Josie Pagani, Labour’s candidate for Rangitiki in the last election and, incidentally, my researcher for two years on Top of the Morning, has penned an interesting opinion piece in today’s Herald  which the paper has headed “Workers lose faith in party with glum message”. Her theme is essentially that making people feel miserable about their lives is not a good way of getting them to vote for you. Helen Clark sometimes used the term ‘”shroud waving” to convey a similar message.

I think Josie has a point, though it’s difficult for an opposition Labour Party during an election to avoid talking about poverty, unemployment, kids going to school without breakfast, the minimum wage and the appalling and widening gap between rich and poor in this country.

Josie’s column led me to thinking of some other reasons why Labour did so poorly in the election. Some can be summarised in just a few words:

• The extreme improbability of any political party in New Zealand being voted out after just one term in office;
• The nation’s love affair with John Key, without doubt the greatest exponent of the photo opportunity and ‘skinetics’ in the history of New Zealand politics;
• The relative lack of voter enthusiasm for Phil Goff;
• Earthquakes, mining and shipping disasters which, in media terms, disadvantage those not in power and unable to influence events;
• The Rugby World Cup, a convenient distraction for National shortly before the election;
• The general euphoria that winning the Cup produced;
• Widespread voter disengagement from politics, particularly on the Left.
• The self-fulfilling nature of three  years of polls branding Key and National  sure-fire winners and Goff and Labour sure-fire losers.
• Labour’s courage in advancing policies that made long-term economic sense, but were highly unattractive to voters in the short term: a capital gains tax and raising the age of eligibility for the pension.   

I got to know, like and respect Phil Goff during the six months or so before the election. I’d written about him several times on this site. If he’d read them, he would not have found much that was cheering in those posts. I gave him little chance of winning the election. My arguments were essentially that he had been around too long, that defeating Key in his first term as Prime Minister was a virtual impossibility and that he was wooden on television.

As it turned out, Goff won one of the three televised debates hands down and, in my submission, had an honourable draw in the other two. But it was simply too late. I suspect that if Goff had won all three debates hands down, the outcome would have been no different. The country wasn’t listening.  

Nor was Goff helped by the idiotic decision of Labour’s campaign team not to have a Party launch and not to feature the Party Leader on any of their election billboards. The only possible interpretation that could be placed on this hare-brained scheme was that Labour was embarrassed by Goff and wanted him kept in the background. And that is precisely the interpretation that the media, political commentators and, I suspect, voters placed on it.

It was certainly the interpretation which I placed on it and I branded Labour’s campaign team “idiots” on the Jim Mora programme. Some days later I received an irate call from a very senior member of that team who told me that a lot of people in the Party were very angry about my remarks and suggested that I really ought to pull my woolly head in. The conversation ended amicably enough, but I have since found no reason to change my view of this particular ‘strategy’ and still think they were idiots, albeit well-meaning. I don’t know and haven’t asked whether Phil was himself party to this decision but, whether he was or not, it was an appalling misjudgement that undoubtedly damaged him at the worst possible moment in the campaign.

Another serious misjudgement was Labour’s conviction that their campaign ace-in-the-hole was their opposition to the sale of state assets. That conviction was largely fuelled by the feedback they were getting from focus group research. My own view of this style of opinion gathering is that it is about as reliable as consulting the entrails of chickens. The sample size is too small and the scope for subjective interpretation too large. But Labour leaders seem dazzled by what they see as highly reliable scientific evidence, and questioning the reliability of focus group information is seen as akin to heresy.

If you ask a dozen New Zealanders in a room whether they are opposed to the sale of our high-performing SOEs, a clear majority will naturally say that they are. But their opposition will be intellectual rather than visceral, almost a case of what they think they ought to believe as good Kiwis, rather than something they feel in their guts or would change their vote for. So the focus group and other research that showed that most New Zealanders didn’t want state assets sold was probably statistically correct. What it didn’t record was that this was the head speaking, not the heart.

Finally, Phil was probably not helped by Helen’s dramatic departure from the scene or by her ordination of him as Labour’s new leader. Having served a parliamentary apprenticeship only three years short of hers, he might just have appreciated another three or six months to get his bearings and turn to her for advice. But it was probably never on the cards. On numerous occasions Helen said to me or Judy that being Leader of the Opposition was the worst job in the world. No way was she going back to that.

It’s David Shearer’s turn now. He should probably take note of one major reason why Josie Pagani thinks Labour lost so much support:

“We were seen as looking backwards, not forwards. We didn’t sound aspirational, we sounded miserable. We were turning up on people’s doorsteps telling them their lives were gloomy. And anyone who has ever been poor knows the last thing you want is someone telling you your life is crap.”

“There was one age-old Labour message that always got me in the front door for a cup of tea and a chat – ‘Labour will create jobs. We’ve got a plan to do it. Just give us the mandate to get started.’”

Makes sense to me.

 Over the past six months Judy and I have come to know Phil Goff really well. The experience of working with him has been something of a revelation for me. We were colleagues before, when he was out of Parliament, teaching at the AUT. I didn’t warm to him. Small things can influence your view of another person, often wrongly. Phil had this swaggering walk, which suggested  arrogance. He still has it. But I have known no politician less arrogant than him. Goff is a modest man, not given to airs and graces – a part explanation perhaps of his discomfiture on television.

Looking for words to describe him, I come up with: warm, generous, kind, caring, loyal, principled, hard-working, intelligent, passionate – a decent man.

‘Passionate’ may surprise. At the beginning of the campaign it was fashionable to call him ‘robotic’. But the television debates revealed a man with a passionate commitment to social equity. Where inequity and injustice are concerned, you have to add ‘anger’ to his list of qualities.

Ironically, it was his opponent who seemed ‘robotic’ during the campaign, a smiling photo-opportunist cuddling dogs and babies, yet whose eyes showed no trace of real emotion.

But what has most impressed those working with Goff has been his extraordinary resilience in the face of polls and pundits that until very recently have branded him  ‘loser’. I can think of only one occasion when I thought he looked a little down. But it was fleeting. Phil refused to be beaten. He showed, and continues to show, enormous strength of character.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s election, Phil Goff can stay or walk away with his head held high.

I was worried about ‘the worm’. TV3 had made the indefensible decision to allow viewers at home who could afford a particular type of phone to vote on who was winning at any particular time in the debate. ‘Indefensible’ because the owners of those phones would come from a social group much more likely to support National than Labour. They then decided to combine the indefensible with the defensible – an audience of 65 uncommitted voters who would be given meters to record their preference for what each leader was saying during the debate.

Here’s the outcome: for three quarters of the debate, Phil Goff registered approval and John Key disapproval. For one part of the debate, where Goff spoke of the possibility of an arrangement with Peters, the worm favoured Key.

More significantly, the economically-biased ‘rich folks’ worm produced virtually the same result.

Those are the facts.  

Trouble is, TV3 didn’t seem too happy with the facts. Enter ‘the panel’. You might think that TV3 would have been careful to ensure that the panel had a more or less equal representation of Right and Left. But you would have been wrong. The panel consisted of Duncan Garner, TV3’s political editor who, one might have thought, was politically neutral; academic Therese Arseneau who, one might have thought, was politically neutral; and former National Party candidate and Right-wing advocate, Paul Henry.

I’m comfortable with Henry being there, providing there’s a Labour Party supporter there as well – maybe Mike Williams or even me. But there isn’t. This is a completely uneven balance and, given the importance of this debate, totally undermines the really excellent work that the network and John Campbell have done in the previous hour.

So it turns out, if you’re to believe what Arseneau and Garner and Henry have to say, that you really imagined that the worm – that is to say the uncommitted voters secreted somewhere in Auckland, and the viewers at home with expensive cell phones – actually supported John Key for at least half of the programme, which, if you’ll excuse me, is total bullshit.

So the purpose of the panel seemed to be to say – hey, Goff did OK, but really the night was Key’s and, even if it wasn’t, Labour has no chance of winning the election.

So I’d like to put this question to Mark Jennings, Head of News and Current Affairs at TV3, and Keith Slater, the producer of this programme: How do you justify having two supposedly disinterested commentators on your panel, along with a former National Party candidate and no-one from Labour? I’ll answer the question for you: other than justifying the exorbitant money you’re paying to Henry, you can’t.

Well, I doubt that many people watched the panel anyway. The reality is that this was a rout. Phil Goff by a knockout. If you doubt it, watch the replay on TV3’s website. And when you’ve done that, you might like to put a call through to the network and ask them: where was the Labour Party spokesperson on your post-debate panel.

I’m against selling our state assets. I’m impressed by Labour’s argument that you can only sell an asset once, and that, as soon as you’ve sold it, you’ve lost the revenue stream forever. Forever is probably the key word. You have to calculate the dividend loss for an indefinite period that ends – never.

And I’m not impressed by the Government’s intention to use the money from asset sales to fund hospitals and schools. Funding for hospitals and schools shouldn’t come from  selling the family silver, it should come from general taxation. If it doesn’t, where are you going to find the cash to fund health and education next year, and the year after that, and the year after that,  when the assets are gone?

I’m familiar with the Government’s answer: ‘We aren’t selling off the lot; we’re keeping a controlling 51% share and we’ll still have the dividends from that.’ Well, 51% of the dividends! And I hope you won’t think me unkind, but I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you on this. When you run short of dough, and you will run short of dough, you’re going to sell the rest. Of course you are. You’re philosophically opposed to the idea of governments owning and running businesses. That’s the private sector’s job.

And this is where you’re out of touch with the essentially chauvinistic view of a majority of Kiwis: ‘Hey, this is our bank; it’s got our name on it – Kiwi Bank; this is our airline, it’s got our name on it – Air New Zealand; this is our power station – we built the bloody thing! This stuff is all ours and you want to flog it off to foreigners.’ Ours and foreigners are probably the key (but not Key) words in this debate.  

So it’s pretty clear what side I’m on – ‘Get your grubby hands off our assets.’ The polls seem to suggest that that’s the majority view among voters. But is it enough to win Labour the election? Those same polls would seem to suggest that it isn’t. Why?

Well perhaps I can use myself as an example. I’m against the sale of state assets. I think selling them can’t be justified on economic grounds; and I share the nationalistic sentiments of so many Kiwis that they’re ours and we should keep ownership and control of them here.

But my objections are essentially intellectual rather than visceral. I think we shouldn’t sell Kiwi Bank, Air New Zealand, our power companies and the rest, but it isn’t a gut issue for me. My gut issues are to do with poverty, child abuse, unemployment, a decent wage, access to education and health care, the protection of the weak and disadvantaged, an enlightened justice system not founded in punishment and revenge… These are just some of the issues that, to answer the question put to Goff and Key on the first TV debate, I would march on the streets for. But to stop asset sales? Probably not.

What I’m trying to say is that Labour is right to oppose the sale of state assets, but it has placed too much reliance on the fact that most Kiwis oppose those sales, and too little reliance on the actual depth of feeling behind that opposition.

The same may well be true of its policies on a capital gains tax, compulsory superannuation, raising the retirement age and so on. These are sensible and courageous proposals. But their appeal is to the intellect and not to the gut. For most ordinary people, they are not vote-changing issues. And where they are vote-changing issues, the change will disadvantage rather than favour Labour.

I’ll be voting Labour on the 26^th of November, not out of habit, but because my gut tells me that this government seeks to retain office by rewarding the rich and not merely neglecting but blaming and punishing the poor. That, rather than asset sales, should, I believe, be Labour’s core message in the remaining two weeks of the campaign.  

And of course, whether you want a show-pony or a man of quiet integrity to run the country.

Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. It wasn’t Goff. And it wasn’t Key. It was you and me – the voting public. We were conned by Television New Zealand into thinking that for an hour-and-a -half last night the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition would debate the serious issues that confront this country, the channel’s Political Editor, Guyon Espiner, would keep order and, by the end of the 90 minutes, we would all be better informed.

We should have learned from history not to trust that promise. Television New Zealand has never treated the Leaders’ Debates as anything more than an entertainment. Its remit to sell audiences to advertisers, its suspicion that viewers are fundamentally uninterested in politics, its conviction that the attention span of the average television consumer is seven minutes tops and its paranoia about doing anything that might bore that viewer into switching channels, all contribute  to the entertainment ethos that drives the Leaders’ Debates.

‘Debates’ is of course a misnomer. A real debate requires an extensive exchange of views between the parties. Three or four minutes on a topic, some part of that time spent in an undecipherable cacophony of moderator and leaders talking at once, cannot be called a debate. But that is precisely what TVNZ wants and the programme is structured to ensure that result. 

A 90-minute programme does not of course comprise 90 minutes of content. A standard commercial half-hour has about 22 minutes of programme material. So a commercial hour-and-a-half will have no more than 70 minutes of content.

Into this 70 minutes last night, TVNZ managed to squeeze the following ingredients:

• Mark Sainsbury’s opening and closing;
• Guyon Espiner’s topic introductions and questions;
• John Key’s and Phil Goff’s responses on at least 15 different topics. (I didn’t count.)
• Sainsbury’s interviews with Jon Johanssen and Claire Robinson during the breaks;
• Questions from Fran O’Sullivan, Wallace Chapman and Shane Taurima;
• Viewers’ questions;
• A text poll.

 It can’t be done.

And it wasn’t done. In almost every case, the so-called ‘debate’  between Key and Goff had to be cut off mid-stream or earlier, leaving the issue not merely unresolved but barely touched on.

Respected  Media and Communications scholar Ernest Hess-Luttich called this sort of exchange ‘pseudo argumentation’. As it happens, this is precisely the form of entertainment that TVNZ wants from its election debates – political leaders squabbling to no purpose.

We were at least spared the bedlam of audience shouting and abuse which occurred during the first of the Clark/Brash debates in 2005 when a senior TVNZ network executive appeared in the studio during the first commercial break to encourage the 50:50 National/Labour audience to ‘rark up’ the leaders with even more shouting and abuse.

I don’t want to get too precious about this, but doesn’t an organisation called ‘Television New Zealand’ have an obligation in an election year to provide its audience with proper forums for discursive political debate rather than programmes based on the entertainment ethos of a Punch and Judy Show? TVNZ clearly thinks it doesn’t. I find that shameful.

As to who won, I leave that to you. It seemed to me that it was pretty even.

There’s general agreement that the three televised debates between John Key and Phil Goff scheduled to take place between now and the election could  play a significant role in changing voter perceptions of the two contenders.

Television viewers have seen a lot of Goff over the last three years primarily because he has, on principle, made himself available for cross-examination. He regards that as something any politician aspiring to the highest office in the land ought to do. Key, on the other hand, has been largely unavailable for media interviews, preferring, it would seem, to be seen rather than heard. It’s interesting that the video which preceded National’s phoney debate TV opening was a montage of the Prime Minister’s photo ops with famous people.

If the polls are anything to go by, not being available to answer questions is a more effective strategy than being available to answer questions. But it can hardly be described as a more responsible strategy.

The televised debates thus assume a particular importance since they represent the first occasion on which the PM will be available for media interrogation before a large audience and the first occasion, outside Parliament, when we will see him in a face to face encounter with Phil Goff.

However admirable it may have been, there has been a significant downside in Goff’s willingness to face media interrogation on television. He’s not comfortable before the cameras, not at ease in the studio. That’s a considerable disadvantage in the age of presidential-style campaigning and it has been a significant, perhaps even the most significant reason for his extremely low rating in the Preferred Prime Minister polls. The opposite is true of John Key.

Parliament watchers will be aware that it is a very different story in the House. Goff is a superb debater – informed, confident and extremely forceful. Key isn’t, relying instead on disparaging put-downs and playing to the audience – his colleagues.

The first of the televised debates in 2008 revealed another side to ‘nice’ Mr Key – the bully. He constantly talked over Clark and shouted her down. Bizarrely, the Labour leader was accused by commentators and some viewers of having behaved badly. She had made the mistake of continuing to talk while Key was shouting. Perhaps people found that ‘unladylike’.

Over the next three weeks the Prime Minister will find himself in a somewhat different situation than over the last three years. He will be cross-examined by journalists and he will face an opponent who is a formidable debater and who has demonstrated in the House that he can beat him in argument.

It is to be hoped that the moderators of the debates will understand the difference between reasonable interjection and shouting down and will have the skill and the authority to prevent the contenders talking over one another for lengthy periods.

If this morning’s Q & A ‘debate’ between David Parker and Steven Joyce over the parties’ economic policies is anything to go by, that hope will be vain. Moderator Guyon Espiner failed totally to prevent Joyce talking over Parker, even allowing the Minister to produce and read from a piece of paper while Parker was talking. As is inevitable in these circumstances, Parker had no option but to respond in kind, chipping in and talking over Joyce. Result – debate bedlam.

Espiner will be the questioner in tomorrow night’s TV1 debate between Goff and Key. In the interests of providing the voting public with a reasonable understanding of the relative merits of the two men and their policies, he will have to do considerably better than this.

Is John Key such an inspirational leader that he deserves to enjoy the support of 57% of New Zealand voters? Is Phil Goff such a hopeless leader that he deserves the support of only 8% of New Zealand voters? Has the National Party’s record in office been so impressive that it deserves to enjoy the support of 56% of New Zealand voters, including one might surmise, a significant number of Labour defectors? And has the Labour opposition been so feeble that it deserves the support of only 30% of New Zealand voters?

Well, if the polls are right – and there is no great difference between one and another – then the answer to all of these questions would seem to be Yes. But are they right? The extremity of their findings – the adulation of John Key and the seeming invisibility of Phil Goff; National having twice as much support as Labour  – seems curious, given the parlous state of the economy, the high level of unemployment and the near-Third-World conditions in which so many of our citizens, both adults and children, are currently living.

As a nation we seem to have closed our eyes to these realities, so dazzled are we by the luminance of the Prime Minister. The mirror image of ourselves as a people which the polls present seems to me less than flattering. Are we really a nation more impressed by style than substance? Are we really that shallow? 

It seems that we are. It surely can be no coincidence that Key’s rating as ‘preferred Prime Minister’ is virtually identical to National’s rating as preferred party to govern. In the minds of Key’s supporters, leader and party are one and indivisible.

Attacking the messenger is never a good look, and arguing that the polls may be wrong invariably suggests sour grapes. But a couple of things are at least worth noting. The good or bad news which the polls bring each month reflects the answers given by around 1,000 people to questions put to them by professional pollsters. The so-called ‘margin of error’ is a little over 3%. Statistically speaking,  the polls should be reasonably accurate.

However, a problem arises from the fact that the information is gathered exclusively by landline. This creates a bias in the poll results, since people on lower incomes – the non-working, working and lower-middle classes – tend not to have landlines, relying instead on (frequently pre-paid) mobile phones. The same is true of students and younger people in general. You can’t text on a landline.

The pollsters are of course aware of this and use a statistical formula to correct the imbalance. But they still don’t know how the people without landlines would have ‘voted’, had they been given the chance. The exclusion of a significant segment of the voting population, a segment more likely to be sympathetic to the Left, must surely be a relevant factor in judging the reliability of political opinion polls.

More important than this (to me) is the effect on voter perception and decision-making of the polls themselves. If you are constantly being told that scientific polling shows that X has no chance of winning and Y has no chance of losing, your inclination to vote for X will diminish and your inclination to vote for Y increase. That is simply human nature. People like to back winners. And they don’t want  to waste their vote on a certain loser.

For months now the pollsters and their media messengers – most prominently (since they are on television) the political soothsaying duo of  Garner and Espiner – have been telling us, with a degree of schadenfreude bordering on glee, that Goff and Labour are toast. It seems naive in the extreme to believe that this has no effect on voting preference. The polls, in a word, have a built-in tendency to be self-fulfilling.

This might be of less significance – and the results might be slightly or even significantly different – if political issues were discursively debated on prime-time television. They aren’t. There is no programme on prime-time television devoted to the analysis of political issues. This reflects, and has for decades reflected television executives’ belief that politics are boring and of little interest to the prime-time viewer. Hence the marginalisation of political debate to Saturday and Sunday morning. Q & A and The Nation are both good programmes, but their audiences are, of necessity, small in comparison to programmes broadcast in the evening.

This absence of informed, in depth, prime-time television debate of political issues serves to favour and encourage political judgements made on the basis of on-screen personality or facility with the medium rather than on the basis of policy or the national interest. What the politician says or believes is of less importance than how he or she comes across. As a long-time media advisor to the political Left, I am of course complicit in all of this. But this does not prevent me from bemoaning the failure of the television networks to meet what I consider their obligation (certainly Television New Zealand’s obligation)  in a democracy to foster and promote political literacy among their viewers.  Politics has been reduced in prime time to the level of a beauty contest in which the contestants’ attractiveness is the main criterion for winning the judges’ approval.

It is his superiority on the political catwalk, combined with the near-total absence of discursive political debate on television that accounts in large part for John Key’s dominance in the polls. No New Zealand politician has ever had a better understanding of the power of celebrity, of the role of the photo-opportunity in generating and maintaining public approval, of  the infectious nature of proximity to the rich, famous and powerful. The adjective most commonly used to describe Key is ‘nice’, closely followed by ‘easy’’. His opponents like to dub him ‘Smile And Wave’, perhaps not realising the power of smiling and waving.

One could be amused by all of this if it were part of a wider and deeper political discourse, but it seems to have replaced political discourse entirely. In a curiously circular logic our political leaders are judged not on the basis of the merits or lack of merits of their stewardship or policies but on their ratings in the polls. John Key is a superb leader because he is on 56% in the preferred Prime Minister polls; Phil Goff is a hopeless leader because he is on 8% in the polls. It thus becomes virtually impossible for a low-polling leader to improve his or her  rating, since it is the rating itself that is the gauge of political ability.

If I had any doubts about the merits of this argument they were utterly dispelled by Duncan Garner. Sunday’s 3 News Reid Research poll had brought as little comfort to Labour and its leader as the One News Colmar Brunton Poll on the same night. But on Monday TV3’s political editor had a few more rabbits to pull out of the hat:

Fewer than two in every 10 people think Phil Goff can win the next election, according to our latest 3 News Reid Research poll. And it is not much better if you ask just Labour voters. One in three Labour voters now thinks it is time for Mr Goff to stand aside as leader of the party.

In our latest 3 News Reid Research poll 78% of voters said he cannot win. Just 16% said he can.

But it is not much better amongst his own believers – more than one in two Labour voters have lost the faith. 56% say he cannot win and just 37% of his own voters say he can.

Labour is trailing National by 25 points in our latest poll, and Mr Goff is on track for a humiliating defeat.

So we asked Labour voters, should Mr Goff be dumped as Labour’s leader.  30% say yes get rid of him – that is one in three of his own voters.  65% say leave him there.  5% did not know.

One senior Labour MP told 3 News today the latest polls are “depressing and it’s dead man’s territory”.

Now here’s an interesting question for Mr Garner: If John Key is on 56% in the preferred Prime Minister polls and Phil Goff  is on 8%,  what precisely could you expect to learn by asking the same respondents  whether they think Goff  can win the election?

I’ll help you with the answer, Duncan – Absolutely nothing!

An even more interesting question might be: Why bother including a question to which  anyone who knows that 56 is 7 times 8 already knows the answer? On current polling the odds against Goff winning the election are huge.

Here’s one more for you: Would a poll result stating that ‘fewer than two in every 10 people think Phil Goff can win the next election be helpful or unhelpful to Goff’s chances of actually winning the election?

It’s a rhetorical question, Duncan, so I’ll ask another one:

Could anything be more damaging to Goff’s chances of actually winning the next election? Well, maybe if a majority of Labour voters thought Goff had no chance of winning. And, shiver me timbers, by a slim majority, your poll showed that too.

On a roll here, me old mate. Might as well go for the biggie and ask those Labour voters whether they think Goff should be dumped as party leader? Not quite so conclusive this time: 30%  which, as you helpfully reminded us, is one in three, said Yes, while 65%, which you forgot to remind us, is two out of three, said No.

So what we had here was a poll about voters reactions to the polls. My problem with it is that I find it hard to believe it was neutral in its intention. Given the sheer predictability of its outcome – a double whammy whose effect could only  be to further damage Goff’s electoral chances – it  was gratuitous at best. In effectively asking respondents to predict the outcome of the election by interpreting  the meaning of previous polls, rather than simply stating their own voting preferences,  it was also of  dubious  value as a piece of research.

Still, as I said earlier, complaining about the polls is not a good look. But it would be helpful if the delivery and analysis of  poll results was not television’s main contribution to prime-time political coverage, and debate of the political issues confronting our society was.

scoop.co.nz

At 70.6%, John Key’s rating as preferred Prime Minister had gone through the roof, the result, a sceptic might suggest, of more photo-ops in the press and on television than I have seen in more than 40 years of politician watching.

And Phil Goff? Still languishing in single figures? Another depressing 6 or 7 percent? Well, and this really is curious, that was the one figure from its DigiPoll that the Herald didn’t give us. So I had to find out for myself.

In the latest Herald DigiPoll, the Leader of the Opposition scores 12.4%, an increase on the previous poll, which in turn was an increase on the poll before that. And yes, it isn’t huge but it’s a lot higher than Helen Clark was polling at the same time in 1996, the year she would have become Prime Minister, were it not for the treachery of Winston Peters. 

What pollsters always tell us is that what matters is the general trend rather than any individual poll. Well, both Labour and Goff are trending up with almost 5 months to go before the election. So I wouldn’t write them off quite yet.

In the meantime, I’d really like to know why the Herald didn’t publish Goff’s rating which would have brought a degree of comfort to him and his supporters.  

Probably just an oversight, eh?

Sean Plunket is an intelligent and informed interviewer but seems more preoccupied with confirming his reputation as a tough  interrogator than with asking questions  that are relevant to voters six months before a general election. It would be hard to imagine a week in which the political pendulum has moved so quickly or so far, yet in his interview with Phil Goff on Sunday’s The Nation, Plunket spent almost 90 percent of the time nitpicking his way through the Labour Leader’s past history.

Like all interviewers of this stripe – and we have more than our fair share of them in New Zealand – what Plunket was looking for was ‘the king hit’, the knockout question that leaves the interviewee floundering and defeated. As I indicated in a previous post, Goff is no great television performer, but his stubborn refusal to yield to any of Plunket’s propositions, combined with Plunket’s seeming inability to provide supporting evidence for those propositions, left the interviewer with only one avenue of attack – to keep repeating the  question in the hope, one presumes,  that Goff would eventually tire of denial and give way. He didn’t.

What follows is a transcript of the interview with my comments. I identify seven basic propositions which Plunket puts to Goff: 

Proposition 1: You inherited Helen Clark’s caucus.

 Sean Now for the latest in our extended interviews with influential New Zealanders. Joining me is the Labour Leader Phil Goff. Phil Goff welcome to The Nation. Some criticism there in the piece we ran, I’m wondering your views on Michael Basset’s claim that you inherited the leadership of a party with a caucus which perhaps was more designed for the glorification of Helen Clark than to advance the Labour principles which you have held so dear for so long.

Phil  No totally disagree with that. I think that reflects more on Michael’s relationship with Helen. There’s no suggestion that I have anything other than great confidence in the people that I have in my caucus, they’re able, they’re talented, a good mixture of experience and freshness and dynamism.

Sean You didn’t pick them though, you inherited them.

Phil No, but a third of that caucus is new since 2008, so they’re fresh faces, they’re people that I’ve got enormous respect for. I can see the core of the next Labour government in that caucus, people that are talented to be Cabinet ministers, people that work hard in their electorates.

Proposition 2: The Consistency Pitch – You were a Rogernome in the 4^th Labour Government, now you’re [pretending to be] a proponent of traditional Labour Values

Sean You’ve been in politics essentially your entire adult life, and as we heard even from your student days it has been a passion for you. In your maiden speech in parliament you quoted Michael Joseph Savage, you talked about social justice, but in 1984 you found yourself implementing policies that I’m sure Savage would have been spinning in his grave over. How did you make and why did you have to make that transition from what some would call core traditional Labour values to essentially the creation of a free market economy in New Zealand?

Phil Well I think my values have stayed pretty consistent actually all the way through, and it is a strong belief in social justice, a fair and a decent New Zealand where everybody gets opportunity. We have basic security around issues like health and education and housing, but most of all you have opportunity because that’s what the legacy of the Savage government gave to me a working class boy, able to get a university education to make his way forward in life.

Sean But you were sitting round a Cabinet table implementing policies that were promoted and endorsed by for example the Business Round Table.

Phil Well actually if you look at my portfolio of Housing at that time, you’ll actually see a pretty left wing position on housing. We built more houses.

Sean Were you a voice in the wilderness during the Douglas years?

[Sarcasm]

Phil No no, because I understood as most New Zealanders understood that the legacy of Muldoon was policies that might have related to the 1950s but didn’t relate to the 1980s. We had to make changes. Many of those changes were right, some of those changes were wrong, and my experience of life is that when I find out that something’s wrong I change my position. What do you do?

Sean Fair enough to say David Lange replaced you as Minister of Housing with Helen Clark because he considered you to be too free market?

Phil Oh I don’t think that’s true at all.

[Housing 1^st denial]

Sean He did replace you?

Phil Well of course, I went on to two other portfolios, and the Housing portfolio was given to Helen who was then a new minister, but I’m proud of what I did as Minister of Housing in those days, getting a lot of families into homes of their own, and getting a lot of families that needed social provided houses.

[Housing 2^nd denial]

Sean Did you for example though support Roger Douglas’s proposal to sell the state houses?

[First of a series of questions in which the word ’support’ is ambiguously used: as a Cabinet Minister Goff could not have spoken out publicly against a Cabinet decision; this does not mean that he was personally in favour of that decision or did not speak out against it in Cabinet. Plunket essentially exploits this ambiguity.]

Phil No, I never supported that, and you can go back through my track record and have a look at that. We increased the level of state housing from the past Tory government that had run it down, and that was important to me. I represent an electorate that has a significant chunk of state housing. I grew up in that electorate, I know how important housing is as a base ….

[Housing 3^rd denial. Plunket loses interest and tries a different example: flat tax.]

Sean Did you support flat tax which was voted for and approved by the Cabinet?

Phil I supported the Cabinet decision on it, I didn’t have any involvement with it.

Sean So you were part of the decision for flat tax?

Phil Insofar as I was a Cabinet Minister.

[Plunket tries a different example: American warship visits.]

Sean Alright, did you support inviting an American warship to visit?

[Note the ‘Alright’, normally indicating a concession.]

Phil No I did not support…

[US Ship Visits 1^st denial.]

Sean You weren’t part of that Cabinet decision?

Phil No I did not support…

[US Ship Visits 2^nd denial.]

Sean You weren’t part of that Cabinet decision?

[Sophistry. Unless he was absent from caucus, Goff must have been part of the decision.]

Phil I was part of that Cabinet decision and we determined that New Zealand would be nuclear free, free of nuclear power, and certainly free of nuclear armaments, and I’m proud of the position that government took.

[US Ship Visits 3^rd denial.]

Sean Alright but you were in the Cabinet that invited the warship, you were in the Cabinet that ….

[Factually incorrect question. Note the ‘Alright’.]

Phil No no no no no I’m sorry. We did not invite the warship. That was the whole basis of the breakdown of the ANZUS Treaty, Labour as a Government determined that we would be nuclear free.

[US Ship Visits 4^th denial.]

Sean There was a split there and the invitation was extended, was going to be extended though.

[Plunket changes his incorrect question from an invitation ‘having been’ extended to ‘was going to be extended’.]

Phil No. The decision of the Cabinet was that there would be no warship invited and that’s what led to New Zealand having a very openly independent foreign policy.

[US Ship Visits 5^th denial. American warship question answered. Plunket decides to give flat tax another outing.]

Sean Okay. Flat tax, you were in the Cabinet that supported that?

[Note the ‘Okay’, normally an indication of concession.]

Phil Yeah, I wasn’t an economic minister and I think in retrospect it was a crazy idea.

[Flat Tax 1^st outright denial.]

Sean So what? You weren’t there at the time, you weren’t listening that day?

[Sarcasm.]

Phil Oh no no no, I was there, I take collective responsibility but it was the wrong decision, as was the decision to sell state assets. Both of those decisions were wrong, we did not repeat those mistakes in the fifth Labour Government.

 [Goff repeats his earlier answer about collective responsibility. Unequivocally says flat tax and sale of state assets were wrong.]

[Flat Tax 2^nd denial; State Asset Sales 1^st denial.]

Sean Okay but the 1984 government you’re saying all the asset sales were wrong?

[Note the ‘Okay’]

Phil Oh I think the asset sales were wrong. I agree with the process of commercialisation.

[Asset Sales 2^nd denial.]

Sean But Mr Goff I’m sorry, you were painted as a supporter of Roger Douglas and his free market reforms. Are you saying that he got it wrong for all those years.

[Plunket moves from fact to media portrayal. ‘Painted’ by whom?]

Phil I supported the decision of the Cabinet that I was part of, I’m collectively responsible for that.

Sean But you’re now walking away from that collective responsibility.

[Meaningless question since his collective responsibility for those decisions ended when  Labour lost the 1990 election.]

Phil No I’m not now walking away Sean, I decided more than a decade ago that flat tax didn’t work, in fact we decided that as a government in the 1980s. That was the beginning of the division between many in Cabinet and Roger Douglas, and I certainly am absolutely opposed to the sale of state assets, and you know look recall the fifth Labour government, there was a nine year Labour government between the fourth Labour Government and now, we didn’t sell a single asset, in fact we bought back Air New Zealand, we bought back New Zealand Rail, and we set up Kiwi Bank and I strongly supported all of those decisions.

[Asset Sales and Flat Tax: 3^rd denial.]

Sean But which side were you on when that bust up came?

[Question has relevance only to consistency, no relevance to current politics.]

Phil Well I didn’t want the bust up. I thought that both Lange and Douglas had a lot to offer New Zealand. We showed that in our first three years and that break up was the beginning of the end of that Labour government.

Sean Alright but which side were you on Phil Goff?

Phil Oh look I have my own position on those things.

Sean Could you tell us what it was please?

Phil Yeah yeah yeah, I mean in a lot of areas I supported David Lange, but I didn’t support David Lange’s decision unilaterally to change decisions that Cabinet had agreed to.

Sean Like flat tax?

[One more bite at flat tax.]

Phil Yeah I mean there was another way of doing it. He went away over Christmas, decided that was wrong and I think for probably good reasons, but the way that he handled that was not to work through the Cabinet process.

Sean Alright, you had some time in the wilderness, you come back and it would seem that in some ways your star waned somewhat. Would you agree under the leadership, or in the years say in the mid 90s?

Phil Oh no look I was out of office for three years. I think that sabbatical actually did me a lot of good, gave me a chance to get out and do some of the things, promoting New Zealand education internationally, attended Oxford University. I worked at Auckland University of Technology. But I came back and I came back with new portfolios. I did well in those portfolios, I was promoted to the front bench obviously and I became Minister for Foreign Affairs and for Justice and I’m proud of what I did in those years.

Proposition Three: You were a challenger for Helen Clark’s job

Sean And you did well enough to be considered as a challenger to Helen Clark in 1995?

Phil No, that’s where I think it was it Michael Basset or Jonathan Hunt is quite wrong.

[Challenger 1^st  denial.]

Sean Well Phil Quinn’s written about …

Phil He’s wrong, he’s wrong.

[Challenger 2^nd denial]

Sean Are you saying these people are lying about ….

[A common interviewer ploy: Suggest that saying an opponent is wrong (acceptable)  is the same as calling them a liar (unacceptable).]

Phil No I’m saying they’re wrong. I was never a challenger for Helen Clark. I went to see Helen with a group of people privately to say that I didn’t think that she was gonna get it up, at that point she was 1% in the polls, Labour was 14%. We did not have an alternative candidate, that’s where Jonathan Hunt is right, but I was never a contender in that contest.

[Challenger 3^rd denial.]

Sean No one ever discussed with you being a contender?

Phil No, never. I was never, I never had my name in the ring formally or informally.

[Challenger 4^th denial]

Sean Did anyone ever talk to you about putting your name in?

Phil No, no. I was never interested in doing it at that point.

[Challenger 5th denial]

Sean So you had no leadership aspirations in 1995?

Phil No, I was not interested in being the leader at that point.

[Challenger 6^th denial]

Proposition Four: You did a deal with Helen Clark – In exchange for your support, she would offer you the leadership when she stepped down.

Sean Alright. Did you reach any accommodation with Helen Clark about leadership, because clearly you were in the frame?

[Note the ‘Alright’.]

Phil Yeah no absolutely I supported very strongly Helen’s leadership from that time through to the end of the time that she resigned from her leadership.

[Accession Deal 1^st denial.]

Sean Did you reach an arrangement with her about accepting her leadership and your possible political future?

Phil No, no.

[Accession Deal 2^nd denial]

Sean It was never discussed?

Phil No, no that wasn’t part of the discussion.

[Accession Deal 3rd denial]

Sean Well okay, was it part of any other discussion with anyone?

[... in the world, the universe, with one of your children at a birthday party? And note the ‘Well okay’.]

Phil No, no. No, I was firmly a supporter of Helen Clark, I still am, I think she did a great job as Prime Minister of this country.

[Accession Deal 4^th denial]

Sean Okay, you say it wasn’t part of the discussion, what was the discussion about the arrangement with leadership and support?

[You’ve probably sussed the OKs by now, so you’re on your own.]

Phil Well Helen was the unquestioned leader of the Labour Party through that period of time in government. She worked hard she had the support of the Cabinet.

Sean Did she specifically ask you personally or privately to pledge your support?

Phil No, no of course not. The understanding we reached after 1996 was that she was the leader. I said after we’d approached her if you want me to go on the back benches I’ll do so, no she said I respect the ability that you have I want you on my front bench, and I agreed and our working relationship was excellent.

[Accession Deal 5^th denial]

Sean Okay, did that create an expectation that when she went she would hand on to you in some way?

Phil No there wasn’t that expectation there until after she had made that announcement on the night of the election.

[Accession Deal 6th Denial]

Sean She never discussed …

Phil No, we never talked about that, she was leader of the party and I supported her in that role.

[Accession Deal 7th Denial]

Sean And she never discussed with you what might happen if you lost that election, and where you might be in that?

Phil No, when you go into an election you don’t have a plan B you go in to win.

[Accession Deal 8^th denial]

Proposition Five: You assumed you would be the next leader.

Sean Okay tell us then about the process of her resignation on the night, did it surprise you?

Phil I guess it didn’t surprise me because she’d reached the pinnacle of her position in politics, she’d been Prime Minister for nine years. Nobody much likes the job of Leader of the Opposition, and I didn’t anticipate that she’d want to go back to it.

Sean Okay but you must have anticipated that you would be next cab off the rank once she went?

Phil Right up until election day I was working to re-elect a Labour Government.

[Next Leader 1st denial]

Sean Mr Goff, you know a politician might say that but the reality is come on.

Phil Well a politician might say that, no the reality is that’s exactly what I did.

[Next Leader 2^nd denial]

Sean So you never considered, you never had – you seem to be telling me throughout this interview you’ve never really had any leadership aspirations.

Phil No, well look when I see a person is doing a job I get in behind and I support them, and Helen was doing a good job and I did support her.

[Next Leader 3rd denial]

Sean Okay, and you’d never thought about leadership in 95?

Phil No I was not interested in…..

[Proposition Two – 7th denial]

Sean And you hadn’t thought about leadership before the loss in 2008?

Phil No I was supporting Helen in that position and that was the appropriate thing to do.

[Next Leader 4th denial]

Sean Okay so did it come as a huge surprise then that you found yourself Leader of the Labour Party? [Sarcasm]

Phil No it didn’t come as a surprise, at the Cabinet Meeting of the outgoing Cabinet after we’d lost the election we had a meeting of our Cabinet as we did every week, Helen proposed me as her successor and there was unanimous support of the front bench.

Sean Okay did that come as a surprise to you or had she indicated in previous conversations that she was going to nominate you?

Phil No she hadn’t indicated that prior to that point.

[Proposition Four 9^th denial]

Sean You’d never had any discussion about that? No understanding?

Phil Not prior to the election, after the election ….

[Proposition Four – tenth denial]

Proposition Six: Helen Clark handed you the leadership

Sean Okay so before that meeting she’d actually said she was gonna hand on…

Phil Oh she’d obviously contacted me and said I think that you should be the Leader of the Labour Party, that you should succeed me in that position, that you are the best placed person to do that role, and I said thank you for your confidence and I accepted the nomination.

Sean So at the end of the day Phil Goff you did not go out, seek, fight for the leadership of the Labour Party, it was given to you by Helen Clark.

Phil Well it wasn’t given to me by Helen Clark, it was actually agreed to by the whole of the front bench in caucus unanimously. There’s a difference.

[Handed Leadership 1st denial]

Sean But Helen Clark still had a fair bit of sway around that table the day that meeting was held. So I’m sorry I come back again Mr Goff you were given the leadership of the Labour Party by Helen Clark.

Phil No, let me reiterate you are wrong. Every member of the caucus has a vote on that, any member of the caucus can nominate for it, unanimously they decided that I was the best person to lead Labour.

[Handed Leadership 2^nd denial]

Sean But when it’s a caucus as Michael Basset would attest that was selected for the greater glorification of Helen Clark, one presumes she can make suggestions to that caucus as to who in fact is its next leader.

Phil I said before that’s Michael’s opinion, I don’t agree with that. It was a caucus in which Helen obviously has and had strong influence, but every member of the caucus is capable of making up their own mind and did.

[Handed Leadership 3rd denial]

Proposition Seven: Helen Clark is still running the show.

Sean You said has strong influence. 

[Freudian slip by Goff or just a mistake? Good listening by Plunket who picks it up.]

Phil Oh had strong influence.

Sean Well I still hear stories for example, and I don’t want to go into the details of the issue in the Darren Hughes affair that many senior members of your caucus were still taking phone calls and in direct contact with Helen Clark in New York who was proffering advice as to what to do.

[Unspecified ‘stories’ in place of fact and no details offered. The interviewer would not allow his guest away with that.]

Phil No look I have conversations with Helen from time to time, I respect her judgement, but if your suggestion is that she is somehow directing the way in which the Labour Party is going, no that’s quite wrong and you won’t find any caucus member that agrees with that.

Sean So does Helen Clark advise you now?

Phil I talk to Helen, I talk to a lot of people. That’s what you do when you’re a Leader of the Opposition.

Sean And you don’t mind her talking to other members, senior members of your caucus?

Phil Of course not, they’re her friends, why shouldn’t she?

Sean Well because she lost the election in 2008 Mr Goff and lost the election by sticking with Winston Peters in a side show that you admit was one – you admitted in 2009 at the party conference that she got embroiled in side shows which detracted from the achievements of the Labour Government.

Phil I think after nine years in office the cycle turns, it was time for a change and yes we were portrayed as being focused on issues that weren’t at the central focus of most New Zealand voters’ concerns. That’s why we’re now focusing on issues like the cost of living, employment and so on.

Sean It was Helen Clark’s leadership that allowed the Labour Party to be disconnected from the electorate though.

Phil No I think that’s often just a process of time. When you’ve been in office nine years in this country you generally lose office and we did.

This is where the interview should have started. Interestingly when the ‘did/didn’t’ examination of ancient history is dispensed with, both men do better. By my assessment Plunket has Goff on the ropes over his willingness to deal with Peters but not Harawira. Goff, however ends well with a strong statement on corporate bludgers.

Sean Okay, you also said in that 2009 speech that you would spend every day of your leadership listening.

Phil And I do.

Sean Looking at the poll results are you listening hard enough or is it just a question of time and the whims of political fortune?

Phil No look I think time and circumstance obviously plays a part, but we can help determine those circumstances. When I’m out there in the community as I am every day of the week, I’m listening to New Zealanders talking about the pressure that they’re under, because of the cost of living. Middle class New Zealanders who are now the working poor, lower income New Zealanders who are actually thrust into a position of poverty, I’m hearing what they’re saying about those things. I’m hearing what people are saying about the threat to the security of their employment. I’m hearing mums and dads talking about how they can’t afford to get their kids early childhood education.

Sean Okay so you’re listening, but the polls would suggest that the people of the electorate are not listening to you.

Phil No I think when people focus as we build up to the election on the things that matter in their lives, they’ll see that Labour is standing alongside them in their concerns and in their interests and National isn’t, and that’s why we’ll win this election.

Sean I want to have a quick look at the political landscape which is changing fairly quickly or altering fairly quickly at the moment. Let’s start with Winston Peters, you said in 2009 the Peters’ side show was one of the issues which cost Labour support, yet still you say you would deal with Winton Peters?

Phil I’ve said I’ll wait till the people make their decision and then I’ll decide how I put together a coalition government.

Sean Okay but you haven’t said that about Hone Harawira, you heard earlier on this programme holding out the olive branch to you?

Phil Yep.

Sean A man who hasn’t been found by parliament’s privilege committee to have lied to it.

Phil Let me say this. John Key brands Don Brash as an extremist but said he’ll get into bed with him. I regard Hone Harawira as having extreme views and I won’t get into bed with him.

Sean And do you think Matt McCarten does as well, and Annette Sykes?

Phil Yeah I think that that is a party that is well out of the mainstream of New Zealand.

Sean And you will have nothing to do with it?

Phil No I don’t see myself as being able to form a coalition both on the grounds of different policies and on the grounds of reliability. I’ve said that and I stand by it.

Sean Alright and you’re not gonna let the people decide on that one and then make your decision?

Phil Oh the people will decide whether they want to support a Maori Party that’s now discredited or a more radical party that I don’t think will have widespread support.

Sean But you find Winston Peters a man essentially found by the privileges committee to have misled parliament and his colleagues is a more reliable person to do a coalition deal?

Phil I’ve said I’ll let the public make the decision, as the moment it’s hypothetical. If Winston is back then we’ll look at it.

Sean Well the Privileges Committee finding against him wasn’t hypothetical, it’s written there in the parliamentary record.

Phil Yeah, look I’m not going into past history on that, Winston Peters has got a long history in politics and people will judge him on the basis of that history.

Sean Alright so you’re not gonna deal with Hone Harawira, the jury is out on New Zealand First. I want to ask you about the Maori Party, do you think there is a need for a rapprochement with the Maori Party?

Phil Look I think the Maori Party has done exactly what I predicted at the time that they went into a supply and confidence agreement with National. They’ve supported National on things that have hurt working and middle income New Zealanders. They supported the rise in GST, they supported the taxcuts for the most wealthy, they’ve supported things that really haven’t advanced the interests of Maori people. I’m not at all surprised that there is a movement in Maoridom away from re-electing the Maori Party to parliament.

Sean Okay but you’re not gonna support the new party, Hone Harawira’s party.

Phil No I’m putting Labour up as the alternative to either of those parties, as a party that has a track record, and standing beside working people Maori and Pakeha, and working in their interests.

Sean So as far as you’re concerned it is them or us with the Maori Party for Maori voters?

Phil Well the public will make their mind up, they will decide whether they want to put Maori MPs back into Parliament, whether they’ll put the new Hone Harawira party into parliament, or whether they’ll come back to Labour, and the feedback that I’ve got as recently as last night at a very big meeting I did in Tauranga, was that the Maori voter’s coming back to Labour, and I welcome that.

Sean Alright, even though you now face the prospect Hone Harawira says vote Mana for the party, vote Maori Party MPs in your electorate.

Phil Yeah well I think that he’s gonna be in isolation, and I don’t think that he will be able to take the interests of Maori people forward. Maori people are interested in unemployment because that hammers them, the young people, young Maori women are one in two coming out of school, going on to unemployment and not going on to earn and to learn. The wages in Maoridom and working New Zealanders falling behind the cost of living, people are hurting, they’re not able to make ends meet. Those are the things that I think will bring people, working and middle income New Zealanders back to Labour.

Sean Phil Goff, I want to come back to that quote from your student days, ‘corporate bludgers outweighing dole bludgers’.

Phil Yeah, they’re still there and they’re still doing it.

Sean Isn’t it the truth that many might see in this 21st century that through welfarism and I’m sure the right and Don Brash would argue this, what Labour would seek to create is an economy where beneficiaries of one side or other completely outweigh and drag down those who create wealth.

Phil No, you know the great thing about having a Labour government was that we took the people on the unemployment benefit down to 18,000. It’s now 68,000. There’s now 158,000 New Zealanders who want to work and can’t, and I saw that in my own electorate when the New World supermarket opened 150 jobs, 2700 people lined up desperate to take on that work, and Paula Bennett and John Key says those people, they’re unemployed as a lifestyle choice. I reject that, I have never accepted that, I don’t accept bludging, either from people that want to beat the benefit system, or from the bludgers that live in 30 million dollar houses while they rip off the investors.

Sean That Mr Goff is a long way away from Rogernomics, isn’t it?

[I think this is where we came in!]

Phil No look I’ve been very consistent on that. All of my life I’ve worked hard for what I’ve done, I’ve put myself through university, I come from a family that worked hard, working class family, they worked for what they got. I don’t accept for a moment the people that bludge off our system at the top levels, who don’t pay their taxes, and I don’t accept those that rip off the system at the bottom level. I said that early on my political career, and I stand by that today. Absolutely consistent.

Sean Phil Goff I thank you very much indeed for your time today.

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz

zimbio.com

 The likely end of Phil Goff’s political career has all the hallmarks of a personal tragedy. The fates appear to have conspired against the Member for Mt. Roskill with singular vindictiveness. A 27-year apprenticeship for the top job may well end in November with the arguably more qualified candidate pipped at the post.

Yet Goff’s political CV could scarcely be more impressive:

Boy from poor Auckland family leaves home at 16; puts himself through university by working as a freezing worker and cleaner; gains a first class honours degree in Political Studies at the University of Auckland where he lectures while completing his MA; stands for Labour in Roskill in 1981 and wins the seat.

Becomes the youngest Minister in the Lange/Palmer/Moore administrations (1984-1990) holding portfolios as diverse as Housing,  Labour, Youth Affairs, Tourism and Education; loses Roskill in the landslide against Labour in 1990 and takes up a teaching position (along with yours truly) at what is now the AUT; accepts a scholarship to study for six months at Oxford University.

Is re-elected MP for Roskill in 1993; Labour Leader Helen Clark whose early parliamentary career runs parallel to his, appoints him shadow Minister of  Justice; is part of a failed coup to replace her in June 1996 but Clark does not demote him; under her administration (1999-2008) holds portfolios of Foreign Affairs, Trade, Justice, Defence and Disarmament; is widely respected as an intelligent, hard-working, reliable and highly competent Minister.

After Clark steps down in the wake of National’s win in the 2008 election, is unanimously elected Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. 

Both Goff and Labour have floundered in the polls ever since.   

It’s worth pointing out, however, that Goff’s and Labour’s poll ratings are actually better now, seven months before a general election,  than Clark’s and Labour’s were seven months before the 1996 general election. Had it not been for Winston Peter’s decision to go with National, Clark would have won that election.

There is, however, no such expectation that Goff can win this year’s election in November. He has been written off by the media and, if the latest polls are to be believed, by a majority of Labour’s own supporters. After a 27-year career in Parliament the Leader of the Opposition looks almost certain to be denied the glittering prize. Therein lies the tragedy.

Goff, it seems to me, has three strikes against him.

The first is that he took over as leader of a party which had been in office for nine years, which the electorate was thoroughly tired of and which had just lost an election. His task, to re-enthuse that  electorate to the point where it would throw out the government after only one term, was nigh on impossible. Political history argues against it.

Second, he has been around too long. In a post entitled The Prince Charles Syndrome (March 11, 2010) I wrote:

Working against Goff… is a phenomenon which I like to call ‘The Prince Charles Syndrome’. Charles, the man who would be king, has simply been around too long. Kept waiting by a mother in excellent health and showing no inclination to abdicate, the once young and attractive prince has lost his appeal…

Kept waiting by the hugely charismatic  if morally flawed Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the dour Scottish son of a Presbyterian minister, may have suffered the same fate – around too long. And the same may be true of Phil Goff.

At the heart of National’s 2008 election win was the simplistic but potent belief that it was ‘time for a change’. John Key had been in Parliament only 6 years when he became Prime Minister. He was fresh and new…

When the 2011 election rolls around, Phil Goff will have been in Parliament for 27 years, kept waiting for twelve of those years by a woman who in 1996 also refused to abdicate.

The third strike against the Leader of the Opposition is that amorphous quality ‘charisma’. Or rather the lack of it. Phil does not have charisma. His ‘image’ – that other indefinable term – is terrible: stiff, wooden, robotic, uncomfortable, ill-at-ease, stern, censorious, lecturing, occasionally irritable, occasionally sour.

In an unhappy irony Goff is a Labour leader with no apparent common touch. The ‘apparent’ is important, because people who know him and people who meet him face to face speak of an entirely different person – approachable, warm, relaxed, funny, a good bloke, a decent man.

To those three strikes you can add the self-fulfilling nature of opinion polls and  the expectation of failure engendered by the media and, to be frank, by sympathetic but essentially dire columns like this. When everyone is saying you can’t win, it becomes more difficult to win.

And this government has been helped by natural and man-made disasters, by the easy charm of its leader and by the seemingly unlimited willingness of the electorate to forgive it its trespasses. Our economy, according to both left and right-wing pundits, is about to go down the gurgler. We are drowning in debt. But National and its leader still rate through the roof. Go figure.

Still, it’s only April and there’s Hone and Don and Winston and a blackish budget to come and people without jobs and families without food and, regardless of the outcome of the Rugby World Cup, more bad news than good in the pipeline, and last but by no means least, the vagaries of MMP to figure in the mix. And stranger things have happened.

And two questions may remain in Phil Goff’s mind: What would have happened if Clark had done a Bolger in 1996 and walked away rather than challenging the plotters to take their chances in a Caucus vote? And what might have happened if she’d given him 18 months breathing space after the last election before leaving him holding  the less than bouncing baby? After all, in politics, as in comedy, timing is everything.