I suppose, officially, it's all underway. 

Parliament has finished and the two major parties have kicked off their campaigns. 

So far it is sooo depressing. 

New Zealand First over the weekend promised, in a “made it up on the spot” sort of way, to compensate the vaccine injured and the vaccine mandated. How they would do that, I don’t know. 

It will never come to pass because they need to get 5 percent, be on the right side of the ledger in terms of Government and then even if they were involved in some sort of arrangement, get that policy across the line, which of course would never happen. 

So, once again, it's a depressing outworking of MMP, where minor players get to say anything with no real accountability. 

Other minor players, like the clowns who protested at Labour's and National's launches, get to make dicks of themselves by yelling and screaming and generally looking uncouth and out of control. 

But none of that is as bad or as depressing as watching a desperate Labour party reach into their grab bag of fantasy promises and tell us that free dentistry is coming, when no such thing can happen. 

I think I am right in saying that I can't remember, in any election campaign, a promise of this sort being made that would not be delivered for so many years. 

Here we are in 2023, about to vote, and the latter part of Labour's free dentistry doesn’t arrive until we are about to vote in the following election. A whole election later, a whole term of Government passes before what they promised gets delivered. 

• Kate Hawkesby: The whole lead-up to the election so far feels a bit low rent
• Jason Walls: People are starting to poke holes in National's just-released tax plan
• Barry Soper: It's shaping up to be a full on campaign

That’s before you get to the real problem - not only is it years away, it's promised by the KiwiBuild and light rail and cycle bridge specialists, the people who make announcements and that’s the last you ever hear of it. 

We all get roads and highways and bridges are multi-year projects. 

But dentistry? How far out from the present does an election promise have to be before it becomes little more than fantasy? 

That’s how bad it has got. Desperation from a broke Government, mad ramblings from a geriatric, fringe player, yelling and screaming from conspiratorialists and revengeful sideliners. 

This is all at a time when most of us, I hope I speak for the majority, are actually interested in sorting this place out, getting a bit of professionalism and aspiration back, getting the old New Zealand back and having a bit of a rockstar economy as a reward for hard work. 

Remember any of that? Or are we all just down in the mud with the tragics and attention seekers looking to be the loudest bottom dweller?