KEY POINTS:
We're either living in a country that's doing well under a Government with the policies to make it even better, or we've just about lost hope and can't wait to get rid of Labour.
Prime Minister Helen Clark and National Party leader John Key presented vastly different pictures of New Zealand to Parliament yesterday.
Helen Clark's speech went across the spectrum of social policy, detailing achievements gained and the Government's determination to build on the good work.
She didn't mention the National Party, but Mr Key had plenty to say about Labour.
Families terrorised by gangs, an underclass in despair, hungry children in schools and charities that couldn't cope.
The Government was out of touch, the Prime Minister was aloof and uncaring.
Helen Clark set out her agenda, and sometimes her dreams, in a speech that rarely diverted from a written text.
Mr Key, mostly off the cuff, said little about National's plans but was quick to pick up on the Prime Minister's points.
It was an attack speech, which greatly pleased his own MPs and was scorned as useless by Labour members.
"The number of people in severe hardship is increasing, charities can't cope with the need for food, the police can't cope with gang violence," Mr Key said.
"Communities are being terrorised, children are going hungry and the Government doesn't care."
Mr Key raked up Labour's pledge card, said the Corrections Department existed in a culture of denial, that drugs were rife in prisons and called Finance Minister Michael Cullen's tax cuts policy "the longest striptease in history". "We will be committed to tax cuts year after year'," Mr Key said.
But a significant feature of Parliament's first day of the year was Helen Clark's heavy commitment to developing climate change policies.
The way she is going about this suggests it will be Labour's most important path to an election victory in 2008.
She is linking environmental sustainability with national identity - she said it would define New Zealand in the same way the anti-nuclear stance had done.
The Government, she said, had a huge work programme in hand as it worked toward a goal of carbon neutrality and becoming the first country in the world to achieve environmental sustainability.
She did say it was a goal, not a promise, and it's a big ask.
Between now and the next election the "huge work programme" really has to work, because if it doesn't then Mr Key and his colleagues are going to let the country know the Government has failed.
Helen Clark will be acutely aware of that. She is putting great emphasis on the need to succeed with climate change policies, and her Government's future may well depend on it.
- NZPA
