Matt McCarten: Labour gets back to basics

This week's political story is the changing of the guard at the Labour Party's annual conference in Rotorua. It's probably a good thing it has had the best part of a year to lick its wounds after its general election drubbing at the hands of John Key.

Helen Clark rightly took the blame for Labour's defeat and her gracious and seamless transfer of power to Phil Goff was a class act.

Deputy leader Michael Cullen and party president Mike Williams took her lead and relinquished their roles shortly after.

I've always been fond of Williams. My lasting memory will always be of when I first met him. He was dressed completely in black, seated in the back of a cafe, chain-smoking over black coffee while wheeling and dealing on a cellphone attached to his ear.

He really was a working-class party boss right out of central casting. He's always great fun, a consummate story teller and a political spinner from way back. It's an end of an era.

I understand the party's need for swift change after the election, but it was disappointing he didn't get to finish his term at this weekend's conference as planned.

Initially, I was sceptical that the incoming president, Andrew Little, would be able to juggle his party responsibilities while also carrying out his role as the head of our country's biggest and most important trade union.

But the EPMU has been more active than ever and Little has led the two biggest industrial disputes already this year, while managing the rejuvenation of his party.

The other top party leader, Mike Smith, steps down this weekend after nearly a decade as its general secretary. Smith has been one of the party's central organisers for more than 25 years.

Williams and Smith weren't that close, and it did cause some internal problems. Little, as new president, has made sure he doesn't have the same difficulties and installed his personal choice, Chris Flatt, as Labour's new general secretary. Flatt has been a long-time organiser for the Australian Labor Party and up until this month been the trade union's top national campaigner. Flatt is well-liked with a reputation as a formidable organiser.

Surprisingly, John Pagani, who is a senior player in the Progressive Party and a former Alliance media strategist, was shortlisted with Flatt for the job.

I've worked with Pagani over several years on Alliance campaigns, and he is one of the most talented and creative strategists around. But, as some insiders have reported, there's no way they were going to hand the party's chequebook and organisation over to an ex-Alliance apparatchik - no matter how good he is.

Goff, though, won't allow past sectarianism to get in the way of him winning the next election. Wisely, he's appointed Pagani as a senior adviser in his office, apparently to be his key campaign strategist.

I won't be surprised if Pagani in time becomes as influential to Goff as Heather Simpson was to Clark.

You can already see the priorities of the new leadership. Social liberalism, it seems, has been shunted to the back burner and replaced with working-class bread and butter economic issues. Clearly, it is going after the traditional Labour constituency that Clark lost to National.

It is heartening to see a whole series of conference workshops this weekend discussing current struggles that working people are facing.

The new party leadership has cottoned on to the probability that if they limit themselves to a usual parliamentary strategy, Key will be re-elected at a canter. But if, in addition to its parliamentary work, Labour pursues campaigns in the community that are important and resonant with its core constituencies, then it may be able to rebuild its support and may be able to pull off a miracle.

You wouldn't put money on it today but two years is a very, very long time in politics.