Why re-elect Labour and its coalition pals? Well, because Helen Clark says that it’s simply a question of trust. This is Clark and Company’s mantra for our election.

How odd. Why not ask us to re-elect Labour on its nine-year record of lowering crime, soaring educational excellence, wonderful health care and all-round happiness? And rely for extra votes on the huge influx of migrants, seeking relief from the other world’s troubles, and a fulfilling future that beckons in the land of milk, honey and welfare-supported joy?

It seems like a natural choice of message: until you look at the full-on reality: Labour’s tragic record of lazy neglect, arrogance and failure.

One day before the election date was announced, history professor and Minister of Finance Dr Michael Cullen rejoiced at the dramatic cut in the official lending rate and declared that the New Zealand recession was more or less over.

Just hours later, the financial world went into meltdown, and Dr Cullen declared that John Key was unfit to run this country’s finances because he had once worked for the failed Merrill Lynch.

Not one journalist dared to ask Cullen whether he was a qualified financial adviser or a chartered accountant, or even if he had the law degree that might make him more credible as our Attorney General, and qualified to make a judgement about our abandonment of the Privy Council, or how he planned to reduce the appalling waiting lists for jury trials. No one asked him about how, as a financial whizz-kid and prophet, he had come to preside over the worst balance of payments performance in this country’s history, and its largest-ever extraction of tax from New Zealand’s earners of wealth, with virtually no improvement in our fortunes to show for it. Or what is in store for investors in Kiwisaver.

Hours later, Helen Clark got her sums wrong by claiming that, under a presumed John Key government that might have been involved in the Iraq war, 60 Kiwi body bags would have been returned home. That was bad arithmetic, and a seriously sick insult. Our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will no doubt be feeling even more threatened as a result of Clark’s loose talk. Particularly since our Air Force lacks fighters, our Navy and its bored sailor-persons are reduced to sinking undefended shipping containers and we have the worst ever record for grossly over-spending on defence and getting rubbish in return, usually delivered way past the deadline. And we don’t have an army that can guard its own medals.

Labour cannot campaign on its record of achievements, because there are none.

* Image by Elena Torre at Dreamstime.com