KEY POINTS:
History repeats - but not quite. John Key has been blindsided by something from his past. It has happened at the exact same stage of the election campaign that Don Brash came a cropper in 2005 - nine days out from polling day when voters are firming up their choices.
The repercussions for Key are unlikely to be anywhere near as serious, however.
Brash got into bother after admitting he had known all along the Exclusive Brethren were responsible for anti-Greens and anti-Labour leaflets when he had earlier claimed he didn't know. The U-turn dogged the then National leader into the final week of the campaign and may have cost National that election.
The charge that National's current leader has misled the public over the dates when he was working as a foreign exchange dealer for Elders Merchant Finance in the 1980s is nowhere near in the same league.
Brash and the Brethren was easy to comprehend. The so-called H-Fee saga involving Elders and Equiticorp and sham foreign exchange deals is extremely complicated. Moreover, it happened 20 years ago.
It is not the "neutron bomb" capable of taking out Key that Labour had been hoping to find when its president, Mike Williams, went to Melbourne to trawl through court documents relating to the H-Fee.
It does turn out that despite earlier assurances that he had already left Elders, Key was still working for the company when one of the sham deals was made.
But that is about it. There is no evidence Key was involved.
However, the discrepancy over the dates when Key said he had left Elders and when he did leave does offer further grist to Labour's efforts to paint him as "Slippery John" - someone whose story varies according to circumstances.
It gives Helen Clark fresh ammunition to fire in the two televised leaders' debates in the final week of the campaign.
But will she? As many, if not more people will see Key's confusion over the dates as a simple memory lapse as will consider it an attempt to conceal the truth.
Labour has to weigh up whether arguing Key has failed to be straight with the public might instead backfire on the party, given Williams was obviously digging for dirt.
Clark's reluctance yesterday to say whether she thought Key had misled the public indicates she is thinking carefully before going down that path.
