By VERNON SMALL

After almost three years beguiling reporters with a mix of relative openness and access to the Prime Minister's cellphone, there is no doubt that the Government was severely spooked by the media during the election campaign.

At the start of the campaign it was so ingrained that the media would accept Labour's "right" to a second term that one senior minister even mused: "I suppose you are going to 'pretend' there is a real contest for a couple of weeks?"

Lulled into complacency by reporting which had generally praised the first term's policy delivery, strong leadership and smooth political management, even experienced MPs were taken aback when the media began giving the Opposition equal air time and critically examined Labour's promise of stable Government and principled leadership.

In the end, it was only by comparison with the sheer awfulness of National's campaign that Labour's result looked vaguely acceptable.

The reasons have already been well canvassed.

Vitriolic attacks on its potential coalition partners undermined the promise of stable Government.

The failure to sell a positive programme left its appeal for the party vote looking threadbare.

And Helen Clark's role in bagging potential coalition partners and her unlovely television interviews over fake paintings and claims of contaminated corn sapped public enthusiasm for an outright Labour majority.

The upshot was a dive from more than 50 per cent in the polls at the start of the campaign to just over 41 per cent by election night.

Labour's first reaction was to blame the media for its aggressive and "oppositional" approach - or, more accurately, to start asking itself whether it should blame the media.

Senior ministers pondered aloud if they would, in some unspecified way, alter their approach.

Social Services Minister Steve Maharey and Energy Minister Pete Hodgson went as far as to organise a "de-briefing dinner" with some senior journalists in an attempt to find out what went wrong.

Was Helen Clark's post-1999 approach no longer enough?

She had adopted a simple strategy: assiduously returning media calls and reinstating weekly post-Cabinet press conferences.

On a less public level, she agreed to regular interviews with influential former critics, such as Ian Templeton of the newsletter Transtasman, and opened a briefing-cum-gossip line to Victoria Main, the political editor of Labour's old enemy, the Dominion.