Rather too much has been made of the Labour Party's conference workshop enthusiast's idea that canvassers should hand out departmental information leaflets while door-knocking for votes in the election this year.
If ever there was a proposal designed to annoy potential voters it was this: after all, by the time the election is held - whether an early poll in July, as now seems quite possible, or one in November - the public will have heard so much about electioneering advertising as to be entirely hostile to canvassers of all persuasions, no matter how informative their pamphlets.
The Prime Minister was quite right to veto the idea, and correct to condemn it as representing poor judgement about what is and is not "campaign material''.
It is important that people understand the difference. Government departments are apolitical: they push no party barrow.
But when governments introduce new policies, especially policies involving quite complicated arrangements or much detail, departments quite properly issue information material, often in the form of pamphlets, to help consumers understand what is being done, and how they may benefit.
In the case of Working for Families and KiwiSaver, it was essential for comprehensive publicity material to be made available by the departments concerned.
And every member of Parliament, not just Government MPs, has a duty to explain to constituents what is being done in their name where law changes or new policies are concerned.
Just what is "campaign material'', however, may finally be determined by the courts, at the behest of the National Party and, we do not doubt, at the unstated wish of every political party, including Labour.
That Labour already intends using the taxpayers' resources to publicise its own key policies is no longer denied, even by the Government.
That it has a list of policy completions reached over the past nine years - including Working for Families and KiwiSaver - and wants to publicise them is also undeniable, but its hunger to sell them to a constituency perhaps weary of nine years of the same faces saying much the same things has crucially been hamstrung by the Government's self-serving obsession to limit the election spending of its opponents.
The Electoral Finance Act, without clarification of its baffling and often contradictory meanings for politicians by the courts, may yet limit Labour as much as its competition.
People might now also be waking up to the realisation that those all-too-frequent television advertisements promoting Government policies have been paid for by taxpayers and are, in a de facto sense, promoting Labour and its allies in election year.
Voters should already be aware Labour has been three times found in breach of electoral law, and was the first party to breach the new rules, although it is not being prosecuted. And only the very naive will assume that a law which enables Labour-affiliated unions to spend up to $120,000 on anti-Labour campaigns was ever innocently intended.
The taxpayers' watchdog, the Auditor-general, itemised in 2005 the potential for the use of government publicity material for political campaigning and couched it in terms of a warning. And the independent Electoral Commission has since made clear that MPs do not have an exemption to spend up large, using taxpayer funds that many thought the Act gave them.
But, as with most things in life, context is important. The Prime Minister clearly understands this, which is why she has vetoed the Labour Party member's bright idea.
Whereas it would hardly go amiss if a Labour canvasser handed out departmental publicity material on Labour-generated policies in a non-election year, that is not the case in the extreme sensitivity of a campaign year - when the restrictions on election advertising spending that once used to apply only for the six-week campaign period proper now apply for the entire year - doubly so in the charged political atmosphere that is the outcome of such a regrettable item of legislation as the Electoral Finance Act.
It is good that the Prime Minister has intervened, but no-one should forget that the Government's recent history has been to use whatever publicity means at its disposal, including bending and even breaking the rules, to promote itself.
It cannot be trusted not to do so again, so the utmost vigilance is required - and a considerable degree of scepticism by voters.
