Politics is largely about trust.

When you break it down to its most simple terms, it's about trust.

If you see a bloke or a woman on the telly trying to get your vote, you try and work out what sort of person they are? Do they think like me? Are they smart? Are they thick? Can I trust that they'll make a good decision at an important time?

It's a magic thing that takes a lifetime to earn in a second to plunder.

And so as the Labour Party faithful filed in for their annual conference gearing up for another year and then probably another term in opposition, voters won't be thinking about anything to do with politics right now because we're mid cycle.

It's way too early. It's like fretting over a birth before you're even pregnant.

But when they do, they will ask whether they can trust Chippy. Like a sugar daddy Santa he was doling out the cash quicker than you could rake it in at the weekend.

A full price new hospital in Dunedin. How much exactly will it cost? Well, we don't know, but we don't care, they're getting it.

Same goes with the rail enabled ferries. Hipkins says he'll make it happen.

How are you going to pay for all of that is the question when, as we learned last week, our growth outlooks have been downgraded.

Nicola Willis has hinted that we'll probably be looking at, at pushing the surplus even further out into the future, which makes you wonder whether it's ever even going to happen, no matter who's in government, it's that bad.

So how do you spend all that money, commit to spending all that money, commit to reversing all the cuts that National has made as well and then still balance the books.

It's like wizardry and that's where trust comes into it.

After six years, Labour lost the country's trust on many issues because as many people have said they couldn't deliver a pizza or run a bath.

They've been quiet on tax for now, but the remit did pass at the election.

So the question is whether Labour should at this point be promising much in the way of anything to anyone when they've lost so much capital on delivery.

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