John Armstrong: Do-or-die time as Brash lays his cards on the table

With the election campaign now down to a drag race between Labour and National, today is the day the rubber really hits the road. It is make-or-break time for Don Brash.

He has to deliver the goods when he finally takes the wrapper off National's tax cuts this afternoon. He has to deliver the goods when he confronts the Prime Minister head-to-head in tonight's leaders debate on TVOne.

The loser of the two debates so far, Dr Brash must lift his game tonight.

There can be no more stumbling over details of his party's policies.

He must confidently project a competent government-in-waiting, rather than merely scratching the numerous itches of dissatisfaction a portion of the electorate feels towards Labour.

He needs to stop treating such debates as just debates and start treating them as life-or-death struggles.

His inexperience is a handicap National will have to shoulder through the next four weeks.

It would not matter so much if National was coasting to victory on a tide for change.

It does matter when the party is locked in its tightest, toughest contest in more than 20 years.

Dr Brash also has to realise he is up against someone whose speciality is making a four-course meal out of the tiniest slip-up or slightly loosely worded statement.

Helen Clark's game-plan is to grind down voter sympathy for the underdog's inexperience and make that an issue of competence, while not appearing arrogant doing so.

He needs to bring a real edge to his campaigning, starting tonight.

Otherwise, it will be three strikes and you're out as far as the rest of Dr Brash's campaign is concerned.

Another failure tonight would leave the tax policy carrying too heavy a burden to pull National through to polling day, even though senior MPs are expressing quiet confidence they will trump Labour's de facto tax cuts for middle-class families.

There was a hint in Dr Brash's speech at National's campaign launch at Auckland's Sky City yesterday that the policy may be more innovative than just an exercise in cutting rates.

But the minor promise to alter the way tax is collected from people who have second jobs seemed to have been inserted in the speech to whet the appetite for today's announcement, without taking the edge off that hunger.

It also stalled accusations of Dr Brash having nothing fresh to say.

He was not alone in this. A few streets away in the Auckland Town Hall, Helen Clark was reheating Labour's "KiwiSaver" scheme as her seventh and final campaign pledge.

However, such rallies are ritualistic affairs designed to make the parties feel good about themselves. Dr Brash and Helen Clark followed the required script. They both appealed to nationalistic sentiment. Where he saw the country failing, she saw it succeeding. They denigrated each other without mentioning each other by name. The difference was, he was in dire need of pumping up for the next four weeks, which will be the most draining, frustrating and challenging of his life. She was not.