Like most political observers, I was of the view that the John Key National-led Government would be hard to beat in the general election due next year but the past few days have caused me to think again.
On Friday I attended Helen Kelly's memorial ceremony. This was huge, with few seats left empty at the Michael Fowler Centre.
Although it was inevitably a very sad occasion, it was also inspirational.
Helen had battled inequality, dangerous workplaces, low pay and a huge range of destructive trends in this country for years with a high degree of success.
She became the attractive and reasonable face of trade unionism in New Zealand.
Largely thanks to Helen and her formidable organising abilities, we no longer have zero hour contracts where workers were guaranteed no pay whatsoever but had to be on-call, and our forests are safer places to work.
I had not appreciated, until I heard former education minister Trevor Mallard's speech at the ceremony, just how important Helen had been to the development and growth of early childhood education in New Zealand.
This is one of the most valuable legacies of the fifth Labour government.
Free, good quality early childhood education is a powerful force for equal opportunity in modern society. At its best it means that kids from poor families get to start school with many of the advantages of their better-off classmates.
Last week the Government trumpeted the fact that the early childhood education attendance rate was up from 94.7 per cent to 96.6 per cent.
I'm delighted that National has adopted and expanded early childhood education, but we should not forget that it was originally Helen Kelly and Trevor Mallard who convinced Helen Clark and Michael Cullen of the value of this large ongoing investment.
The memorial ceremony ended with Helen's last media interview and she offered a precious piece of advice to the Labour Party. She argued that Labour should focus on its core values, rather than narrow points of policy and this struck me as both a way back for Labour and an explanation of why the party has survived for a hundred years.
Homelessness, kids living in poverty, burgeoning jail populations, wages at a level where you can't make ends meet and dangerous work sites, simply don't reflect core Labour Party values and, I suspect, basic Kiwi values.
Politicians love detailed policies so it will be a challenge for Labour luminaries to occupy a higher plain. Let's watch this space.
The second event that caused me to think that Labour just may be on the way back was a dinner and art auction on Saturday evening.
Although tickets were expensive at $160 each, the event was a sell-out and raised more than $200,000.
These events were common when I was party president, but the sum raised last Saturday were twice the previous best.
The evening was a huge success.
Andrew Little gave a relaxed, witty speech which included a hilarious jab at Max Key's unfortunate jibe at cyclists.
Little is on top of his job in a way that three of his immediate predecessors were not and it will be interesting to see what the voters think of him when the spotlight of an election campaign is turned on him.
He's united the party and he could very well look a lot like a prime minister in waiting.
The next day I was one of a panel of guest speakers at a Fabian Society meeting at Auckland University.
The topic was the fifth Labour government and the Fabian Society had come to the conclusion that enough time had lapsed allow an intelligent judgment on its achievements.
Sir Michael Cullen reminded us that this government ran nine successive surpluses, paid off the country's debt and started the sovereign wealth fund which became known as the "Cullen Fund".
With no debt, John Key's Government had the room to borrow to get the country through the downturn after the Global Financial Crisis.
If the farsightedness of Cullen's government were more widely recognised, and Little keeps improving we just may soon see a tipping point in the polls and a Labour government in 2017.
