Opinion: Sweet moment coming up for Labour in Parliament during Question Time on Tuesday

There have been few times in his two-year leadership that Andrew Little has had the upper hand over PM John Key, but Tuesday could be it. Photo / Supplied

When Andrew Little sits opposite John Key at Question Time on Tuesday, it will be a sweet moment for Labour.

There have been few times in his two-year leadership in which he has had the upper hand over Key but this could be it.

The Mt Roskill byelection victory on Saturday was not a matter of Labour keeping a safe Labour seat.

While there is no question National was the underdog and Key kept saying so, the reality was the party campaigned very hard for an upset result.

Two days before the election Key said that Little's leadership would be "terminal" if National won.

Two hours after the result Labour MPs were tweeting that the result had been a referendum on Key's leadership.

They never said it during the campaign because they, too, thought there was an outside chance National could win.

But Labour campaigned better, and in Michael Wood it had a better candidate.

Wood is steeped in the electorate and the community, and with political and presentational skills to match just about anyone on Labour's current front bench.

Michael Wood is steeped in the Mt Roskill electorate and the community, and with political and presentational skills to match just about anyone on Labour's current front bench. Photo / Michael Craig

He has a huge future.

In Mt Roskill it was not just the emphatic win that mattered - 66 per cent of the vote to 28 per cent for National's candidate - it was how Labour won.

It used a field campaign style, taken from the United States, and adopted by the Victoria Labor Party, which used it to elect Daniel Andrews as Premier in 2014.

It was adopted by New Zealand Labour to successfully campaign for Justin Lester as Wellington mayor and, for a second time, successfully in the Mt Roskill byelection.

It establishes a network of field organisers and volunteers, uses data to determine which voters are persuadable, and a style of personal connection with them and carefully chooses the issues on which to connect.

It will be the template for Labour's campaign for the 2017 election.

While the Mt Roskill campaign was locally run, the Victorian and federal Labor Party have been advising New Zealand Labour.

Little's leadership is not "terminal", but it would have been seriously undermined if he had lost a seat Labour has held for 32 of the past 35 years.

With Mt Roskill behind him, Little can focus on the election.

First he has a trip to India and Pakistan, which he delayed because of the Kaikoura earthquake.

He has a reshuffle to conduct to take account of Phil Goff's departure, the pending retirements of David Cunliffe and Clayton Cosgrove and, of course, the newly acquired talent of Michael Wood.