John Armstrong: Labour learns from slips

No wonder Parliament's image-obsessed inhabitants want to sanitise the institution by banning television news cameras from the chamber.

Such censorship would not only have saved David Benson-Pope from being caught doing his Ugly Sister-like impersonation of Sleeping Beauty - footage which is bound to be re-screened every time there is talk of Labour sleepwalking to victory.

Limiting filming to an in-house system which confines the camera to the MP who has the call from the Speaker probably cannot come soon enough for the National Party either.

Only then could its MPs be confident the agony-filled expressions on their faces are kept well out of shot every time Don Brash chooses to joust with the Prime Minister.

This week Brash found himself the butt of merciless lampooning by Helen Clark as she quoted embarrassing tracts from his recently published biography back at him. Lacking the dexterity to respond in kind, Brash pressed on, sticking to his prepared questions as if all this were happening to someone else.

The horror was compounded by Brash's line of questioning - the brain-drain of young New Zealanders overseas. That is supposedly one issue where National believes it can punish Labour.

It did not bode well for Brash's showing in the multitude of televised leaders' debates which will dominate September's election campaign. But the one-sided exchange was also symptomatic of a wider mood shift around Parliament.

Labour believes it has recovered its equilibrium after being bogged down by the woes in the education and police portfolios.

It is National which now looks distracted. The party has struggled to shrug off reports of internal squabbling in the wake of Katherine Rich's sacking. It is not displaying its trademark hunger for power. The impression is that it does not think it can win and its MPs are instead jostling in readiness for the bloody aftermath.

Meanwhile, Act has adopted an unwelcome variation of the old Vietnam War maxim that to save the village - in this case the prospect of a centre-right government - it is first necessary to destroy it.

In reality, Act is likely to be utterly incidental to post-election negotiations. But the damage has been done in allowing Labour to rehearse a core theme of its election campaign: we can govern, you cannot.

National thus awaits with some trepidation this weekend's One News-Colmar Brunton poll, which comes at a critical juncture in the election cycle.

It is crucial that Opposition parties cut back Labour's lead in the early months of the year and jolt voter perceptions of how the election will play out.

National will have fingers crossed that, given the time-lag between cause and effect, this poll is the one that shows the Government taking a big hit over the 111 call responses and school examination botch-ups.

If it does not, Labour is quietly confident National cannot turn things around in the six months until election day. It is doing its best to make National's task even harder by carefully sequencing events through that period to control the political agenda.

The Easter recess will be followed by Labour's election-year Congress, which will provide Clark with another platform to flag her post-election agenda.

The income top-ups contained in the "Working for Families" package kick in from the start of next month. That landmark will be followed by the annual drip-feeding of Budget spending announcements. They will be followed by the Budget proper on May 19. And that will likely be followed by stints of parliamentary urgency - unproductive for the Opposition - as the Government rushes through its business before the House rises for the election.

The picture is not all rosy. Labour knows it could be vulnerable to the national mood switching from unbounded optimism to sudden pessimism if the economy slows. Somehow, Michael Cullen's surplus has turned from political asset to albatross.

Labour's desperate desire to divest itself of the tag of "political correctness" has seen Georgina Beyer's bill recognising the rights of transgender people shelved.

As the governing party, Labour is also inevitably going to be tripped up this side of polling day by the unexpected - such as the sudden shortage of flu vaccine.

The thought of half a million New Zealanders sneezing through an election campaign and blaming Labour would have sent the Beehive into a cold sweat.

However, Labour seems to have taken a lesson in political management from its earlier mishandling of the botch-up over last year's scholarship exams and the fall-out from that on the NCEA.

This time the Government did not try to shut down the problem by ducking responsibility and apportioning blame to hapless officials. In contrast to the numerous reviews hanging over the Qualifications Authority, Annette King specifically ruled out a formal inquiry.

The Health Minister has been at pains to be seen as being upfront about the problem and "solution-focused" - playing to the Government's strengths rather than playing the blame-game and indulging in a slanging match with political opponents.

King's tidy performance is a clue to how Labour intends to perform in the election campaign - the second it has fought under MMP from the Government benches.

Three years ago, Labour squandered its poll advantage by allowing itself to be dragged into an almighty row with TV3 and the Greens after Nicky Hager's Seeds of Distrust questioned the credibility of Labour's ban on genetically modified crops.

And late in the campaign, Labour went after Winston Peters in crude fashion to eliminate New Zealand First as a possible coalition powerbroker.

Expecting a closer tussle with National this time, Clark intends retaining her advantage by keeping Labour in statesman-like pose well above the fray.

She will stress that she has run two highly competent and stable minority Governments. She will refuse to speculate on coalition options. She will stress that Labour has shown it can work with a range of parties, including New Zealand First.

This time, Labour is extremely wary of its campaign being hijacked - as happened with Hager's book. If something similarly comes out of left field, Labour intends being more considered and less combative in its response. It will work on the principle that ignoring opponents' taunts is the best way of depriving them of the oxygen of publicity.

Labour knows it made mistakes last time. The bad news for National is that it won't be making them again.