The mystery of Liberal Party’s ‘fake tradie’
It’s the dream of many marketing executives to go viral but Liberal Party HQ is wondering if its new attack ad accusing Labor of launching a “war” on the economy might be going viral for all the wrong reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I0wae57nJ0
Screened yesterday, the Liberal Party ad features what appears to be an ordinary tradie sitting on a building site talking to the camera.
Internet users quickly began to dissect some of the incongruities in the ad and soon the hashtag #faketradie was born.
It appears to be the little things that brought them undone:
Also, why is his saw-stool set up in a lane outside the fencing? And who has a ceramic cup on a building site? pic.twitter.com/pZEs7TPk0T
— Bill (@Billablog) June 19, 2016
Like really little:
Ha, how many takes? Grip on the cup changes at the cut at 0.10 #faketradie pic.twitter.com/2hWT9s7BUp
— Mike Sampson (@mfsampson) June 19, 2016
And then of course you have the (rather unkind) memes:
ICYMI #faketradie is on a world tour! pic.twitter.com/QHAFbloWUf
— Fake Richard Tuffin (@RichardTuffin) June 19, 2016
Even the Australian Manufacturers and Workers Union was having a go:
he just wants a fair go dinki di VB cricket shannon noll BBQ crack at negatively gearing his 5th home #faketradie pic.twitter.com/vHRTRlOEkS
— The AMWU (@theamwu) June 19, 2016
Dr Mumbo was also particularly amused that the folks at Buzzfeed also spotted that “fake tradie” also appears to be wearing a $7000 Tiffany man’s watch.
Is the Liberal party tradie wearing a $7,000 watch? https://t.co/D51JMoTqQI pic.twitter.com/Ercyo5dbP4
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) June 20, 2016
Which led to tweets like this:
Shop where the Tradies shop. #faketradie pic.twitter.com/0NME7F1MpW
— Denise C (@SpudBenBean) June 19, 2016
But of course the real mystery is the identity of the ‘fake tradie’. Labor creative strategist Dee Madigan tweeted that surely the Liberals wouldn’t be silly enough to hire an actor:
I bet he’s a real person b/c a) no actor is that bad b) Libs not silly enough to use an actor. But I bet he’s no ordinary tradie. #Faketradie
— DeeMadigan (@deemadigan) June 19, 2016
But soon websites Buzzfeed were questioning whether the Libs had hired actor Andrew MacRae to front the ad:
Such was the furore that Macrae was forced to come out and tweet that it wasn’t him:
Dear all,
It’s not me. I’m not in the ad. I didn’t voice the ad. I had nothing to do with the ad. #faketradie— Andrew MacRae (@MedinaVoice) June 20, 2016
The latest update has the Government insisting that “fake tradie” is real.
“We are very pleased that people are talking about this ad which highlights the risks of Bill Shorten’s war on business,” said a Liberal spokesman.“The tradie is real, unlike Mr Shorten’s claims about Medicare.”
Meanwhile the CFMEU has come out to insist he is not a member of their union.
The CFMEU would like to categorically state that @faketradie is NOT a member of our union. #faketradie #auspol pic.twitter.com/jvMrDjjOKi
— John Setka (@CFMEUJohnSetka) June 20, 2016
So for the moment it appears that fake tradie may be real – or at least not a union member – but what about the posh watch?
Update June 21 9am – A caller to Triple J’s Mat and Alex breakfast show this morning claimed to have been on the site when the ad was filmed.
Apparently the tradie in question was a boiler maker who was brought in by the Liberal Party to the building site a couple of weeks ago, complete with props including the saw horse, but was not working on the site himself.
Update 10am – Fake tradie has been reveal. Daily Mail Australia journalist Daniel Piotrowski found the “fake tradie”, who is in fact 50-year-old Andrew MacRae who lives in a modest home in Lane Cove.
MacRae is in fact a tradie who even provided his NSW government contractor’s licence to prove the point.
Click here to read the Daily Mail story.
It’s this kind of brilliant thinking and execution of ideas by our political class that’s just made Australia so great over the last decade.
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The Fake Tradie is as Fake as the Liberal Parties Policies,but whats new about that?
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https://voicebunny.com/profile/andrew-macrae-7J5BH34/#
Hear Andrew Macrae, the fake tradie, and hisvoice over ad for Opera!
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Unconvincing and a waste of dollars. Hurry up July 2.
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He will turn out to be a trained Tradie who has moved on to be a developer with strong Liberal party links. Is he representative of real tradies? – NO.
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https://www.facebook.com/TailWaggersParty/photos/a.1289739564387671.1073741828.1274222079272753/1327496320611995/?type=3&theater
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Well, I’ve met plenty of ‘tradies’ who may not wear a ‘posh watch’ to work but some sure as hell make enough to have a collection of them – and I’ll be a lot of tradies have investment properties, union members or not.
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Wow. Looks like Umbrella is more popular with the lefties than the SMH site. You guys are all worried about mugs, watches, actors, yet the mob you support couldn’t even get a surplus when they were last in. When will any of you have the decency to admit you’re all snickering away because the libs ruined your ABC/gov grant life? And I’m not as to-the-right, as you are left… I just want responsible gov’t with solid financial policies. And if Labor ever prove they’re up to it, I’d respect that… and not be a child niggling at their ads.
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If anything after the fiasco with the NBN Turnbull has proven to be a fraud and as time goes by a pathetic spin doctor I liken his NBN to a 747 with jet engines on one wing and propellers on the other Bill Shorten has it all over him.
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My father was a building tradie, though brickies aren’t the top of the rung. At this time of (winter), he would wear a flannelette shirt possibly over a blue singlet. When it got really cold or windy out in the weather, perhaps a pair of grey overalls would be thrown on. Sometimes, Dad would wear one of my high school rugby league football jerseys, and a terry towelling beach hat. I don’t actually ever recall him wearing a watch. The local radio station was on all day at work, so the time would be announced periodically. Times must have changed because tradesmen like the guy featured in the Liberal Party advertisement were usually carpenters / master builders, who supervised projects. They never hung around construction sites long, and didn’t tend to buy second houses. Instead, they were more inclined to either build their own, or buy up an under market property at auction, do some repairs, then flog it off.
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Trouble is it’s a waste of OUR dollars…
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Maybe he’s a real tradie who got paid enough for doing the ad that he could buy a real $7000 watch. Kind of makes you worry about if he really means what he says.
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Surely the Libs can’t be that stupid. They attack the comeuppance through a royal commission and when that doesn’t work use their rejected bill of reinstating the ABCC as a trigger to call a DD. A full frontal assault on tradies and then to add further insult they try and use a tradie, fake or not to push their destroy the construction industry agenda. They really are a special kind of stupid.
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I guess the Libs won this one because you are all bringing attention to their message
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He was gunna be a tradie but LNP bairdy shut down all the Taeffes
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Why is nobody talking about the fact it’s an objectively terrible commerical?
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Hey Unaligned
Have you seen the budget, the libs have a 40 billion deficit, they doubled debt all the while taxing more. The ladies at the school tuck shop budget better.
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A bit redundant if the message is garbage.
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Tiffany watches, gold chains, and investment properties…not surprising considering what tradies charge these days!
(p.s. the libs real screwed up with this ad).
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It is an objectively terrible commercial!
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I guess all those heartbreaking, gut wrenching Labour ads showing families in strife because of bad Gummint policies are all made without actors, using real people’s life stories. ALU
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What had me suspicious is the fact that a tradie with no presenting experience nailed the ad to the required 30 seconds so effortlessly with just two edits. Ian MacRae (no relation).
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Heyyy, acting is a trade ;).
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Despite the ceramic mug, the bucks up watch, the Tiffany store, the overseas trips, the saw horse, the fence and the voice over this just proves one thing – everyone one is so busy walking down the street with their Eyephone four inches from the tip of their nose that I forgot what the question was
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But who created this ad for the Libs? I’m feeling their pain, from under that rock. Oww
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Seriously: tradies don’t wear $7k watches? All that cash in hand, and business expense claims….Did no one remember the article where Cambridge University PhD students were leaving in droves to become plumbers in London on 70-80k POUNDS a year? It is badly stereotypical to think tradies can’t afford nice watches! They are about the only people guaranteed work in our current economy! The stereotyping is almost as bad as the ad…no, actually, nowhere NEAR as bad as the ad!
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So there is a backlash by real people, aimed at real politicians and advertising producers, because the Liberal party machine, in election mode, cast a TV ad using an actor to play a character who has been conceived in a pro Liberal think tank, and given dialogue that supports the Liberal stance. This is hardly surprising.
Perhaps some people think they should have scoured the country for real people who may fit the bill, and then auditioned them via an opinion system, to find the one tradesman* who would speak, for a fee, the very words approved by, and on behalf of the party ?
* He is obviously a man.
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Hey ALU – but other ads we know its an actor. This is an actor pretending to be a real thing and pretending not to be pretending. Bit of a difference I think.That’s what makes it even more infuriatingly bad and annoying. Goes to show how what sorts the libs are, they like nice fake tradies who are really developers.
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This ad is bang on!
Fake PM. Fake Tradie.
Shit government. Shit ad.
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Turnbull is a moderate, however the right of the partry is holding him back. The funny thing is that he does profess that we need an innovation revolution, that is spear headed by creativity, yet is cutting money to the arts (the most creative sector that we have…). Meanwhile the far right conservatives (who do not like change and relish the good old days; love fine art…). The NBN, to really make it work and power Australia firmly into the future and again, which will enable us as a nation to innovate; is being sabotaged; it MUST be fibre to the premise.
You cannot write the script.
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p.s. meanwhile all the spin doctors and the sheep / fools can do is talk about deficit. Howard et al didn’t build a future fund and squandered essential $’s that could have had Australia sitting pretty for decades to come. Norway did it and are looking rosy, all under a socialist government; fancy that! Too many snouts in the trough in Australia, on both sides of politics.
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I don’t really care if the tradie is real or fake. I object much more to how his whole dialogue (and that of the Liberal party in general) is based around “Labor’s war on…”
What the hell is that all about? Since when did a policy direction equate to a war? It’s incendiary, negative language that is totally out of line, and seems to be a trademark of the Liberal Party approach. Who needs that?
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I’ll give you the hot tip, the average tradie earns more money than the average person in the ad industry…. and given that this bloke is wise enough to not be bullied in to joining the scum CFMEU, it’s easy to see how he could be successful enough to get off the tools and afford expensive watches…. which the socialist left hates of course. How dare he succeed? how dare he invest his hard earned money in an open market?
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This just shows how stupid the Liberal government think we are. Would they like to tell this tradie that when he goes to get medical help, it’s thanks to the Labor government that he’s able to do so without having to fork out thousands of dollars. AND… this over leveraged idiot is the one who is going to get impacted the most by a housing bubble that the Liberal government and Reserve Bank are so desperately trying to create.
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Good attention vs bad attention. I dont think any attention automatically leads to what the goals of the ad are supposed to be.
Thanks to social media sharing, the pisstake will win. Does the ad swing votes? My guess is it is one big subtle instruction: he is hard working and wearing a watch and bracelet, he signifies he has earnt all of that. If the ALP take away all of that, he wont be able to show off how rich he is. But he is also a hard worker.
It is supposed to order everyone to get back in line, esp. that “current mob”. Sure, factory workers I know think like that, so this is supposed to be their cue to pay attention once to politics, and do what they say.
But, the amount of people in the factory I worked at who will be taking the piss will outway the subtle hint-hint, so in the end, I think it will fail with them. But with the housos, well, it will probably work. And if they are the actual key to getting Mal back in, then it did its work. If they are the key target to power. Which I am not sure….
As for any publicity focuses in on the Liberals: it’s a two party system, sure they’ll get attention. Which one do people think about: night or day? Hmmmmm that’s a tough one.
Someone fell for it, and the Libs are hoping it is someone who would now vote Lib in a marginal seat. Remember, not many people care or know about what is going on. Works well for the Libs.
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Well said – will they all come out and admit they were wrong now that it’s been proven he’s a bona fide tradesperson?
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Agreed. My thoughts exactly, which is why the Libs look even more stupid for using him (actor or not)! What the ad really shows is that the reason we pay such ridiculously high rates to our tradies is so that they can negatively gear and buy designer jewellery – TO WORK no less! It really acts to say that negative gearing has a negative impact on the average consumer i.e. average income earners and that if Labor did do away with it they would actually assist us all to get a better deal for services required!
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Well done! Agree totally, and very well put!
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Did a reputable advertising agency create this dross?
On top of the dreadful and talentless wardrobe, location, production, and direction decisions that were made regarding this ad (who is responsible – does anyone know? ) the lead talent’s voice has been post-synced.
Are the actor’s dulcet tones too ‘liberal’ sounding that they had to be dumbed down to represent the dialogue, dialect and poor sentence structure of the stereotypical local Tradie, we all know and love/hate?
It’s difficult for even the best actors in the world to read 30 seconds of drivel, direct to camera, so I’d be intrigued to hear the original out-takes to identify which words he couldn’t pronounce properly.
Is he one of those fink and forters? An everythink, or overly ‘strayan ocker cockie?
Or, worse that that, an Australian, who’s spent a couple of months in the UK, and now sounds like they were born and bred in Sarf London?
I’m deeply intrigued, Malcolm – please illuminate me.
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And I thought this was a trade site for the advertising industry….
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The best part is how all the trolls claiming he is a fake got played for what they are, fake people. I bet none of them have even worked in the trades or even been on a work site, but yet think they know it all when it comes to tradies. Tbh BEST ad ever!
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Many of my friends are ‘tradies’. They, like my ‘white collar’ friends all acknowledge that FTTP is the way to go and FTTN is simply put: crazy, foolish, disastrous (enter further bewilderment here). The analogy a good mate of mine gave me who works on the railways is: ‘Imagine if Australia revealed that it was building a bullet train, however for the last 100km’s passengers would be treated to a replacement bus service and not only that, the bus was 50+ years old, unreliable and running out of fuel…’
Turnbull + LNP Luddites: Stop being irresponsible with this nations resources and pull your fingers out! For crying out loud; what is wrong with you!?
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Just through the wording of your post you are clearly a liberal party staffer. The only thing you mention was ‘jobs and growth’. Come on, stay on message.
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Well gosh, you’ve obviously obtained your economics degree haven’t you? Which is surprising given you have zero understanding of how surpluses and deficits work. The whole ‘surplus good/deficit bad’ lie was a cunning sleight of hand by the Howard-Costello Government who sold off and cut back every social program and bit of infrastructure they could to manufacture this disingenuous surplus, then wasted massive amounts of it on vote-buying handouts. They then relentlessly flogged the lie to gormless, self-serving voters like you that this was a result of their good economic management. Any number of sources will tell you they were the biggest spending Government ever, so their surplus – given how they flogged off so many public-owned assets to create – was disgracefully ‘modest’ at the end of their vote-buying spree. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-.....2cj38.html
A deficit makes perfect sense for nation building projects and infrastructure (the antithesis of any right wing agenda) – borrowing the money or spending a surplus for projects that create jobs, or a proper NBN, or that equitably fund public education, or by spending instead of cutting during the world’s worst financial crisis and leaving Australia one of the only countries in the world to avoid going into recession, and one of the only countries with its AAA credit rating intact.
Finally, because “…if Labor ever prove they’re up to it, I’d respect that…”, I’ve provided a link from Murdoch’s right wing mouthpiece (not the “leftie” SMH or ABC you’ve expressed such contempt for) that demonstrates even they couldn’t spin the truth about who manages the economy better. http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....6056371414
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Oooh, ouch! Burn! Gee, you really showed up us “average people in the ad industry” and “socialist left” types eh Pat? That’ll learn us. Which Liberal Party branch does your daddy belong to, BTW?
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@Mumbrella It looks like replies are being applied to the wrong comments?
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Thanks I Know,
We’re looking into the issue as a priority.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella