TracyWatkins

the party’s MPs want to be seen as focused on when the Government is talking up the economy.

Meanwhile MPs, including Phil Goff and Shane Jones, are saddling up for a stoush over the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, which is facing staunch opposition among the rank and file.

Heading into the conference, Mr Jones is clear that he is brewing for an argument over the TPP representing everything he believes the Left stands for – trade, jobs and a stronger economy.

‘‘There are already 130,000 Maoris living in Australia and what peeves me is that if we are unable to meet the burgeoning demand for jobs, certainly from our young people, they’re going to keep coming home with an Australian accent.’’

The party’s finance spokesman and newly appointed deputy, David Parker, faces an equally stiff battle holding on to his flagship policy from the last election, raising the pension age to 67, a key plank in Labour’s plan to combat National’s caricature of Labour as fiscally reckless.

The policy won him plenty of kudos from the big end of town, but it rankles the party’s union base.

In other words, the conference risks exposing the widening rift between where many of Labour’s MPs believe Mr Cunliffe must take the party to win the next election, and where the grassroots – the more vocal of which are refugees from the old Alliance Party – believe he should take them, which is further to the left and closer to the Greens.

Mr Cunliffe has so far straddled both sides of the debate successfully.

Despite the faith of the activist base in him as the leader of a ‘‘red’’ revolution, Mr Cunliffe’s lurch to the left has been more in tone than position.

Other than his pledge to reverse National’s industrial law changes, he has made few promises that weren’t already written into Labour policy before the change of leader.

Even his promises of a living wage have been carefully tempered.

Mr Cunliffe insists that the rift over direction is overstated and is also confident the ‘‘identity politics’’ focus of last year’s conference, which only contributed to making Labour look removed from the lives of middle New Zealand, won’t dominate this year.

‘‘I don’t see there is any problem there, I really don’t.’’

He also rejects suggestions that he has been too equivocal on where Labour stands on issues like the SkyCity convention centre, and the lucrative gambling concessions enshrined in a deal done with National.

‘‘Do you want it straight from the shoulder? Here it is. We will not rip up the contract. We will not throw out the term of SkyCity’s gaming licence. However, we will reserve the right to regulate for gaming harm in a way that we would with any other participant in the gaming industry.’’

FORMER Labour Party president Mike Williams says it will take time for Mr Cunliffe to erode Mr Key’s popularity – but it will happen. But he has to keep the party focused on the big battles.

‘‘A party that’s talking about needing more gays, lesbians and trans-gender people on the list is really not focusing on fundraising and organising and gaining members. So he’s really got to get hold of that.’’

The party faced the same battles under Helen Clark, Mr Williams says.

‘‘I just used to say to her ‘let it fall off the agenda’.’’ He believes Labour is already halfway to winning the next election under Mr Cunliffe and says National is only ‘‘hanging on by the skin of their teeth’’.

‘‘If you can get someone to join up all the dots, as Clark did in 1999, you can make it look like a government that is [on the way out].

‘‘I’ll be very interested to see his speech to the conference because all the polls tell you the election can be won by good organisation; getting out that last one per cent or two per cent is what will put you over the top.’’

This is where Labour’s rhetoric is increasingly focused – the so-called ‘‘missing million’’ voters who did not bother to turn up to vote at the last election. It is pinning its electoral hopes on finding the magic formula that will mobilise those voters again in 2014, rather than the more difficult task of peeling swing voters off National.

But the debate within the party over whether you do that by moving closer to the centre, or further to the left, has not been resolved.

Mr Cunliffe says it would be ‘‘giving away trade secrets’’ to give a straight answer to that question. All parties will be getting to know their ‘‘target voters’’ very well over the next year, he suggests.

‘‘[But] I’m obviously convinced the kind of policies we stand for are the things middle New Zealand will like. At the same time it’s really important that our rankand-file members clearly understand from the conference that this is going to be a strong social democratic party.’’

But wooing back many of those voters will not be easy.

Many of them are likely to be the socially conservative wing of Labour’s traditional constituency who were turned off by its liberal agenda on issues including prostitution law reform and smacking.

Mr Cunliffe rejects the notion that those voters are ‘‘a homogenous’’ group with all the same concerns.

‘‘What I can say is our understanding is that a lot of the same themes are important to a lot of different voter segments and we will be communicating the opportunities for New Zealanders based on the issues that we know matter to them.

‘‘A lot of those core issues are about having a job, and that they’ve got a future.’’

Political commentator and former Alliance president Matt McCarten says Mr Cunliffe needs to focus on equality and growing problems for the poor, because Labour cannot win on economic management, given the improving state of the economy.

Demonising Mr Key, meanwhile, would be a mistake.

‘‘They can’t make it about Key not being a nice man, or not being interested in New Zealand, because he is.’’