Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Surely the campaign will get better than this?

I don't want to bring you down but do you realise we have almost four full weeks of this crap ahead of us? Unbelievable.

Four weeks of small-beer politics about the price of airline tickets and school uniform logos. Honestly, is that what the contest for control of our central government has come down to? How many logos you're allowed to have on your school uniform?

Now, that's not to say it's not a decent policy. It's a perfectly fine idea to roll out. But it's not going to change the direction of this country, is it?

And this country needs a change of direction. Voters know it.

Based on what I'm hearing from the political parties, voters know, accept and have already made peace with the fact that we are broke as a country. They know something massive has to happen to fix our situation. But that's not what's being discussed four weeks out from an election.

We're discussing school uniforms and we're discussing the Greens' plan to regulate AI, when there is very little chance that a nation of five million people will have any discernible impact on a technology being compared to the Industrial Revolution.

I can count on one hand the number of policy announcements that have been genuinely interesting, viable and capable of changing this country's fortunes: National's plan to make KiwiSaver compulsory, ACT's plan to make KiwiSaver tax-free and, if you want to include the more bonkers ideas, TOP's land tax and the Greens' wealth tax.

At least they're bold. At least they address national wealth, however mad some of them might be.

Everything else is tiny stuff. Everything else is not going to help us build the wealth we need to retain talent and pay for the healthcare that every one of us will need one day.

Are we really going to spend four weeks ignoring the country's debt, ignoring the fiscal deficit and discussing hidden transaction fees on your ticket purchase to see Lily Allen?

Is that what we're going to do?

Surely the parties don't have four weeks' worth of these tiny policy announcements to carry us all the way through to election day.

Please, dear God.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.