The National caucus is meeting in Havelock North for its first caucus of the year. Photo / Supplied
In election year, everything is political.
The weather, cars, roads, viruses, what you say, what you don't say, where you go, how long for and who with.
Jacinda Ardern's first few weeks of election year have been planned to perfection.
First the Labour caucus retreat, well ahead of National's, then the election date, September 19, then the monumental infrastructure announcement, then a date with Auckland business leaders.
Tomorrow she leaves for four days in Waitangi.
Ardern's extended visit to Waitangi is a pattern she established two years ago.
Because she will be away for so long, she will be taking daughter Neve with her. The public may even get a glimpse.
There will be those who say she is wheeling out her daughter because it is election year, as some speculated a week ago when the inquisitive toddler stole the attention of cameras at Ratana.
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The outing did break Ardern's normal habit of shielding the child from cameras.
But according to Ardern, it was a matter of logistics and nothing to do with accentuating herself as a mother in election year.
"I have taken to Neve to Waitangi before and am doing so again this year, so in the back of my mind I knew that it was either at Waitangi or Ratana that she was going to get photographed."
"It was inevitable."
Ardern said she intended to operate in the same way as she has before, meaning public appearances of Neve would still be rare, except when they were together as a family and it was easier for them to have her with them.
"She will not be on the campaign trail with me. She will not be at election launches. She will not be at election night. You won't see her in publications."
So why the preference to keep her out of sight?
"I feel that she doesn't have so many choices at her age," Ardern says.
"I don't want her to have to constantly be in the public eye. I want her to have some choices and I feel if she is constantly exposed to that, it removes some of her choices in the future."
She also settles one issue that is repeatedly raised on social media - the question of when she will get married to partner Clarke Gayford.
"There will be no wedding before the election.
"You can't plan an election and a wedding."
Part of our interview is in Auckland after Ardern unveiled the massive infrastructure.
Part of the interview was on the Ninth Floor of the Beehive, where Ardern often gathers her closest colleagues - Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins and Megan Woods - to plan events, messaging and timing including the roll-out of election year.
A Michael Joseph Savage portrait sits behind her desk. A pottery rendition of Rangitoto, by Peter Lange (the former PM's brother) sprawls across the front of her desk – Ardern took up pottery for a while and threw pots on Lange's wheel.
She has a large board room with a table that seats at least 20.
The Ninth Floor also has one small room dedicated to one small girl and dozens of toys.
In an election of firsts, this is probably the first election in which both main contenders to be Prime Minister are young enough to have toddlers.
National leader Simon Bridges has taken a different approach to involving his family in politics.
He plasters pictures of himself on social media biking with the boys or cooking up a storm with the kids at Christmas.
They were with him on the stage at the National Party contest and featured on the thousands of Christmas cards he sent out.
Bridges says he said he hasn't explicitly thought about what part his wife, Natalie, and three kids will play in election year.
"We don't overthink it," Bridges says.
"If it feels natural and good, Natalie and the kids will be along as part of it all.
"Half the time we are struggling for a babysitter and are trying to multitask while I look after our children," he says, and recounts a recent media interview.
"Yesterday, for example, Natalie locked her keys in our car at Bunnings. I had to go and rescue them with the other set of keys and do an interview with Radio Tarana while all the kids were screaming in the background and try and cover that up."
Bridges says he has no truck with the nasty comments on social media made about Ardern's outing at Ratana and says some of them were unacceptable.
But he says the nasties on social media exist on both sides of the spectrum and his own MPs are often the targets.
And in what may become a recurring refrain this election, he accuses the media of being soft on Ardern.
"I get pretty brassed-off at the way our media seem to always become very protective of our Prime Minister – when a bunch of stuff happens to me and my colleagues it is somehow fair game and part of politics generally."
It is possibly that mistrust of the media which has fuelled National's expertise in producing social media attack ads that bypass news outlets and go direct to the voter.
It is possibly National's expertise in that form of advertising which has fuelled Ardern's attempts to frame Labour as the positive, clean and honest campaigners - with little imagination needed as to who the negative, dirty dishonest campaigners are meant to be.
Bridges dismisses the projection of Labour as positive but in a way in which it is impossible not to be negative.
"It may create some buzz in the media and in Wellington Central and Grey Lynn but outside that, I don't think it takes them anywhere," Bridges says.
Labour's attempts to frame itself as the party wanting a "factual" campaign has been in a way that National knows best, with an attack ad about "Labour misinformation" on the failed KiwiBuild policy.
Since the infrastructure announcement, Labour has rolled out very slick video ads featuring Ardern behind her big Beehive desk promoting "the Big New Zealand Upgrade".
The size of the infrastructure announcements and voter interest in them has eclipsed National this week - apart from the Serious Fraud Office charges being laid against four people (not Bridges or the party).
Bridges and his colleagues head to Havelock North tomorrow for their first caucus of the year, to map out their strategy to combat a Government on the go.
But it evident that Labour is feeling more than satisfied with its start to the year.
"We've started as we mean to continue," Ardern says.
"For me, it is about starting the year as I intend to govern for the year as opposed to how I just intend to campaign.
" I am acutely aware that I have the role as Prime Minister of New Zealand, not just leader of the New Zealand Labour Party.
"I will govern right up to the day of that election and I will campaign closer to the time too."
Ardern rejects a suggestion, however, that she has a tendency to raise expectations beyond her capacity to deliver, such as promising "transformational government" and declaring 2019 The Year of Delivery.
She would argue she has already achieved transformational change in some areas – those in which she got bipartisan support from National.
"There is no point creating transformations that get overturned in three years … I believe what we have done on the child poverty legislation and what we've done with zero carbon [legislation], that is transformation and we managed to bring people with us."
Leadership will be a clear issue and an advantage this time that she did not have in 2017 as an untested leader against Prime Minister Bill English.
She also agrees that incumbency will be an advantage this election.
"You don't just produce a policy paper. You have to do it - and that's what we are doing."
Bridges says incumbency should be an advantage for Ardern but doesn't believe it is.
"With the benefit of incumbency, with thousands of officials, with the government coffers, you expect to see a government that is firing with action three years in," he says.
"They are not using incumbency even remotely competently like a normal government would."
So what will the National Party story be this election?
Bridges: "It is going to be very simple and clear. We will deliver more money in your pocket, we will build infrastructure and roads and will give you and your family safety."
Ardern is asked the same question – what will Labour's story be?
"That we have had some massive long-term challenges to address, that we have made good progress and we will be campaigning on the record but there is still more to do and to give us the opportunity to keep going."
'He has disregarded our voice and continued with this divisive kaupapa.'