The Labour Party has promised to run a clean election campaign, free of dirty tricks, smear campaigns and what it called a personality cult, Radio New Zealand reports.
The party held its election-year congress over the weekend and unveiled its campaign slogan, “Vote Positive”, not on the party's leadership.
David Cunliffe's reference to a personality cult was a direct swipe at the National Party's campaign slogan Team Key - which is centred around its leader Prime Minister John Key.
“Labour is running a positive campaign. We care about New Zealanders and their opportunities. We want to talk about them. We want to talk about policies that assist them. We want a clean, positive campaign,” Cunliffe said.
Labour released also more of its education policy at the congress.
It said it would reduce the student-teacher ratios at primary schools from 29 to one, to 26 to one by 2018 - and will train 990 more teachers.
Education Minister Hekia Parata said Labour's idea of reducing class sizes would achieve very little.
“That policy was Labour's policy the last time it was in Government and student achievement flat-lined at best. Investing in the quality of all teachers is more important than class sizes.”
Parata said Labour was seriously understating the costs of its policy.