KEY POINTS:
Advantage Key. Whatever the Prime Minister has kept up her sleeve for her landmark speech tomorrow, it is going to have to be something pretty darned special to better John Key's effort today.
As a piece of politics, the state of the nation address delivered by National's leader
comes as close to hitting the bull's eye as you can probably get
It is not quite in the league of Don Brash's Orewa treatise on race. It has a different job to do, cementing National's current lead in the polls, rather than having the shock value Brash's needed to close the gap on Labour.
Its promise to give young criminals a dose of discipline-instilling boot camp-style military training along with incentives to keep school-leavers studying rather than going on the dole will do the job for Key in terms of the necessary impact-creating headlines.
Overall the speech covers all the bases in the way an Opposition leader should with the opening salvo of election year - and more.
Not only does the speech meet the requirement that National start talking policy. It is overflowing with policy ideas.
It cannot be attacked for lacking substance. The speech shows National is much more serious about policy than it was at the last election. It successfully conveys the impression of a Government-in-waiting.
It not only takes the fight to Labour. It seeks to prise away those voters whose attachment to Labour is weakening.
But its pitch for votes in the centre-ground does not compromise traditional National Party principles. If anything, it underlines them.
Of course, talking tough on law and order has always been the easiest means for a conservative politician to do this. We are still waiting, for example, to see what National would do substantially differently on the economic front.
However, youth crime is the hot topic of the moment. National's proposals - including stints of army training for serious youth offenders - will resonate deeply in traditional Labour territory like crime-hit Manurewa. There will be wider backing elsewhere for National taking "an ambulance at the top of the cliff" approach.
Similarly, National's promise to offer free courses in polytechnics, wanaga or private training schools so that 16 and 17-year-olds go into training if they leave school.
No matter that the Youth Guarantee policy has been borrowed - name included - from Australia and Scandinavia. Key and National have stolen a march on Labour which has talked, but only talked of similarly ensuring young people do not go straight from school to the dole.
The speech's big strength is that it is constructive rather than merely critical. Key lets the policy ideas do the talking rather than relying on overblown rhetoric to carry the attack to Labour.
However, Labour's failings are the undercurrent driving the speech.
Be it youth crime or the economy or whatever, Key's overarching theme for election year is that New Zealand can do better than it has under Labour's rule. Today's speech is the first in a long line of policy releases with which National will seek to answer the obvious question of how.
