Campaign Diary: 9 days to go

Compiled by political editor John Armstrong

Where there's smoke there's fire ...


National's sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut offensive on the Greens is looking a bit dopey. Jenny Shipley yesterday claimed the Greens would force Labour to decriminalise cannabis as a price of coalition. Yet some of her own MPs, including her Police Minister,support a review of the law and think their boss is getting a bit carried away. Not Tony Ryall, however. The Justice Minister thought he'd hit the jackpot when he discovered a press clipping from 1996 of Green No 5 Nandor Tanczos saying smoking dope was his "God-given right." But the Greens were also trawling the back copies, revealing the Young Nationals voted in 1995 to legalise personal use of marijuana.

Act of God


It could have been worse for Bill English. At least the central Otago floods pushed the Reserve Bank's interest rate hike well down last night's television news. The Treasurer was resigned to the bank's intervention, which will flow into mortgage rates. But it cuts across National's painstaking efforts to reassure middle-income New Zealand that everything's hunky-dory. English is hoping this crucial segment of voters will see the bigger picture of a recovering economy forecast to grow at a chirpy 4 per cent next year.

All right on the night?


No wonder Labour and National are reminding people in their advertising that the party vote is the one that matters. The Electoral Commission reveals only 44 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men understand the party vote determines each party's share of seats in Parliament.


WHAT THEY SAID


* "I have stood at the urinal of life." - Labour's transsexual Wairarapa candidate and Carterton mayor Georgina Beyer.

* "It's nice to know there are other opportunities out there." - National's Gerry Brownlee, after vandals transformed a hoarding photograph of him into a cross between a 1970s rock star and a South American dictator.

WHERE THEYLL BE


TODAY: Winston Peters releases NZ First's economic policy in Hamilton; Richard Prebble forays into Shipley Country in mid-Canterbury; Jenny Shipley is in Wellington and Nelson; Helen Clark swings through Christchurch; Jim Anderton launches the Alliance employment policy in Auckland.