KEY POINTS:
John Key came from a state house in a poor neighbourbood and pulled himself up by his bootstraps through the rich values his widowed mother imparted to him, in case you missed it the first 100 times.
The rags to riches story has been a recurring theme since
he gained National's leadership in November last year but at the same time is one that is difficult to tire of.
It was again the staple of his first state of the nation speech he delivered this afternoon at Burnside Rugby Clubrooms, near his old fibrolite state house in Hollyford Ave.
He virtually dramatised the metaphor of pressing one's grubby nose to the windows of the rich when he told 200 party faithful: "I remember how it felt to peer in the windows of homes that were materially better than my own, looking at kids with toys better than mine, families with both a mum and a dad, and homes where the fridge was full and the car was in the garage."
But rather than be embittered by being a have-not, it inspired him to be ambitious for his family, and now for New Zealand, to promote values that he calls "the Kiwi Way."
But clearly the "underclass" of which he was once a member was a different league to today's underclass.
Rectiting a litany of recent horror stories - the Kahuis, the murder of Doreen Reed, the posties who are too intimidated by gangs to deliver mail - he painted a picture of a "dangerous drift toward social and economic exclusion," which sounds like a line borrowed from Dr Brash's "dangerous drift towards racial separatism" speech at Orewa.
The one example he could have given - but didn't - was the fact that one the horrific deaths that has shaken the country from its summer mood this year, that of 10-year-old Charlene Makaza, took place on the same street that Key grew up in.
It is all potent stuff for a fresh young Leader of the Opposition.
We know a little bit more about John Key than we did a week ago. His father who died when he was young, was an alcoholic. His mother was so rabidly anti-National that his joke present to her was a blue party rosett. "That sent her right off the deep end," he told Newstalk ZB shortly before his speech.
After today's speech we know that he has a remarkable talent for describing the problems.
The challenge will be coming up with some remarkable solutions.