KEY POINTS:
Political editor Audrey Young rates the performances of National leader John Key and Prime Minister Helen Clark who this week both set out their vision for New Zealand in the first heavyweight clash of election year.
HELEN CLARK
OVERALL RATING 6.1 OUT OF 10
SUBJECT CHOICE: 7
Worthy, important, but very complicated - education-work interface for school-leavers. Needed something relevant to a large number of voters, something positive, and something that has had some reasonable work done on it by officials. "Realising youth potential" had been in the pipeline for several months.
SUBSTANCE: 8
Two big ideas. Keeping kids in school or some form of structured learning until aged 18 even if they are working; and setting up apprenticeship-style courses from year 9 (third form) across all schools. Cabinet made a big step in confirming the policies.
PREPARATION: 6
Clark's staff began pulling material together over the summer. Clark wrote her own speech by hand at home two days before delivering it - rather late in the piece.
CONTENT: 7
Broad and thorough. Turned out to be more a state-of-the-nation speech than Key's, covering New Zealand's place in the world and well-argued new policy. No mention of Key except for indirect reference to those who thought climate change was a "hoax" looking sillier.
DELIVERY: 5
Perfunctory. Oratory has never been Clark's strong suit but she has done a lot better than this speech, which lacked any oomph. By her own admission she is not a morning person. Choosing a business audience constrained the political elements of both content and delivery.
THE BIG SELL: 4
A big struggle to sell it publicly. The big ideas that are a no-brainer to Clark and the Cabinet have been met with unexpected criticism, and been compressed in voter-land to "raising the school leaving age to 18". It has taken a lot of explaining. And as they say in politics, explaining is losing.
JOHN KEY
OVERALL SCORE 7.8 OUT OF 10
SUBJECT CHOICE: 9
Simple. Topical. Logical. Choosing "youth crime" built on his Burnside speech of last year about the "underclass" and enabled him to dwell not only on the real manifestations of it, as only the Opposition can, but on constructive ideas to address it.
SUBSTANCE: 8
Two key areas: stopping school leavers from drifting on to benefits, and new powers for Youth Court to deal with offenders, including "boot camp". Detailed enough to demonstrate they were not seat-of-the-pants populist ideas.
PREPARATION: 9
Decided in September last year to focus on youth policy in his January speech, drawing on youth justice and education policy under development and drawn together by Key advisers Nicola Willis and Grant Johnston over summer.
CONTENT: 8
Narrow and thorough. Clark was right: Key's speech didn't really fit the bill as a state-of-the-nation speech because it was so narrowly focused on youth policy. But it didn't matter in the end because he got the attention he was aiming for.
DELIVERY: 5
Improving. Speaking to small National Party audience of 200 at an Auckland hotel allowed Key's people to control everything and worry about nothing except his speech. Clearer delivery was a big advance on previous mumbling style, but formal speaking is still a big effort for him.
THE BIG SELL: 8
Easily grasped by the public because the speech was all things to all people. It appealed to those who wanted a simple hardline 'boot camp" approach as well as to those who wanted to see more complex policy beyond the slogans. Consulting potential critics on policy development paid off.
