Labour’s chance to regroup and go on the attack

It’s taken this long but the shell shock of finding itself in Government seems to be wearing off for Labour. After an untidy start, the fightback has begun.

The flood of ‘‘BIMS’’ – briefings to incoming ministers,170 of them in total – has provided the opening to a conversation about National’s legacy not being all it was cracked up to be.

A big gap in housing need – 71,000 houses short nationwide – was the first of those conversations.

But expect Labour to talk more about other ticking time bombs it inherited from National as a result of deferred spending in health, education, and infrastructure.

The message will be that there are going to have to be sacrifices in other areas of spending as the cracks start to show. Some of them are already showing in health, which is starting to look like a basket case.

That, and the growing crisis of confidence in water quality revealed by a damning inquiry this week, is finally an opportunity for ministers to roll up their sleeves and get on with the job of governing.

The relief of having real problems and real work to do after the weeks of shadow boxing since the election is palpable.

New governments love problems, especially when they are of their predecessor’s making.

Attorney General and Environment Minister David Parker – who is fast shaping up as Labour’s fix-it man – was positively glowing with purpose as he dealt with the double whammy of the drinking water inquiry and a water contamination scare.

In the early days of this government the mood has ranged from euphoria to looking like stunned mullets.

New ministers settled into their new Beehive offices surrounded by boxes, skeleton staffing, and a lack of even basic IT systems. Some of their people still haven’t even got log-ons for their email.

Back offices have been in chaos as new ministers scrambled to get people and systems up and running.

After nine years in Opposition, this is what starting from scratch looks like.

The institutional knowledge about who and how to deal with departments, and how to deal with the sudden deluge of requests for information, left the Beehive along with National.

National has been making hay while the sun shines – running rings around Labour in the House and making mountains out of molehills like the number of bills on the order paper.

It’s been great for team National morale and helps feed the narrative of an inexperienced and unprepared government. But the law of diminishing returns applies.

As Labour starts getting momentum on its programme, National won’t want to look like it’s still stuck in the sandpit.

Labour’s mistake has been in leaving a vacuum for National to fill with such games. It’s not for want of trying – it has failed to get as much traction as it should for big ticket announcements, like the free tertiary study policy rolled out last week, and paid parental leave.

Blame it on the ambivalence about change – internal polls on both sides suggest National is still marginally more popular than Labour – or maybe just the fact that summer came early, but Jacinda Ardern seems to be getting a bigger honeymoon on the international stage than she has domestically.

The mood here among many still seems to be wait and see.

Labour needs to build some momentum before Parliament rises two weeks from now to turn ‘‘wait and see’’ into a feel good factor before the summer break. Part of that will be dismantling the National ‘‘legend’’, in the same way John Key and Bill English picked apart the Clark government’s legacy after nine years in power.

National was ruthless in seizing any opportunity after 2008 to feed the narrative of Labour as a wasteful and reckless manager of the country’s finances. Any crisis was an opportunity. But Labour has not been as organised in its strategy. The language will get sharper when the books are opened next week, however. The end of year fiscal update is being used as a spring board for a mini-budget – though ‘‘mini’’ is probably a misnomer.

The centre piece of that document will be two of the big ticket items in Labour’s first term – its flagship families package, and the resumption of contributions to the so-called Cullen super fund.

Resuming super fund contributions is part of the wider story about re-investing in the country’s future. And the families package will represent a huge boost to low and middle income family wealth.

Word is, Labour is throwing so much at this mini-budget that there won’t be much to get too excited about when the May budget rolls around.

So a lot is riding on getting this one right.

The families package is not new – Andrew Little announced it on the campaign trail. But you can be forgiven for not noticing. The package was overly complicated and Labour struggled to explain why people would be getting more than under National. National, meanwhile, found a highly effective attack line painting it as a money grab, because it is funded by cancelling the last government’s tax cuts. Labour blew it in other words.

Parliament will go into urgency on Thursday to cancel National’s April 1 tax cuts to make way for Labour’s July 1 families package. Labour can’t afford to let National control the narrative again. If Labour can win that battle it will be giving itself a better chance of winning the war and rewriting National’s legacy.