Goff S Labour Of Love

PHIL GOFF is grinning as though he had won an election. He's just inherited the worst job in parliament , leadership of the opposition. The outgoing minister of overseas trade, known for his robotic appearances before the nation's media, bounces around his Beehive suite. Ten brown boxes of his stuff are stacked in a corner, waiting to be taken away. He can't contain his glee.

Labour has lost, but Goff has won. At 55, he is finally leader of the party. In politics I firmly believe you need to control your emotions, he insists, speaking of other matters. Where have we seen this middle-aged elation before? On Saturday night, on the face of John Key, 47. The inner boy bursts out and grabs his prize.
There is an edge of nuttiness among the bureaucrats in the Beehive today, like school on break-up day. It's the joy of escape. A group that has just arrived from the departing PM's farewell morning tea laughs among the boxes. Out of chaos comes order, says one official. A bit of chaos is always welcome.
Goff has seen three Labour defeats during his time, and this is easily the best one. In 1975 and 1990, I remember the anger that existed out in the electorate on both those occasions. I didn't detect the anger this time. Labour won 34% of the vote, far from a massacre, and a solid base on which to rebuild. And it had moved quickly to change its leadership and start again.
But National moved even faster. In a week, Key seems to have stitched up a deal with both Act and the Maori Party. When Act leader Rodney Hide strutted and bellowed as though he had won the election, Key never stopped smiling. This week his cabinet will be sworn in and he flies to Peru for talks about the world economic crisis.
Can Labour ever catch up?

PEOPLE EXPECTED that a government once elected would rule for more than one term, Goff says. I don't believe that should be taken for granted, he says cautiously. National had built up high expectations, but it was entering difficult economic times when it would be hard to meet those expectations.
National and the Maori Party run real risks with their deal, he says. In bad times, the Tory instinct was to slash social services. That would affect Maori most.
If the Maori Party hitches its wagon to the National Party, and the National Party delivers what it traditionally does in tougher economic times to the people that are the most vulnerable, there will be a sense of disillusionment.
National faces the same problem with pakeha.
We had this curious phenomenon of the National Party embracing a whole range of critical initiatives that the government had taken. In defence, the air combat wing [abolished by Labour] suddenly they didn't want an air combat wing either, after saying that we would leave the country defenceless and we were bludging on our mates, says the outgoing defence minister.
The Working for Families package, you'll recall John Key saying This is communism by stealth' and suddenly it was a good thing for the country! What the National Party very cleverly did was to say, These things Labour has done are really popular, why should we be seen to be continuing to oppose them? '
Victoria University political scientist Jon Johansson says: The space between the two parties is so small Key in my estimation has signed up to over 90% of Labour's policy inheritance that really [the battle] is going to come down to which party provides the most competent government.
Johansson says the new Labour lineup includes many competent and experienced ministers. This is the strongest opposition to confront a new government since 1990. Goff was a competent politician with a strong intellect who could lead the party to victory in 2011 if National bungled.
But he will also need to learn to keep on message because he tends to waffle on too much . His stolid public manner also needed to change.
People who have met him socially say that he is far more of a personality than we would ever think from that public demeanour in his ministerial role. He needs to show that personality, Johansson says, especially against someone like Key, who comes across as such a friendly figure .
Goff does tend to bang on, and sometimes it's hard for the journalist to get a question in. Fortunately the politician has a rhetorical habit of asking the questions himself, and then providing the answers ( Do I think that's wrong? Yes I do. And why do I think that's wrong? Well... ).
But he bridles at the accusation that, as one journalist put it last week, he is robotic in public. Of course, says the former justice minister, if he is discussing serious issues he will look serious.
Will I, when I'm dealing with justice issues, fix you with a steely glare and say this, this and this? Yeah, I will. He could hardly sit there smiling sweetly while discussing this appalling person that murdered his mistress and cut her up into little pieces .
But nobody who had worked with him would say he was robotic, although I have learned various things. I mean anger in politics very rarely serves your purpose. I control my emotions, actually.
He grew up in the [era of] Vietnam and Pinochet and the apartheid regime. Robotic? Christ, I've never been robotic on any of those issues. I actually am sort of irritated that I would be accused of it because it bears no resemblance to what I am and what I've done and how I've done it .
The politician is far from robotic today. Perhaps he just needs to show more of the bubbly inner Goff.

SO WHAT did Labour do wrong? Certainly the anti-smacking bill hurt it, he says. People resented the idea itself a misconception that suddenly you were a criminal if you smacked your children. And I understand why they resented that. I'm a parent, my children are now all in their 20s, considerably fitter and stronger, but as a parent did I ever smack my children? Yes. Did I feel particularly proud of it? No. Did I think sometimes it was justified and was it effective? Yes.
However, he said, the law had not criminalised parents and most parties in parliament, including National, had supported it.
Labour's decision to stick with Winston Peters had also damaged the government. But Helen Clark had had to stick by her minister while the official inquiries into the controversial party donations went ahead. You're innocent until proven guilty. How would the prime minister have looked had she sacked Winston and then found that the Serious Fraud Office, the police and the audit office had found that he committed no offence?
GOFF IS disappointed but not bitter that some voters did not understand what Labour had done for them. A man asked him at a street corner meeting, What are you doing for us? And I said, Have you got kids?' Yep.' Do you get Working for Families?' Yeah'. How much do you get, come on, tell us how much are you going to get?' I'm getting $91 a week.' I said, Doesn't that make a difference in your living standard? And do you realise that if we were just to do tax cuts we couldn't have delivered you that amount?'
And there wasn't an understanding of that.
Still, says Goff, the voters by definition are always right. And in any case, everyone takes it for granted that their living standards would continue to rise, year after year. It's like when you're in trade negotiations, says the government's trade negotiator. You offer something, the other side pockets it and then asks: What else do you have?
Law and order was an issue for Auckland voters, he says, including those in his electorate. I was never able to counter the perception, and particularly in many of our ethnic communities, that there had been a massive increase in criminal activity. The statistics don't show that, but the perception was absolutely true.
Goff has a beef about the media in this. How often was it reported that there had been a massive increase in the numbers of criminals in jail? Was it ever reported that Labour had cut prison escapes by 84%? That there had been a two-thirds reduction in illicit drug use in prisons? No, it was never reported. Did the media say that the parole laws had been toughened and that now 71% of applications were being declined? I said it time and again. Anthony, it was never reported.
The funny thing was yesterday I was written up in the paper as being a hardliner on law and order. Nobody ever wrote me up that way before the election itself. In the debate over the issue, I found that kind of ironic .
In fact, there have been dozens of stories in the newspapers describing Goff's tough line on law and order. When confronted with this, Goff replies that the people on the doorstep didn't see him that way. Every night on television there were long reports about violent crime and damp crawl space the impression of the electorate was that law and review space heaters order was out of control .
Still, there might be an upside. National, after all, faces the same set of problems.
National had created the perception that it would deal to crime, but Goff says there is no silver bullet on this issue. And if they fail to deliver and space saver storage fail to change that perception then they will suffer the electoral consequences likewise .
What can Labour do about the perception that it is old and jaded and that National is fresh and new? Goff points to the 13 new and exciting MPs on Labour's side. If you're looking for old, tired, discredited people, have a look at who might come back on the first two benches of the National cabinet.
He is exasperated by the notion that Key represents generational change . There are only eight years between Keyhim.
Eight years is the difference between siblings within a family rather than a generational one. I'm not much older, but I am much more experienced.
But is that how the voters will see him? And will that do the trick?