However, on the bright side, I was delighted to read the piece published yesterday in Hawke's Bay Today by the Matariki-HBREDS people about the many drivers' licence initiatives in Hawke's Bay.
The New Zealand Howard League is one of the community-based groups promoting driver's licences as a "passport to a job" and last calendar year our Hawke's Bay Unlicenced Driver's Initiative saw nearly 200 licences issued through our programme.
There are many drivers' licence initiatives around the country and as yesterday's HB Today article demonstrated, several groups in the Bay are attempting to address what is a major opportunity to upskill young people, get them into paid employment and make a real attack on our burgeoning prison population.
It is a sad fact that more than half of New Zealand's prisoners identify as Maori but what is less known is that 65 per cent of these Maori prisoners have a driving offence as at least a part of the conviction that leads to their first jail sentence.
Putting taxpayer money into helping people headed for jail by getting them through the driver's licensing process makes powerful economic sense when you know that keeping someone in jail is now costing the taxpayer more than $110,000 per annum.
With just a month to go before election day, the campaign has come alive with Labour Party Leader Jacinda Ardern acting as a catalyst for a pent-up desire for change that had been bubbling under the political surface for some time.
With a grandson, I scored great seats at Labour's campaign launch in Auckland last Sunday and I'd have to say (somewhat ruefully, having been responsible for organising such events in the past) that this was by far the best I've witnessed.
The Town Hall was full; three alternative venues were also needed and the atmosphere was electric.
In my experience, these occasions are dominated by grey hair but not this one.
Large numbers of young people showed up and Jacinda was in heavy demand for "selfies" for a couple of hours after the wind-up.
These events are an essential part of motivating the essential party troops on the ground in the electorates who enrol the voters, distribute the leaflets and perform dozens of necessary tasks.
By contrast, the normally slick National campaign machine is floundering.
I don't know why anyone in their right mind thought it was a good idea for the PM to visit Hawke's Bay and pose in a paddock in foul weather to re-announce 10 roading projects that were already on the Government's books.
The number 10 invited comparison with the 10 bridges that National pledged to the voters of Northland in its failed attempt to head off Winston in the byelection in March 2015.
The media did not resist this bait and it was revealed that none of those promised bridges had eventuated.
As I'm interested in penal matters I had a good look at National's revived proposal for the Defence Department to run "boot camps" for the worst young offenders.
The Prime Minister's own chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, warned about such training in 2011, saying there was no evidence it worked, but this didn't stop the policy getting warmed over and re-announced.
Printing the official policy hot off the press, I was struck by "Waiouru" getting repeatedly misspelled as "Waioru".
"Waioru", which translates as "quagmire", could well be the emblem for National's campaign so far.
Like the 10 roads, boot camps were a rush of blood to the head without even time for proof-reading.
This is sloppy and not the way to win an election.
* Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
