KEY POINTS:
Big promises, small children, a packet of cliches and voila - it's the opening statements of the political parties.
Labour and National both screened their opening statements on television tonight - with John Key going big on promises of a better future, and Labour's highlighting its record over the past nine years and warning voters not to trust those they don't know.
For Labour it's a chat with Helen Clark, trying to smile while she talks as the camera moves in a slightly dizzying fashion around her.
She takes the pepper shot approach when it comes to policy areas which might resonate with those watching, rocketing through education, first home buyers, hip-operations, arts and culture, Treaty settlements, climate change.
She manages to squeeze in a mention of the Olympics and All Blacks, and Whale Rider as well as a bit of the personal - "I grew up in our family farm, in Pirongia. Being in the outdoors, out in the bush, out in the snow means a lot to me." There's a flick through the photo album of Clark with famous people - Nelson Mandela and Edmund Hillary and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
But the real point is to contrast her own record with that of her rival.
"Who do you trust?" she says at the start of the presentation, and returns to it again later, warning the job requires hard judgment calls "drawing on your own values and experience." "Trust is critical" she says, and in case the point was missed, once she is done, the words: "this one's about trust" are splashed over the screen.
From National came a livelier piece overlaid with the Corelli School Choir singing a song written especially - "Brave Country."
The commentary is accompanied by a video diary of John Key's travels.
There is John Key with the Corelli School choir children, at a medical centre, on the factory floor, meeting ordinary people at the Porirua Markets, and standing in the milking shed behind a line of cows.
He doesn't bother with famous people - instead taking careful target at the type of person who might be home on a Friday night and watching TV One between the news hour and Coronation St - middle New Zealand parents, mothers in particular, and the elderly.
Mr Key talks directly to them - "you work hard, you do the right thing, you pay your taxes and you try to raise your family responsibly. You are entitled to expect the same level of commitment and responsibility from your government."
He focuses only on a few policies - education first, the economy and tax cuts, health - "we've got more health bureaucrats than hospital beds" and a pitch for the elderly vote with law and order promises to "crack down" on P and gangs and the "ticking time bombs" that are youth criminals.
He mentions Labour by name only once, to criticise it for being undisciplined with the public purse. He talks about how much greater New Zealand would be and then dips into his barrel of clichés and coming out with this pearler:
"We can do it, we know we can do it. And it will be one of the important traits that will make us successful because it will be the glue that keeps people in New Zealand and makes them go the extra mile."
So the opening salvoes were fired, ahead of a weekend which will see the same themes hammered over and over again at the campaign launches on Sunday.
