Sixteen things Phil Goff needs to say sorry to the electorate for but probably won't:
1. Nanny State - Screw the CFC lightbulbs and douse the shower nozzles, how about the Nanny Knows Best turning school tuck shops turned into Health Nut temples?
2. The Electoral Finance Act and the retrospective legislation that legalised the 2005 campaign funding theft - Every Labour MP still in parliament bears the blame for just following orders and passing these anti-democratic pieces of self-justification.
3. Winston Peters and Owen Glenn - When there's a conflict between the public good and Winston Peters, Labour chose the wrong side. Screwed a big donor without a second glance too.
4. General tolerance of corruption, bullying and incompetence - Where to start; Philip Field, David Benson Pope, Chris Carter.
5. Judith Tizard - The apotheosis of cronyism. Utterly useless politician put in charge of responsibilities far beyond her competence. Speaking of which...
6. Section 92a of the Copyright Act. Utter clumsiness on an integral subject of NZ's future.
7. KiwiRail - Might as well have burned $300 million in a big bonfire in front of parliament. Thank Dagg everyone wasn't reliant on trains to get from A to B. Between unheated commuter carriages in winter through to lines closed by mudslides, rail transport makes Auckland's motorway system look reliable.
8. Foreshore and Seabed - Labour Five's first really big blunder. If Clark had the cajones to hang in there and let the courts handle the jandal, it would have been fine. Never pick a fight you don't have to.
9. KiwiSaver - Noble plan poorly executed. High bureaucratic churn, money stuck in IRD limbo, uncertain value for money. Middle class welfare which made a mockery of the welfare state.
10. Working For Families, especially Stage II - What started as lower income suppport for the working poor quickly morphed into middle class welfare for families with iPods and cellphones. More high churn uselessness complicating the picture.
11. Interest-Free Student Loans - Another opportunistic unaffordable scheme targeting middle class voters. Wouldn't more good have been done upgrading the universities?
12. ACC blowout - Just one more unbudgeted promise Labour ignored.
13. Section 59 - Word out after 2005 was that Labour was not looking at rocking the boat with more social engineering policies. So why handcuff yourself to Sue Bradford's Bill?
14. The Indoor Smoking Ban - More Nanny State crap treating adults like children. Great way to piss off quarter of the elctorate. Grew NZ's carbon footprint by requiring smoking patrons to have access to outdoor gas heaters in winter.
15. Back to the Future with Jim Anderton - Introducing a man to the annual conference whose party received less than one percent of the vote last election is hardly reaching for popular appeal.
16. Helen Clark - You'll never hear Goff question Clark's autocratic reign. In spite of controlling everything from last year's Labour campaign (normally a task of the Labour party not the executive), through to the horizontal and the vertical of everything within the party caucus, Clark failed. But you'll never hear a discouraging word about the ex-Queen Bee.
