Having walked there, as a 13-year-old I was by far the youngest in the hall, sitting very small at the back behind mainly cloth-capped working men.

It was my first encounter with the “favourites”. In our class at Musselburgh School, we knew amongst our friends who were Labour and who were National.

As election day approached, our debates heightened. Fascinatingly, the strident left-wingers of those days have now become National.

Later, as a 15-year-old, I travelled to Wellington to stay with family friends. I’d sit in Parliament to view proceedings, my interest quite intense.

Those were the good old days of first-past-the-post. Tories versus Socialists, Capital versus Labour, unions versus private enterprise. There was a dramatic difference between philosophies.

Today with MMP – Mickey Mouse Politics – it’s like a lottery. The tail wags the dog, a useless electoral system remaining foisted on the hapless public.

Jim Anderton promises free dental care – with no chance of delivery. The Greens promise fresh lettuce for all. Winston promises that we haven’t seen the last of him – oh yeah.

And Helen, after a Herculean effort creating more dependence on welfare, loses the top job.

The election campaign itself was a drawn-out yawn, thoroughly overshadowed by the US presidential race.
Gone are the days of personalities. Not a Muldoon, Lange or De Cleene in sight. When the event of the week is TV coverage of Helen Clark tripping over restaurant furniture, we’ve fallen to ground zero.

When the leaders’ TV debate ends with criticism by an inadequate panellist suggesting neither aspirant was up to the task “because they couldn’t produce a policy which would resolve the worst economic crisis in more than half a century”, then like Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13: “We have a problem.”

Particularly when our media know diddleysquat about how they – the conduit for the politicians to the public – should perform. John Campbell’s adjudication of TV3’s Clark/Key debate was abysmal.

Let me reminisce about real campaigning. The year was 1975 and it was the penultimate Saturday before the election. Flown by Don Spary, a real Tory, opposition leader Rob Muldoon and my­­­self as Otago candidate did the whistlestop heli-tour from Brighton through Middlemarch, Ranfurly, Wanaka, Queenstown, Cromwell, Alexandra and Roxburgh to Mosgiel.

Sportsgrounds filled with hundreds of people, enthusiasm without respite, Muldoon in his best form, all culminating with the Saturday night speech at Taieri High.

Mosgiel was a Labour stronghold. Outside the hall was a staunch Labour man with a pig’s black head on a stick, enraging and entertaining. A fantastic night.

Later that evening taking out the milk bottles, I disturbed what I thought was a cat in the milkbox. I pushed it away – it was wet and hairy, the pig’s head. A gift from the enemy, the anti-Muldoonist.

I can still remember our daughter Lisa, then aged eight, screaming at the pig’s deathly gaze.

My thoughts also wander back to a campaign meeting at Glenorchy some years ago, when I spoke to about 30 head-of-the lake residents.

As was my way, I addressed the group and attempted to make eye contact, to connect.

I stopped looking to the left when a mother started breastfeeding a hungry child, a novel experience for a political meeting.

My consternation increased massively when on the extreme right another young baby, no doubt inspired, was also in need of feeding. Myriads of meetings over 14 elections in 36 years and the first breastfeeding had become a double whammy.

For myself, elections were a great break from the tedium of endless meetings, committees, caucus, cabinet, too many people who appeared to either procrastinate or simply find the “hardest way to do it”.

So thanks, Helen – and best of luck, John.

Can I conclude with my thoughts on the US? Perhaps now “the world’s greatest democracy”, as they proclaim themselves, will resist the temptation to be the world’s policemen.

Perhaps we can hope that the many other nations who’ve reviled the Bush administration will live to regret that they themselves will now be required to shoulder the burden they’d willingly ceded to the US.

Warren Cooper is a former Queenstown mayor and National cabinet minister