With two weeks to go before New Zealand’s general election, the contest is so close that many have stopped bothering to make predictions over who will win. And yet, despite such competition, one would be hard-pressed to call the parties’ campaigning lively.

The election is being contested by a pair of unprepossessing men named Chris: wonkish, technocratic, affably bland on the stump, they have been crisscrossing the country in a spirit of hokey conviviality.