We always knew we needed to achieve higher density in Perth and Labor's latest election campaign advertisement delivers it in spades.
The advertising team has delivered the public a headache-inducing word-bomb in its full colour 12-page liftout booklet in print media on Saturday, with two central pages devoted to a solid block of text listing Labor's '200 Fresh Ideas for WA.'
Some of the ideas are explored in greater detail in the pages wrapped around this central poster, but clearly the idea is for voters to see all of them at once and be impressed.
However, the mind-bogglingly tiny script of this word salad becomes almost unreadable on a web page and virtually invisible on mobile: so for the online news generation we're delivering the highlights, minus the eye strain.
What makes this easier is that quite a few of the fresh ideas appear to be the same idea re-worded several different ways.
Others are fresh ideas... from Labor's 2013 election platform.
Take #1, for example: 'WA Labor will build Metronet.'
An election commitment for public transport is always appreciated, but we're pretty sure the last time this one was a 'fresh idea' when Labor announced it five years ago.
We do acknowledge that Labor has further refined its plan between elections, holding community forums to get feedback and reworking costings with information obtained from Treasury. At an August relaunch it announced the stage one projects and recently announced it could deliver these – in an order yet to be announced – within six to eight years.
Anyway, we squint towards the next fresh idea.
#2: Build Metronet to Byford.
Hang on, no fair! That's one of the aforementioned stage one projects of Metronet! Oh, well, let's have a look at #3.
#3: Build Metronet to Yanchep.
Wait. We're pretty sure this is cheating.
#4 Start the Circle Line with the Thornlie extension....
Spoiler alert: fresh ideas #5-11 are all Metronet-related.
Ms Saffioti announces the stage 1 project list. Photo: Emma Young
Moving on to the Jobs section, in #12 Labor promises to establish Infrastructure WA.
Yes, industry bodies have long called for WA to join the eastern states and establish an apolitical, transparent committee to set infrastructure priorities – but Labor announced this idea in 2015, the same time it announced #13: Publish a State Infrastructure Policy.
#14: Allow unsolicited infrastructure proposals to be evaluated sounds a lot like the Liberal government's unsolicited bids policy that resulted in plans for a World Trade Centre in Northbridge.
#15-66: feature many worthy and interesting sounding projects, reforms and investments in sectors including liquor licensing, Asian cooperation, migration and tourism. Included in that run of fresh ideas is #36: Extend the hours of operation at key police stations.
#67-140 features text broken up by wrapping around the central image. Sorry, but it just hurts too much to decipher this. Find it all here but it did catch our eyes that some of it sounds suspiciously like aforementioned #36: Extend the hours of operation at key police stations...
#133: 24-HOUR police station in Armadale
#134: 24-HOUR police station in Ellenbrook
#135: 24-HOUR police station in Cockburn
#136: Extend the hours of operation at key police stations (literally the exact same wording as #36)
Domestic and family violence law reform promises that follow are worthy, but also have been long championed by Labor. To be fair, there are numerous promises of reforms in the area of family violence, including introducing family violence leave in the public sector, establishing more crisis accommodation and giving the area a ministerial portfolio.
But as the ad draws to a close, the admittedly important commitment to end the abhorrent practice of puppy farming does some heavy lifting to bump the list towards the necessary 200:
#176: Introduce a centralised registration system to identify every dog or puppy.
#177: Introduce mandatory standards for dog breeding
#178: Transition pet shops into adoption centres
#179 ... in case you had not got the point already... Stop puppy farming.
We recommend you take this list to your Saturday night dinner party and win friends by using the ideas as conversation starters. Guaranteed friendship strengthener.
At the very least, it will be a handy reference for time-poor media to keep Labor honest if it wins the election.
We don't want to be uncharitable - this list contains many fresh ideas. But after a week of talking #jacketgate, Roe 8, kittens being thrown from cars and burqua-banning we needed a laugh and this arrived just in time.
