KEY POINTS:
The movers' boxes in the corridor have yet to be unpacked, but a framed photograph already occupies pride of place on the wall of the otherwise still sparsely decorated lounge in the Leader of the Opposition's suite on the third floor of Parliament Buildings.
If Phil Goff needed
to remind himself of the weight of history he shoulders as Labour's new leader, then there is no-one more guilt-inducing to have staring down on him than the humbling, bespectacled face of Michael Joseph Savage.
Some on the left will view Goff's paying homage to that most iconic of Labour figures as an insult, given the former's support for Sir Roger Douglas free-market policies during the tumultuous years of the Lange Government.
But the Labour Party which Goff inherits from Helen Clark and Michael Cullen is one since reforged in the spirit which fuelled Savage's Government.
The Douglas era is now history. Goff has long since operated within the Clark-Cullen social democratic frame. He and his deputy, Annette King, may be from the more moderate (arguably more right) wing of the party. But it will be a surprise if there is much change in fundamentals under their command.
Yet, if the substance does not alter, Goff's leadership will clearly be a very different style to Clark's, not least because it has to be if he is to win the next
election.
How different may not become clear for some months. Goff is being extremely careful for the time being not to say or do anything which could be construed in any way as criticism of the Clark years.
The party idolises Clark. Goff is in her debt for her resigning the leadership on election night. That left the Labour caucus no option but to choose him. If Clark had hung on for a while, other contenders might have started to emerge as serious alternatives. It was all very tidy. It instantly stopped the leadership question becoming an ongoing distraction and a potentially destabilising factor following defeat.
It was not cost-free for Goff, however. Being granted the full three years to turn things around will be seen as plenty of time for him to put Labour back in a winning position. He will therefore likely get just one shot at becoming prime minister.
Given that - and having waited so patiently for so long to get the job - Goff, not surprisingly, is itching to get stuck into the new National minority Government.
To that end, he is warning colleagues that he will not be carrying any passengers in his shadow cabinet. The message for those promoted in his first allocation of portfolios is that he will reshuffle again before the 2011 election.
Where Goff is demanding performance, Clark was always more willing to accept incompetence rather than upset caucus rankings.
Goff's reshuffle is also a bit of a gamble. Some potential longer-term threats to his leadership could shine. But in doing so, he is hoping they will end up helping him in the short-term by consolidating Labour's recovery.
For the moment, however, everything is in abeyance, at least until Parliament meets in 10 days.
Tempting though it might be to zero in on National's new ministers, Goff has accepted that to do so now in heavy-handed fashion is of little practical benefit to Labour and might backfire.
All-out attack tends to look like overkill when ministers have barely got their feet under their Beehive desks. People are keen to know what National is going to do. They are not really interested at the moment in what Labour has to say about it.
Two things must happen before the normal sparring between Government and Opposition can resume in earnest.
First, National's honeymoon has to run its course. The public - not Labour or the media - will decide when that honeymoon is over.
Labour realises the public will expect John Key and his ministers to be given a "fair go". Apart from an initial jab at the Maori Party which went down like a lead balloon, Goff has been restrained, offering little comment on the make-up of the new Cabinet and letting minor lapses by ministers pass.
Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, National's honeymoon should last at least until Christmas. How long it survives beyond that depends on the deepening economic recession and the adequacy of the Government's response. That will be the major talking point through the early months of 2009. Labour knows full well how the public mood can rapidly shift against a Government. Labour enjoyed a honeymoon after the 1999 election which was brought
to an abrupt halt by the following year's "winter of discontent". That is looking more and more like a mild frost compared with the deep freeze confronting National.
The second thing that must happen is Labour must do some serious soul-searching about why it lost the election. That debate will start with a session at next week's meeting of the Labour caucus, the first chance the party's MPs have had collectively to analyse the reasons why Labour became so "disconnected" from voters that its share of support slumped from just over 41 per cent of the overall party vote to just under 34 per cent.
Goff does not want the assessment of where Labour went wrong to turn into a lengthy exercise in introspection and navel-gazing.
Ideally, the exercise will have run its course at the very point that National's honeymoon ends.
Goff cites the "time for a change" sentiment, the perception that Labour had not done enough on the law and order front, and, the "nanny state" syndrome as major factors responsible for the defeat.
Again, he is careful. He does not volunteer Labour's association with Winston Peters - which may have been Clark's undoing.
Those ties have to be one factor in Labour's support dropping markedly in its inner-city strongholds, like Auckland Central and Wellington Central. Comfortably-off urban liberals felt they could comfortably hive off to the Greens or National.
Labour had already largely lost control of provincial New Zealand in 2005. This time it lost control of Auckland. It took a hammering in poor and well-off metropolitan urban areas.
Apart from losing the social liberals at the upper end of the socio-economic ladder, conservative blue- and white-collar workers at the lower end opted for National or stayed at home.
Goff does have a firm handle on that latter constituency - perhaps more so than Clark did. It is reflected most obviously in what is by Labour standards a hardline approach to law and order.
It is difficult to envisage Goff coming to the rescue of an unpopular piece of social legislation in the way Clark did with the anti-smacking bill.
His Labour Party may turn out to be a more conservative beast, but a sturdy one.
The important thing for now, however, is that Labour be seen displaying humility.
In talking a lot about Labour "not meeting people's expectations", Goff is publicly acknowledging the party made mistakes. That is what voters want to hear. Then they might start listening again to what else Labour has to say.
