Analysis - One of the few moments of agreement in Wednesday night's NZME leaders' debate came right at the outset, when both men insisted, hand on heart, they'd never told a porkie in politics.
It was about as convincing as the next 90 minutes.
Time and again, National's Christopher Luxon and Labour's Chris Hipkins gave voters little reason to believe them, with one frequently flip-flopping and the other over-committing.
Tuesday night's 1News-Verian poll showed the uphill battle the leaders faced coming in, with their respective parties tied at just 28%, evenly matched in their mediocrity.
Both leaders were also stuck on 20% as preferred prime minister. In other words, three out of every five voters have someone else in mind.
Moderator Ryan Bridge put the wider predicament to both men bluntly: "Why are you guys doing so poorly?"
Looking for someone to blame, neither looked inwards. Hipkins attributed the malaise to general voter disillusionment, while Luxon noted a "global political problem" where mainstream parties had "failed to deliver" - but not his, he quickly clarified.
Luxon was particularly prone to making sweeping commitments, only to hurriedly retreat from them.
Asked whether he'd increase the minimum wage in line with inflation, he responded: "Yes, and that's what we've more or less been doing."
Except in each of the past three years, the coalition has increased the minimum wage by less than the rate of inflation, as Hipkins noted.
Luxon performed a similar somersault on supermarkets, promising New World and Pak'nSave would be split apart by the end of the next term, "for sure".
This time it was Bridge who reminded him the policy was actually contingent on the Commerce Commission's sign-off.
The parties' fiscal plans also came in for a battering, with Bridge recalling both parties' previous promises to deliver surpluses that never materialised.
"Can we trust either of you?" Bridge remonstrated.
On other matters, the leaders were dubiously definitive.
For the umpteenth time, Luxon was pressed on whether he would pick up the phone to Opportunity's Qiulae Wong if he needed her party's support to form a government.
And for umpteenth time, Luxon insisted: "No, I've ruled them out."
"No way, Qiulae," Bridge quipped. Yes, way.
Hipkins was also trigger-happy with his permanent pen, perhaps forgetting for a moment that Labour no longer commands the support or sway it once did.
In an in-the-moment captain's call, he ruled out giving key law and order portfolios to any Green or Te Pāti Māori MP, after they posed for photographs with Mongrel Mob members.
No doubt Hipkins is hoping the firm condemnation plays well with middle New Zealand - but the reality of MMP is that numbers matter - and on current polling, the Greens would have a claim on a sizeable wedge of the Cabinet table.
At just 28 percent, Hipkins is hardly in a position of such strength to be dictating terms to his potential partners.
The same applies to his declaration that Greens' co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick could never be Treasurer.
Both men did have their moments to shine.
Hipkins was at his strongest on jobs and pay, pointing out there were 48,000 more people unemployed on the latest figures compared with when Luxon took over as prime minister.
"You celebrate cutting jobs," he chided Luxon. "I want to create them."
And when Luxon accused Labour of failing to properly fund its promise to restore pay equity, Hipkins turned the attack around, delivering an impassioned defence of care and support workers.
"[National] think women should settle for being paid less than men," he said. "I don't."
Luxon, on the other hand, was at his best when making the case for his government's economic management.
Asked to explain why his government had yet to fix the economy, he deployed a killer line: "It's really easy to burn a house down. Takes time to rebuild it."
He also made the most of a near-uninterrupted opportunity to savage Labour's proposed capital gains tax.
"It's going to kill our economy. It's going to add a lot of costs. It's going to slow down and suck out our recovery," Luxon warned.
"But the worst thing I think you're going to do, Chris, is you're going to trash the property market."
Luxon finished by looking straight down the barrel of the camera: "Mark my words, you are going to pay, New Zealand. You are going to pay."
At last, Hipkins fired up, accusing Luxon of lying.
"This is why people don't trust what you say," he said, again bringing the debate back to the question of trust and honesty.
In a lighter moment, the two men were invited to reminisce on their school years, but both refused to divulge the name of their best friend.
"Did neither of you have friends?" Bridge teased.
Looking at current polling, that one is rather easier to believe.
