It's the old "keeping the powder dry" strategy: On Labour's Great Silence

I am being a little unfair, of course. Labour has scrubbed up somewhat on the asset sales front, and somewhat sotto voce on the Crafar case, but I understand that Mr Shearer is adopting a 'wait and see' model based on the expectation that National is quite capable of doing damage to itself in its current careering around the political stage. There is a logic to this. National is indeed in foot-shooting mode, and were it not for Mr Mallard, their horizon would be marked by a swathe of political Renas.

That said, a time must come for the "new" Labour to stand up and say something positive about where it wants to take NZ. It cannot feed forever on the living carcase that is National. And there is an imperative for Mr Shearer in this. He has to prove himself a potential winner in 2015, and that will require him to appear far and wide as the bearer of good news and a better future. I hear that what that good news and better future might look like has still a long way to go in its gestation. As elsewhere, NZ social democracy has problems in distancing itself from the orthodox crisis management beloved of, for example, the Troika in Greece. Mr Parker's comments last week on the government's economic forecasts trod a centrist and 'safe' path very carefully, eschewing any radical utterance and very much posing Labour as the better manager of the economy. Mr Shearer's team seems to be adopting a conservative approach to the next three years, rather than building on some of the more radical and challenging policies that began to emerge (belatedly) under Mr Goff. Here's hoping that a more radical current begins to surface soon in those discussions.