KEY POINTS:
National and Labour are urgently redesigning their election campaigns.
Because of the sudden and shocking international financial crisis which is exacerbating a domestic recession, the decision voters face on November 8 is much more fundamental than it was just a few weeks ago.
Politicians are way outside their comfort zones. Suddenly, the campaign isn't all about carefully prepared policies and promises to spend a bit more here and there.
It is about survival, and which of the main parties has the best policies to steer New Zealand through the worst international financial and economic meltdown since the 1930s.
Even more important to the outcome is which party voters trust to handle the situation for the next three years.
Helen Clark's government, familiar after nine years in office, or John Key's new government?
The international situation isn't going to get better in a hurry, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
An example of the way this has affected the campaign is the response to National's tax cuts. The debate isn't mainly about how much and when, but whether they can be afforded and where the money is coming from.
Key, who knows a lot about international financial markets, realised this and made some quick decisions.
He scaled down the tax cuts and brought forward the announcement date. He fitted the cuts into a broader economic picture and explained the impact they would have on it.
And when National launched its campaign in Auckland, he talked about "rising to the challenge presented by tough global conditions" and the urgent need to inject "additional stimulus" to the economy.
Clark realised it as well. In her opening television campaign message on Friday she dealt with the way her government had managed the economy through the last nine years - which she noted had been mostly good years.
She used her campaign launch, at the same time as National's, to announce the Government would implement a bank deposit guarantee scheme and outlined her plans for dealing with the international crisis.
Clark set out a six-point plan to deal with an economic crisis, focused on the critical need to protect jobs.
And Winston Peters wasn't going to be left behind.
His Tauranga campaign launch on Friday was laced with references to the financial situation, although in his populist way he targeted foreign-owned banks.
High interest rates were "imported foreign financial garbage masquerading as so-called market forces" and New Zealand First was going to stop banks creaming off $4 billion a year in profits.
He said his party would guarantee deposits of up to $100,000 in New Zealand-owned banks and change the Reserve Bank Act to save the country from "present evils".
So the party leaders know what time of day it is, but whether they can produce rescue plans that voters are going to believe in is another matter.
Before the international banking sector started falling over, Labour had decided its campaign would be based on trust.
That meant: could Key be trusted in the light of his mixed messages and policy changes over the last year or so.
Now it is about whether he can be trusted to save the economy.
His response has been to accuse the Government of basically making a mess of it during nearly nine years of economic sunshine and of being poorly prepared for the problems the country is now facing.
He is still talking about ways in which National would create greater prosperity, although the task of delivering that has suddenly become much harder because of the bleak and uncertain economic outlook.
Labour will continue with its "this election is about trust" strategy and will link it with the economic impact of a severe international downturn.
Two opinion polls on Friday indicated changing circumstances were causing voters to reconsider their choices.
The Morgan Research Poll and the TV3 poll were conducted amid the deteriorating international situation but before National had announced its economic and tax cuts package.
The Morgan poll was astonishing. It showed National shedding seven percentage points and Labour gaining ground - the gap between them had closed to three points.
NZPA thought this was probably a rogue poll, an aberration which occasionally strikes all surveys. It was way out of line with other recent polls.
But a few hours later the TV3 poll showed National down four points to 45 percent and Labour up three to 39 percent, a gap of six points compared with 11 a fortnight ago.
The chances of them both being rogue polls was extremely unlikely. Something had to be going on.
It is too early to say this is a definite trend. Polls in the next few days might not show the gap is closing at such a dramatic rate.
But it does appear the economic uncertainty could be to the Government's advantage. Clark is prime minister. She can do things, while Key can only talk about the things he would do if he was prime minister.
And voters who had been thinking about supporting National might now begin to wonder whether this is the time to change the Government.
A few weeks ago many voters were fed up with rising prices and high interest rates, and they were going to make the Government suffer for that. With much more now at stake, they might be wondering whether it would be worth the risk.
- NZPA
