, is impossible to tell.

In fact, it might be neither. One Dunedin billboard had the head of Key and the local candidate completely removed. The missing segment later turned up in the

Is anyone really influenced by the sight of a politician beaming down at them from a billboard, beseeching them to ‘‘gizza vote’’? If that’s the case then it’s surely an argument about the fallibility of democracy.

Christchurch suburb of Linwood, a tribute to the Dedication of the Long Distance Activist.

Greens supporters have been linked in some quarters to the defacements but one of the victims, National MP Michael Woodhouse – dubbed a ‘‘casual Fascist’’ on one of his billboards – was gracious enough to concede that he didn’t think there was any official Green Party involvement.

This view was reinforced by Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei who said her party didn’t want its party’s hoardings defaced, adding ‘‘. . . and we don’t approve of others defacing other parties’ (billboards), they are expensive and they are part of the democratic process to allow parties to put forward their policies’’.

Of course, the National Party is not the only target and the obligatory devil’s horns, beards, moustaches and swastikas have been added to hoardings across the political spectrum. But these lack the redeeming feature of wit and can be viewed as just wilful vandalism.

Labour MP Annette King has had at least one of her billboards in the Wellington electorate of Rongotai defaced, with words ‘‘Bat Man (sic)’’ spray-painted across it. The symbolism escapes me but I expect the joker who did it will not be apprehended.

If I were of a more forceful nature I might be tempted to take up a paint brush myself to alter some of the Labour billboards – those urging the electorate to ‘‘Vote positive’’. While I totally agree with the sentiments the shoddy grammar, which is similar to a recent local campaign urging Timaruvians to ‘‘Shop local’’, grates in the extreme.

Personally, I wonder about the value of these billboards at all. Many don’t espouse policies but merely plead for a vote.

Is anyone really influenced by the sight of a politician beaming down at them from a billboard, beseeching them to ‘‘gizza vote’’? If that’s the case then it’s surely an argument about the fallibility of democracy.

Voting for Key or Cunliffe on the basis that they’ve got a nice smile is not the way to determine who runs the country.

A bit of research on the internet revealed to me that at least most of the content in the defacement of billboards in New Zealand is civilised political comment.

At the last election in the UK many of defaced hoardings contained abusive messages that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.

However, there was one that I took a liking to. It featured a Conservative Party hoarding boasting a photo of then-Labour leader Gordon Brown and the proclamation: ‘‘I doubled the nation’s debt. Let me do it again’’. Below it was a plea: ‘‘Or vote Conservative’’, to which some wit had added www.bunchofbankers.