Clark compares Key with Brash, English

ONE NEWS: With the election still at least three months away, the New Zealand campaign may have begun to get personal.

The Prime Minister  launched a direct attack on opposition leader John Key on Sunday morning, labelling him thin-skinned and an unknown quantity.

Clark says Key has no background in public life, and has spent years outside New Zealand doing heaven knows what.

She suggests he compares poorly with his predecessors, saying Don Brash had presence and authority and despite bad election results, Bill English is a very clever man.

Clark says the National Party leader will hang himself, because while he is a very carefully scripted and managed candidate, he is not good on his feet.

She says gloomy headlines do not bother her, and calls John Key the least of her worries.

Her words come after revelations in the last two weeks that Key and the 2008 National campaign was once again being coached and counselled by Australian political marketing firm Crosby Textor, which the party had remained reasonably circumspect about until that point.

Key is shrugging off the direct attack, simply saying that he and Clark are very different people.

He says while he may not have years of political know-how, he brings a wide range of international and domestic experience to the table.

Key operated outside of New Zealand primarily in the late 1990s. He had worked for a number of local business and finance companies beforehand and then joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore in 1995. He was actively headhunted by the National Party after they learnt of his interest in a political career.

While the accounting and finance sector alone appeared to form the majority of his pre-political career,  Key says he understands the real issues facing New Zealand, and won't be bound up by issues from the 70s and 80s.