Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 9:43 am, November 1st, 2011 - 51 comments

Categories: election 2011, labour, national, transport - Tags: ads, railways, roads

Oh dear. This is not what National needed on the back of Goff besting Key in the first debate. National’s new TV ad is on the world-class infrastructure they claim to have built. But it was all planned, funded, and mostly built by Labour. Have National accidentally revealed their real achievement: taking credit for others work?

First up, we have shots of Newmarket Railway station (featuring Conveniently Multi-Ethnic Casttm). There’s lot of shots of people looking happy as they go to get on trains, which I thought National despised. The problem is: Newmarket was upgraded as part of Labour’s Project DART, planned and funded way back in 2006. Although Steven Joyce, the great patron of rail, happily took the credit when he reopened it.

Then, we see a shot of Spaghetti Junction. Specifically, the final section connecting the Northwestern Motorway eastbound to the Northern Motorway northbound. This project wasn’t just planned and funded by Labour, they were completely built under Labour too and finished in 2006. If National had to show a five year old Labour project in its infrastructure ad, how desperate were they?

Beside the shot of Spaghetti Junction are a couple of shots of a motorway with a distinctive overbridge. It’s the Northern Gateway motorway, specifically the ALPURT B2 extension. That was planned and funded, and mostly built under Labour as well. I’m not a fan of this toll road. But I’m less of a fan of parties that say “we’re building world-class infrastructure” and show other parties’ projects.

Finally, there’s John Key giving what I think we’re meant to believe it his professional and informed inspection of the Victoria Park Tunnel (‘the roof is 20mm lower than spec over there! And the camber on that bend is all wrong! What the hell are you people playing at?). National can at least claim that soil was broken on this project under them, just after they came to power. But it was planned, funded, and consented under Labour.

Oh and there’s some shots of fibre-optic cable being laid. You know, the stuff that Labour was planning to roll-out across the country, then National came up with a cheaper and shittier plan that restores Telecom’s monopoly and is already well behind schedule.

Nice ad, National. I’m left thinking ‘you know, Labour got a lot of stuff built in nine years’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE3Z1ItVk8

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