Steve Braunias: Secret Diary of the election campaign

From left: Gareth Morgan, Peter Dunne, Winston Peters, Jacinda Ardern, Bill English.

GARETH MORGAN

A pig walks into a bar and asks for some lipstick.

The bartender says, "Sorry, Jacinda, I think you've had enough. You need to go home with a sober policy driver."

That's about the size of New Zealand politics today and if anyone has a problem with the way I've put that, they need their head tested. They need to see a doctor. They need to lie down on a couch and have a shrink go through whatever childhood trauma they suffered for them to turn out to be such a total dropkick.

And if that doesn't work then they should do everyone a favour and die.

I'm here to talk about policy. I'm not here to talk about lipstick on pigs. People say, "But you've made it about lipstick and pigs." I haven't made it about lipstick and pigs at all. Lipstick and pigs are the last thing on my mind. People say, "No, you opened your mouth, and you talked about lipstick and pigs."

I could just as easily have said, "You can't polish a turd." Let's go with that one. Because the thing to do with a turd is to flush it. Flush it, and watch it as it goes down the gurgler, and ultimately, thankfully, like anything small and insignificant and of no use to anyone, disappears.

PETER DUNNE

And now, the end is near.

And so I face the final curtain.

I planned each charted course, each careful step along the by-way.

And more, much more than this - I did it their way.

Cheers Labour and National! Couldn't have done it without you!

WINSTON PETERS

I was at an Asian takeaway the other day and ordered nasi goreng.

The Asian behind the counter said, "How spicy would you like that?"

Incredible, isn't it. Asians come into this country, they contribute to society and keep vital industries alive, they pay for our hospitals and our schools, and they ask questions that confuse elderly New Zealanders.

I didn't know what to say. I stood there for an hour, and then the Asian closed for the night. But I held on to my money - so I got the better part of the deal.

JACINDA ARDERN

The thing about an election campaign based on relentless positivity is that it's just so . . . relentless.

I'm a happy person and a natural optimist, but the demand to continually be like that during every second of the campaign is . . . relentless.

One of our idiot MPs sent an angry, threatening letter to a night market after he failed to get free space for me to make a public appearance. I had him on the carpet and told him to pull his head in and think twice before opening his stupid mouth.

He said, "Are you angry with me?"

I said, "Can't you tell?"

He said, "It's just that you laughed your head off the entire time, and even now you're smiling. Relentlessly."

BILL ENGLISH

Our chief election strategist gave me directions to the venue where the National Party is staging its campaign launch on Sunday. I got there, and called out, "Hello?"

I heard my voice echoing in the darkness. The strategist called back, "Over here."

I followed the echo and eventually bumped into him.

"We're standing," I said, "in a dark, cold, deserted space, which could be seen as symptomatic of our campaign to date."

"We're standing," he said, "in what will one day be a new motorway which New Zealanders can drive faster on to get from A to B."

"We're standing," I said, "deep beneath the earth."

"We're standing," he said, "in a tunnel of national significance."