Editorial: Goff needs to choose targets more astutely

Just over a year into his stewardship of the Labour Party, Phil Goff faces difficult choices. A continuation of his desperately low ranking in preferred Prime Minister polls is unthinkable.

Somehow he must connect with voters who deserted Labour at the last election, but without creating tremors elsewhere. Offering to form grand coalitions with National will not do it, however responsible they may be politically.

Mr Goff needs to differentiate himself and his party. But this will succeed only if the correct targets are selected. On the evidence so far, his compass is awry.

He has chosen two major issues - the foreshore and seabed law and monetary policy - on which to place considerable distance between Labour and National. On both, he has exhibited a lack of judgment.

The decision to repudiate the framework under which the Reserve Bank operates, thereby ending 20 years of bipartisan support, could be justified only if an alternative approach was offered. None was forthcoming. Labour, said Mr Goff, would "spend the next 12 to 18 months working on this, with an open mind".

While in power, however, Labour initiated several inquiries designed to uncover means of achieving a harmonious and sustained inflation, interest rate and exchange rate mix, especially for exporters. All plumped for the prevailing orthodoxy, and suggested only tinkering.

It is fanciful to think Labour's research will uncover a new solution. Even if it did, and it was adopted, many overseas investors would look askance at a framework that differed markedly from the norm.

Mr Goff's initiative was, quite rightly, scorned by business groups. Now, he finds himself on even shakier ground after his "nationhood" speech, during which he reversed Labour's support for reform of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, saying its repeal would divide New Zealand racially. This time, the criticism is close to home.

Labour's president, Andrew Little, has said he has "personal concerns" about the speech, while there had been a "mixed response" from the party's rank and file. The latter description is undoubtedly euphemistic, especially in terms of the left wing of the party.

Its instinct for a progressive approach was catered for by outgoing Labour MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen earlier in the year, when he conceded the present law was unacceptable to most Maori and spoke of the need for an "enduring consensus".

In all probability, what will emerge from the National and Maori Party review of the foreshore and seabed legislation will be a law not much different to that fashioned by Labour. There will be no major transformation.

The granting of a customary claim to Ngati Porou after negotiations under the current act offers a strong pointer. As such, Mr Goff has some grounds for suggesting "it's hard to see why the country should be put through all the grief just to put a new brand on law that's working".

But his speech shattered an atmosphere of calm that had developed around the coastal ownership issue. While carefully worded, it also left Mr Goff open to accusations of playing the race card.

Indeed, it seemed hardly coincidental that it was delivered less than a week after the Labour leader gained traction with his criticism of Hone Harawira's "racist" language.

That attack left some of the party's more liberal MPs uncomfortable. Philosophically, they were alarmed and, practically, they worried about Labour's appeal to the Maori constituency. More of his MPs and the party president are now even more ill at ease. That can only suggest that, for the sake of his credibility, Mr Goff needs to choose his targets much more astutely.