The four months before an election aren’t great for those who care about good policy.

Politicians’ competence at other times is questionable. During election season, it gets worse. Ridiculous policy proposals get airtime, with politicians hoping voters like the vibe. Just look at the past couple of weeks.

ACT promised to abolish my visa category. After causing a fair bit of panic, they clarified that the change would not apply to existing permanent residents. They may not have thought things through before the announcement.

New Zealand First said they’ll ban permanent residents from receiving NZ Superannuation. Most Western countries, including New Zealand, base eligibility on how long someone has contributed to the system. The policy would also break New Zealand’s reciprocal agreements with other countries.

Oliver’s column this week noted the Greens’ policy of nationalising supermarkets. At best, it will be a costly way for government to learn that running a supermarket chain is harder than it looks. But governments aren’t always the most diligent students.

National reaffirmed its commitment to social media age restrictions that would erode online privacy and freedom of speech. Every announcement that the government treats ‘big tech’ as an enemy makes it harder to convince international tech companies that New Zealand is a decent place to do business.

Perhaps it’s best that Labour has stayed fairly quiet.

Whatever your views on shifting to a four-year electoral cycle, it would at least reduce the share of each term consumed by election-induced insanity: 44 months out of 48 would be election-free, rather than the current 32 months out of 36.

Best not to follow elections too closely. Look instead to what people outside politics are achieving. We live in an age of wonders.

Mathematicians and AI are rapidly working their way through open, important, unsolved problems – many of which have stood for decades. New systems can also rigorously check that work. I can’t wait to see those techniques applied to difficult parts of engineering theory.

This week, Google released a free atlas predicting the effects of nine billion possible single-letter changes in the human genome. Meanwhile, personalised CAR T-cell therapies are curing cancers that would have been a death sentence only a few years ago.

Election campaigns are ugly things, but there’s no compulsion to stare into that abyss. The world is a beautiful place.

Look away, if you can.