KEY POINTS:
The Labour Party is still a long way off smelling the scent of victory at next year's election - but it has stopped sniffing seemingly inevitable defeat.
For a party still lagging around 10 percentage points behind its main rival, Labour's weekend conference in Takapuna was a particularly upbeat affair from the opening session on Friday evening onwards.
The more than 700 delegates got a rousing rendition of the party's new anthem - It's a Better Way with Labour - composed by Chris Knox.
Knox, whose annoyingly catchy tune fixes itself in the listener's brain through sheer repetition of the title, quipped it was the first time a Prime Minister had been his warm-up act.
Helen Clark's short but fiery preceding speech - normally little more than a welcome to delegates in advance of her main address on Saturday afternoon - sounded like a politician warming up for an election.
After what she described as another politically "chilly winter", it is springtime for Labour. If the polls have yet to turn, Labour believes it is turning the corner and, as another senior MP put it, is "back in the game".
The reasons? The Prime Minister has given voters a crucial assurance personal tax cuts will happen. The Cabinet reshuffle has finally happened.
John Key is seen to be losing his initial momentum and is now discovering it can be difficult for an Opposition leader to make an impact, but easy to make mistakes.
As always, Helen Clark never mentioned Mr Key by name. However, seemingly working on the Knox principle, her Saturday speech contained nearly 40 references linking Labour and "leadership".
Both she and party president Mike Williams attacked National's "me too" endorsement of some Labour policies as a pretence designed to neutralise difficult issues for National pre-election and hide that party's real agenda post-election.
To re-differentiate Labour from National, the conference emphasised Labour basics, such as spending on state schools, hospitals and housing.
The tone was echoed by delegates also marching to a traditional Labour tune in talking about bringing back the universal child benefit and a call for the Government to buy out the minority shareholding in Air New Zealand.
Cabinet ministers have other spending priorities, however - namely tax cuts.
The strong applause following the Prime Minister's announcement was interpreted as relief by delegates that they can finally reassure restive voters that Labour will unveil cuts of some sort in next year's Budget.
While Michael Cullen has been flagging cuts for a while, party strategists argued a definitive statement was needed at the conference to start wooing back low- to middle-income voters who miss out on Working for Families entitlements.
It was "me too-ism" writ large. But attention instead focused on Helen Clark's assertion that cuts were now possible because the Treasury had conceded the huge Budget surpluses of recent years were not one-off events.
By blaming officials, Helen Clark is trying to spare Dr Cullen's blushes.
The big question is whether Dr Cullen can repackage himself and start showing some real enthusiasm for personal tax cuts.
National's tax cut programme will be bigger and bolder. But Labour may try to get in first by bringing in tax cuts at the earliest opportunity. That is October 1 next year - only a few weeks before the likely election date.
No wonder delegates were jubilant. The Prime Minister's announcement may have been overshadowed somewhat by one conference attendee's pugilist version of megaphone diplomacy. However, Labour is now on far more equal terms with National on something where the politics really matter.
