KEY POINTS:
While Helen Clark was captured by television doing Tongan dancing in Kohimarama this morning, John Key spent the morning in Helen Clark heartland, St Lukes shopping centre.
He then ventured north to the huge shopping mall in Albany.
Hardly arduous campaigning but it is Labour Day afterall so some rest time is in order.
Key was very warmly received by everyone he approached and he had a much higher recognition factor than I would have imagined.
There was only one woman who said she wasn't voting for him but, according to him, she said she quite liked him and hoped he would win even though she was voting Labour.
It is easy to see why National does not believe the polls are narrowing.
The shoppers test, however, is no test.
I remember the optimism of Bill Birch just before the 1999 election (he retired that year) who was convinced the tide was not running against National because he was being so very well received in the supermarkets.
National finished on 30.5 per cent party vote that year, 8.24 point behind Labour.
The most excitement of the morning was a debate and bet between TVNZ political editor Guyon Espiner and RNZ's political editor Brent Edwards over whether Winston Peters would be back in Parliament.
The former says he won't, the latter says he will.
Brent, who works in the cash-starved culture of state radio, offered to bet a bottle of beer.
Guyon suggested something more fitting for a Peters bet like a bottle on Johnnie Walker. They settled on a bottle of sauvignon blanc.
It will be interesting to see whether Peters fronts for the TVNZ small leaders' debate tonight (One, 7pm).
He has been a no-show for a leaders' forum run by The Press, for Radio New Zealand's debate on Our Place in the World and for the Sky interview Campaign 08 last week.
Perhaps he thinks that he stands a better chance of being elected if people don't hear from him.
Key appeared on the Sky show last night, run by Bill Ralston, and Newstalk ZB's Barry Soper, Colin Espiner of The Press and I helped to ask the questions.
Time rushes by on those shows and you barely get time to take breath to ask a follow-up question and someone has come in with a completely new line of questioning.
I was intrigued at Key's suggestion that cutting Kiwisaver to fund tax cuts had been part of National's response to the economic downturn because that has been the plan all along.
I was also intrigued by his reasoning for having ruled out Peters from a deal with National - he said Parliament had censured him - excepting Parliament censured him on September 22 and Key had ruled him out a month earlier.
He also talked about recruiting an extra 600 more cops - which is over-inflating National's policy - to recruit an extra 224 officers over the 376 already planned by the end of 2011 - a total of 600.
That's a little bit like saying - as he did - that National's tax cuts would deliver about an extra $50 a week to the average worker - which it included Labour's October 1 tax cuts, and the gains were worth much less to earners entitled to Working for Families.
I'm sure his head is swimming with facts at present and it would be easy to get confused but he is a bit too loose on some of these things.
Clark was criticised for not pulling up John Key on things he got wrong on the One leaders' debate.
But after last night's experience, of a fast moving live show, I have a bit more sympathy for her.
