While I know that complaining about government advertising is like shooting fish in a barrel, the Australian Government has been bringing us some Gold Logie-winning material of late.
Take, for example, the new Workplace Authority commercials. Having abandoned a campaign that saw senior public servants shaking their cans to promote WorkChoices (and abandoning the separation of powers, the protections accorded by an independent civil service and good taste), the Workplace Authority is now pimping the Howard government’s industrial legislation like some diseased hooker by having two “mates” discuss the new fairness test in the most natural of settings: the pub.
So, in the spirit of some esteem-building fish-shooting, Lucky Boris Yeltsin is Dead! brings you… The Top 5 Reasons The Workplace Authority’s “Two Mates in a Pub” Commercials are Unconvincing, Uncompelling and Downright Stupid:
- Two guys walk into a bar. We keep expecting this joke to get funny. It doesn’t.
- A pub, two “mates”, a basket of chips and two glasses – sounds reasonable…even pleasant. But there is no beer in the glasses. None. Could it be that with their spanky new AWA’s they don’t have enough coin for the next shout? Or the Australian Government could see fit to spend our taxes on shamelessly political commercials masquerading as information campaigns, but was too tight to pop for two schooners of XXXX Gold. Who knew?
- There are no sodden coasters. There are some car keys on the table. The mates’ pants appear to coordinate with their shirts and do not appear to be pulling uncomfortably across their bellies. Have these people ever been in a pub?
- The pub is not playing Shannon Noll.
- The mates are talking about WorkChoices, rather than tits.
Is anyone else thirsty?
Lucky Boris Yeltsin is Dead!
What confused me was that in one of these ads the punchline is that one of these two blokes is still living in with his mum and dad as a sort of put down, oh look at him the layabout notgothisshitetogetherohthehumanity kind of way.
But isn’t the fact that this bloke in his thirties is still living at home some sort of indictment of Howard and Costello’s faux economic wonderland?
I mean…I can talk!
Yes you can talk… and more importantly you can sing, er i mean blog!
I just wish they had chosen me for one of the extras for this ad.
look closely there’s:
* token woman
* token Asian man doing a lot of talking – what about? why does he raise his shoulders ~shrugs~ as if to say “i don’t know if this is going to stick eh?”
* guy at table who, even though he was paid to, refuses to let his face be shown on Government IR propaganda – maybe he’s the mole? Respect! Whoever he is.
* or maybe I could have “guy in the blue shirt leaving” – don’t you think that’s strange? leaving in the middle of the ad? Lucky Boris Yeltsin Is Dead! The cameras should have followed him to see what secrets he was going to sell to the punters outside!
* I also worry about the counter-intelligence team on that mod Canberra Bureaucracy set (you don’t think they’re filming inside a real Government Dept do you? – for a start they don’t have COLOUR! only beige!) The girl typing in the background on her computer – what was she looking at on the internet? YOUR AWA or something less helpful like those stupid fucking cheesburger catz of maybe some of that tasteful Canberra porn they’ve got up there? Maybe that’s what token Asian man was shrugging about?
* Maybe it’s the girl-extra going to or coming from the photocopying room that we can hope to turn to the light? You have to admit she has a knack at carrying those papers around…
I love a good extras conspiracy!!
I agree ‘boris’ would be rolling over in his grave, why are the two men drinking beer and not vodka!!! Oh the humanity.
By the way, what are two men doing in the bar and not at work, there is still daylight outside, bloody slackers! I wonder if their boss knows they are down at the pub during lunch break having beer. Bring in the workplace agreements I say…!
hear hear comrade owen!