Jonathan Milne: Campaign is going to be rough, tough and dirty

The cold, the mud, a desperate and determined opposition battling in the small towns and the big cities the length of the country - it's going to be a tough, old-style campaign.

And the rugby tour is going to be interesting as well.

Yes, fathers bring your sons, ladies a plate please, because by the time the Lions leave, New Zealand is going to be beginning an election campaign as dirty as a Danny Grewcock boot in the head.

It was as if that famous rugbyphile Helen Clark watched a jubilant third-string Argentina side celebrate on the field after tying with the Lions last week, and thought "we can take these guys".

Mere hours later, the first serious media speculation about an election date hit the wires, as the New Zealand Press Association named July 30 as election day, quoting an unnamed Beehive source.

And as the election campaign builds, there will be as many such sources mysteriously spreading their information and disinformation in the media as there will be sauce-covered hotdogs at the rugby.

Eye-gouging and ear-biting have become the first distinguishing features of Election 2005 (brought to you by Benson-Pope's Best Balls and Brash's Baloney; the players stay by choice at Heritage Hotels, toilet facilities on every floor).

The media must take some of the blame for this: it is easier to explain Richard Prebble's resignation by his extra-marital affair than by close analysis of the Act Party's policy rifts, and politicians pander to the media's need to simplify, to personalise.

But look askance at any politicians who would claim the moral high ground in the coming months, for there are few parties in Parliament that are not willing to stoop to scurrilous innuendo when it suits them.

Just in the past week, one senior politician's wife fielded calls from a reporter convinced that the politician was having an affair with a journalist; another senior politician was angrily batting off allegations that he was secretly seeing his secretary, then that he was liaising with an Auckland businesswoman.

Most journalists believe the more sordid details of politicians' private lives are none of their business, unless there is an over-riding public interest such as a politician who cheats on his wife while campaigning about the sanctity of marriage. But some politicians have no such scruples, as an election gets closer and the stakes grow.

So, too, is the spinning top increasingly wobbling: witness National's attempt to back away from finance spokesman John Key's promise of tax cuts by Christmas if elected. And tempers are flaring: witness Prime Minister Helen Clark rashly accusing a Herald journalist of putting words in the mouth of the Labour Party president, only to have the journalist produce tape-recorded verification.

It is the sort of snappish mistake one might expect from an inexperienced newcomer, not from the politician who is set this week to celebrate her 2000th day as prime minister.

The received wisdom is that voters get grumpy about a mid-winter election campaign and are less likely to turn up to vote. But right now it is the politicians who are grumpiest.

It is time for Clark to put them out of their misery and announce a date.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY