Some things are never going to happen because the date of implementation is so far in the future that what happens in the interim will make implementation either very difficult, impossible or even unnecessary.
Labour is caught tight in the jaws of a fiscal crunch. But the party's very DNA dictates that it spend money to meet social objectives and restore services that have suffered from National's Budget cuts.
Yet maintaining the party's fiscal credibility is paramount. Labour cannot afford any repeat of the battering it took in the first week of the campaign. The party yesterday released its carefully costed children's policy both to try to strike a balance between those twin pressures and get the party's campaign back on track.
The cornerstone policy contains much which is not controversial and not necessarily that costly.
However, the party is talking of increasing paid parental leave from 14 weeks to 18 weeks and then from 18 week to 26 weeks.
This is what Bill English would call "a nice to have". But Labour is delaying the first change until April 2014 - just seven months before the election after this one.
With early childhood education, Labour says it will progressively restore the $95 million-a-year staff subsidy "over the course of two parliamentary terms".
This delayed timetabling has enabled Labour to scrape together enough money to make an early start on tackling child poverty.
As well as making the first $5000 of income tax-free, Labour is also promising to top up the incomes of beneficiary families by $60 a week where the youngest child is under 2 from April 2013 and families where the youngest child is under 5 from April 2015. This is to compensate for beneficiaries being ineligible for the $60 in-work tax credit which is paid under the Working for Families programme but only to those with jobs.
All beneficiaries eligible for Working for Families assistance will get the $60 from April 2018. This latter date requires a degree of credulity to be taken seriously.
Depending on your preferred measure, that date is three elections, two complete parliamentary terms, six Budgets, or nearly two Rugby World Cups away.
You would not bet your in-work payment on Working for Families not being overhauled within the next seven years.
Labour, however, is counting on most voters only picking up on headlines saying what it would do - rather than the fine print of when it would be doing it.
Sidelights
* Getting in first: Pipped at the post or mere coincidence? A statement from family-friendly United Future which had Peter Dunne calling for an annual report card on whether families are being helped or hurt by government policy landed in in-boxes at 1.57pm yesterday. That beat the release of Labour's children's policy by four minutes.
* Not yet gone, but already forgotten: There he sits, all alone, in a parallel universe while the election goes on all around him. But Rodney Hide is still Minister of Local Government. Yesterday he put the Hamilton City Council on notice over the troubles surrounding the V8 Supercar races. Unless he resigns earlier, Hide keeps his job until December 15 - the day the official result of the election is declared.
