With just three days left of campaigning to go, the election battle between the two major parties has become a maul, with Labour and National plunging the depths of negative campaigning as they scrap for every last vote.

The attacks come as many people hold-off casting early votes, with early voting well down on the last election’s tally. Whether this is due to fewer people fearing being unable to vote because of Covid-19, indecision, or a decline in turnout because of negative campaigning is unclear, but as of October 9, just 733,000 ballots had been cast, well down on the 1.28 million votes cast at a similar point in the last election.

National leader Christopher Luxon dubbed Chris Hipkins the “prime misinformer” after Hipkins clarified Labour’s free dental care for people under 30 policy only covered “basic” dental care.

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Campaigning in Nelson and Blenheim, Luxon turned the screws on Labour for running a “campaign of disinformation”.

The attack was in retaliation for Labour dubbing National’s tax policy a “scam” after it was revealed only about 3000 households would get the full $250 a fortnight National had been promising in ads and media appearances in which it usually, though not always, added the qualifier: “up to”.

National returned the favour, digging up ad after ad promising “free dental” or “free dental care” without the qualifier “basic”.

Finance spokesman Grant Robertson said Labour had always been clear about what was in and out under the policy.

“We’ve been very clear that it’s free basic dental care,” Robertson said.

Lieutenants Robertson and National’s Nicola Willis were rolled out as both turned up the volume on, of all things, fiscal policy.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon campaigning. Photo / Derek Cheng

Between 5am and 6am on Tuesday, both released fiscal plans for their opposite number.

Labour went first, mocking up a National fiscal plan in the party’s blue and purple colours. It recosted policies like National’s foreign buyers’ tax, taking account for the fact economists believe the policy will bring in far less revenue than National anticipated.

It also said National would need to cut into frontline service delivery at the likes of the Department of Conservation if it wants to follow through on its promise to cut backroom expenditure by 6.5 per cent on average.

According to Labour, National would need to cut $3b a year from public services to make those promises add up.

Robertson also pointed out the party’s cuts to landlords’ tax bills in the form of reinstating interest deductability correlated with the amount of money National planned to save by recalculating the way annual increases to benefits were costed.

Hipkins said this was a spending cut for beneficiaries to pay for tax cuts for landlords.

“I think that shows the National Party have their priorities all wrong. In a cost of living crisis, they want to take money away from our poorest families and have thousands more children living in poverty so that they can give tax breaks to landlords,” Hipkins said.

Willis responded in kind, releasing a fiscal plan for Labour.

Much like Labour’s plan for National, National’s plan for Labour was Labour-red and emblazoned with the words “ruin it for you”, a play on Labour’s campaign slogan “in it for you”.

Willis claimed Labour’s promises were far more expensive than it had costed them to be, blowing out the plan by $7b.

The biggest contributor to this was Willis’ disbelief that Labour would stick to its spending plans, having consistently spent more than it had signalled - Labour defends this by saying that Covid-19, the inflation spike, and Cyclone Gabrielle have forced it to spend more to keep up.

Willis added $2.4b to Labour’s plan to bring it up to what she thought was a more realistic number.

She then re-costed the Labour Party dental policy, saying it would be significantly more expensive than Labour had said - although Robertson shot back saying Willis had “costed something else”, which was effectively not the “basic” dental care promised by the policy.

The difference between Labour’s idea of Labour’s policy and National’s idea of Labour’s ended with slurs being lobbed back and forth across the Cook Strait.

Labour also faced heat for a new ad claiming National would erode entitlements to superannuation, although neglecting to mention that National’s policy of lifting the superannuation age would only kick in in 2044.

National is clearly worried this policy is putting off older voters, with Luxon at pains to assure a retirement home audience in Christchurch last week that they would not be affected by the policy, because they would not be here in 2044. Luxon neglected to go for the more benign truth that all would be well over the retirement age when the eligibility hikes begin.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.