Mike's Minute: My review of the first week of the campaign

So week one of the campaign, well I call it week one because the two major parties had their launches.

Of course, they've been campaigning for months, unless you are Chris Hipkins who upon receiving a poll a week or so back claimed he hadn't campaigned at all, until Megan Woods on this show busted him.

He showed ironically that same trait this week when he started defending Willie Jackson, who blatantly made stuff up about Act and National and the minimum wage.

Even when he corrected it, he got it wrong.

Instead of being straight up and down about it, Hipkins started dancing on the head of a pin and used the word "technically". He shouldn't do that, it makes him look churlish and dishonest.

It was the same trick with the vaccines. No one made you get one, technically he was right. But if you were a nurse, or ran a business where a jab was required, you didn't have to get one the same way you didn't have to have a business or a job. So not really a choice then, is it?

The policy of the week was Act and their productivity work.

National gets a mention for a tunnel and some EV chargers, but mainly the dumping of the ute tax.

Labour get the "are you serious?" policy award for their five things to make the economy grow, as though anyone can argue with them and they should have already been in place for at least six years.

And in that is part of their problem. The cold, hard truth is they really can't campaign on their record, for obvious reasons.

The media get a 6/10. There is no shortage of coverage but, boy, you have to look for it. There are live streams of announcements, there is detail about the place; but there is also a predilection for the pointless. There's been coverage of protests and name calling and, from some, an obsession to see skullduggery where there isn't.

The lying, the straight up and down lying, by your Andrew Little's and Willie Jackson's and Shannon Halbert's does need to be called out. It needs to stop.

Chris Bishop gets Cry Baby of the Week for his faux upset over the union ads. Yes, they were low rent and, given about a quarter of union members voted for National in 2017, you might ask whether it's a good use of your subs.

But it is hardly the most egregious campaign crime ever committed.

Add to that a couple of polls, so we've had the numbers to chew over, and for the first week I've had a ball.

The desperation isn't on show yet and no one made a major gaffe.

But there's plenty of time for that yet.

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