KEY POINTS:
There is a right time and a wrong time to enter Parliament.
The wrong time is when your party is coming to power. Chances are, you will serve a term or two on the back benches and maybe become a junior minister at the fag end of the government's life.
The right time, if you are serious, is when the party has been in office a good while and is going out. Ex-ministers hate Opposition and retire, opening the way for rapid promotions. If you are any good you will make it to the front bench as the tide is returning and be set for a senior role in a new era.
Phil Twyford, founder director of Oxfam New Zealand, has picked the right time. At 26 on Labour's list he is certainly coming into Parliament at this election. And he will have a serious career.
If his position as secretary of the Labour Party's policy council did not speak for him, the Prime Minister has. Helen Clark named him to the Herald this week as the next Steve Maharey - not high praise outside the party but inside it carried a certain cachet as thinker and torch-bearer of "social democracy".
His policy council has spent the last three years "consciously opening up the party to new ideas, bringing in thinkers, creating space for political debates and really letting fresh air blow through, with discussion papers, workshops, listening to voices outside and trying to think through what really big issues are coming down the track, what social democracy will look like in New Zealand in the 21st century".
"There is a really strong generation coming up through the party. You can see it in the caucus - after this election 25 per cent of the caucus will have turned over in three years. But it is not just about people, it's about ideas."
Such as?
"We ran an internal poll asking every branch to debate what the three most important issues facing New Zealand over the next 20 years will be. The top issue was climate change, next, energy security, third, the ageing population. So climate change was top. This was a year before the Prime Minister made the speech on carbon neutrality.
"We also did work on the ageing population and what it means for the labour market, health and social services. Ministers were involved. One of the nice things about New Zealand and our party is that it's intimate enough that it's not uncommon for a minister to sit down with a bunch of members from different branches."
We are sitting at the table in his Kingsland home the morning after the Treasury reports the economy has turned to custard. I wonder what social democracy says about the prospect of 10 years of budget deficits.
"I'm a fan of Michael Cullen's brand of old-fashioned Keynesianism. It has served us well, enabling big investments to be made in the country's future while also cautious about what might be down the track. And now we see what was down the track.
"I don't think we have a major problem. Our government accounts are in as good a shape as almost any in terms of debt. As a social democrat I recognise the centrality of achieving economic growth to do what we want to do. Over the next few years we will need to be more cautious and incremental."
The Treasury's fiscal warnings this week named two of Labour's universal benefits, free childcare and KiwiSaver subsidies, as expenses that are starting to weigh heavy on the accounts. Why is Labour determined to give benefits to the well-off as well as those who need them?
"I think there is a strong argument for universality of some social provisions. They become a social good, a collective good that everybody has a stake in. I believe the extension of early childhood education is one of the most important developments since primary and secondary schooling became universal.
"Lack of quality early childhood education has been a woeful gap. If it's accessible to everybody they have a stake in maintaining it and ensuring it is high quality."
They do that better, I suggest, if they pay for it.
"Yeah, but you end up getting two-tier systems and what we are trying to do is build a system that offers high quality to anybody. You could apply [my] logic to the entire health system and education and it fundamentally is not the kind of society I want to see."
How far would he take this? What other provisions of life would social democracy like to socialise?
"The thing about social democrats is there is always another hill to climb."
That's what I'm afraid of.
"Well," he asks himself, "why isn't dental care part of the primary health system? I think it should be.
"I'd like us to expand paid parental leave, and primary healthcare so that people didn't pay anything to go to the doctor. For me these issues are about what tax we can afford and what are we prepared to pay for with it."
I'd sooner be a citizen of a strong economy than get for free services I could pay for.
"Well, there are issues of fairness and public health efficiency. If you have arbitrary cut-off points for free services and abatement arrangements, you inevitably have issues of fairness for those on either side of the line."
Social democracy, it seems, is socialism without the industrial protection that used to be part of it. Twyford is committed to an open economy. Under him Oxfam became a refreshingly liberal advocate for trade as well as aid.
After nine years running the New Zealand agency he went to Washington DC as director of advocacy and campaigns for Oxfam International.
He lobbied global organisations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. He was at the launch of the Doha Round where he presented Mike Moore with Oxfam's petition for developing nations' interests.
He came home four years ago with his eye on Parliament. At the last election he stood in North Shore, one of National's safest seats, and is contesting it again. The best he can do is boost Labour's list vote.
Now 45, he would sooner be an electorate MP. "I like being part of a community and utterly connected to it." We are sitting in Helen Clark's electorate where he has owned his home for 20 years. What prospect of a vacancy here soon?
"I wouldn't hazard a guess."
Hazard, I suspect, was a well-chosen word.
