Opinion: Whoever Hates Tamatha Paul is Really Bad at It

Election season brings with it one of democracy’s less celebrated traditions: covering every available fence, verge, and intersection with enormous photographs of candidates telling you to vote for them. And, almost as reliably, someone gives one a moustache.

Election billboard vandalism is hardly new. Candidates have long acquired missing teeth, devil horns, and various anatomical additions before election day. But this year, Wellington’s vandals seem to have developed ambitions beyond the traditional political doodle.

Driving into university this morning, I passed a Tamatha Paul billboard that had been painted over until it was almost illegible. On another, her face and name had been cut out entirely. Labour candidate Ayesha Verrall has suffered similar treatment. Christopher Luxon, meanwhile, was sitting relatively pretty with a moustache, buck teeth, and googly eyes.

As far as I have seen, every major party has been subjected to some degree of amateur artistic criticism. But nobody seems to disappear from their own billboards quite as reliably as Tamatha Paul.

An informal Salient Instagram poll suggests the damage is hardly isolated: 77 percent of respondents said they had noticed vandalised billboards in their area, with 56 percent of those respondents living in Wellington North. Hardly scientific polling, but enough to suggest Wellington’s politically motivated arts and crafts are not a figment of my imagination. Several respondents even mentioned the mysteriously multiplying number of Tamatha-less Tamatha Paul signs.

Over the past few weeks, I have repeatedly watched Paul disappear from Wellington’s streets. Presumably, cutting her out is intended to communicate a rejection of her politics.

The problem is that it communicates remarkably little.

A missing face does not tell me whether you hate Paul’s housing policy, her position on climate change, the Greens, the colour green, or simply the particular photograph they chose. It only demonstrates that corflute is surprisingly easy to cut.

If you want to make a political argument, I would suggest the radical alternative of actually making one.

One respondent to Salient’s poll defended the vandalism because it seemed like “the only way to actually grab politicians’ attention”.

I am not convinced.

Wellington may be the easiest city in the country in which to tell a politician exactly what you think of them. During an election, candidates are appearing at debates, visiting campuses, and speaking at public events precisely so voters can question them. Parliament is sitting in the middle of town. Wellington has a proud tradition of yelling at politicians in person.

There is no obvious need to outsource political disagreement to a Stanley knife at midnight.

And frankly, doing it in person is much more satisfying. Nothing quite compares to the joy of encountering a politician in the wild and having the opportunity to make your displeasure known. More importantly, asking a candidate a difficult question actually forces them to engage with an argument. Cutting their face out of a sign only forces them to order another one.

That brings us to the second problem: somebody has to put Tamatha Paul back.

Paul told Salient that replacing one of her signs costs around $45. That is hardly going to bankrupt a parliamentary campaign. But the real cost is not simply another sheet of corflute.

Someone has to notice the sign is gone. Someone has to organise a replacement. Someone has to collect it, drive it across Wellington, and put it back up.

And then, apparently, someone has to do it again.

Political campaigns are ultimately human enterprises, sustained by more than money and ambition. They are made up of ordinary people donating their evenings: knocking on doors, making phone calls, delivering pamphlets, and cable-tying enormous photographs of politicians to suburban fences.

As Paul pointed out, those volunteers have jobs and whānau of their own.

Destroying an election sign may feel like sticking it to a politician. In practice, you may mostly be giving a volunteer another errand.

Then there is the third problem: the bastards are littering.

While taking photographs of campaign signs, I found the severed faces of Tamatha Paul and David Seymour lying in the bushes outside Zealandia.

There was something almost touching about it: two politicians from very different parts of the political spectrum, finally united by being discarded in the same shrubbery.

It was less touching for the shrubbery.

Whatever ideological statement was intended became considerably harder to decipher once its final form was two pieces of plastic lying beside a wildlife sanctuary. If your political praxis concludes with David Seymour becoming litter outside Zealandia, it may be time to workshop the praxis.

None of this means election billboards should be treated as sacred democratic artefacts. They are objectively ridiculous objects. Politicians who reproduce their faces at four times their natural size and scatter them across the city cannot reasonably expect complete artistic restraint from the public.

Draw the moustache. Add the googly eyes. I am not here to defend the artistic integrity of corflute.

But systematically destroying campaign signs achieves very little politically. It does not explain your objection. It avoids confronting the candidate you supposedly want to challenge. It creates work for volunteers. And, apparently, it leaves pieces of politicians scattered around Zealandia.

Worse still, in Paul’s case, it appears to have achieved almost precisely the opposite of what was presumably intended.

After posting about the vandalism, Paul told Salient that around 100 people donated to help replace her signs.

So congratulations to whoever keeps cutting Tamatha Paul out of her billboards: your contribution to the anti-Tamatha Paul campaign has apparently been to raise money for more Tamatha Paul billboards.

Exceptional work.

There is a certain Streisand-style irony to the whole thing. Someone removes Paul from a fence. Paul posts about it. Supporters get annoyed. People donate. Volunteers put her back. More people notice the vandalism. A Salient writer starts wondering why Tamatha Paul keeps disappearing from Wellington.

Suddenly, the politician you wanted to make less visible is considerably more visible than she was before.

At a certain point, sabotage starts looking suspiciously like an in-kind campaign contribution.

Paul herself seems fairly unbothered. Speaking to Salient, she said: “I’m a big fan of delayed gratification and all of that just makes the W even sweeter.”

So the vandals have managed to create more work for volunteers, more plastic waste, more attention for Paul, more donations for replacement billboards, and now, an entire Salient article about Tamatha Paul.

If the objective was to make her disappear, there may be room for improvement in the strategy.

Turns out, Tamatha Paul is harder to cut out than a piece of corflute. 

Caption: Tamatha Paul and the ACT Party finding common ground—literally—outside Zealandia.