If you had a fully grown elephant in your dwelling place, wherever or whatever it may be, you would surely see it, smell it, or bump into it. You probably couldn't move without finding it obstructing any plans you may have.
On the other hand, you could ignore it or pretend it wasn't there and hope, like National, Labour, the Greens and others in the election campaign, that it would go away and not be so obvious.
Don't mention it and people won't notice.
Reading election leaflets, Internet websites and newspaper reports, one could be forgiven for not realising that the huge ever growing animal in the room of political and financial debate really did exist.
Labour - the party that brought sales of valuable utilities and the like, which we all owned, and introduced us to the inflation stimulating goods and services tax - except for financial transactions, of course - now wants to convince us that such is all so wrong.
We knew that years ago.
Labour now promises to take " tough decisions for the future" and " address the ever growing gap between rich and poor." Just like that !
National, of course, just tinkers around instead of telling us it is in power and that's where it wants to stay. It hasn't any real plans to improve the lot of most people-a few perhaps-but then that's always been the case. It too makes no mention of the elephant in the room despite the fact that it has been unnecessarily feeding it by the baleful for years.
The Green Party makes a few noises - like wanting to bring "100,000 kids out of poverty" -never asking what part they played in putting them there - and they would avoid a legacy of debt ( for these kids presumably ) by having "a clean, green economy ". How would they have a clean green economy without leaving a legacy of debt? They don't tell us.
The Greens have had a whiff of the elephant's presence, but have no clue what to do about it and prefer to ignore it in the hope that it goes away.
So what is this ever growing elephant in the room?
It is debt-a huge amount of debt that will have to be repaid and cannot be ignored. Debts that are costing billions of taxpayers' dollars a year with interest charges just to keep the animal friendly.
The financial system cannot function unless more debt is created, and interest paid on it, and is not one that will enable a clean green economy to be introduced.
We have a legacy of debt already -the elephant in the room-growing and growing each year - and until political parties face up to its existence-instead of ignoring it- one day we will all be financially suffocated, just like the Greek people are being at present.
Then, like Queen Elizabeth, in commenting on the 2008 financial crash, we will ask " why did no one see it coming?"
- contributed by Paula Bazarotti, political commentator