On election night, Phil Goff didn't know Helen Clark would stand down as leader of the Labour Party. Within weeks he had replaced her and was putting together an opposition team.
The first year was always going to be tough.
If it had been a matter of choice, says Phil Goff, he wouldn't have become leader of the Labour Party a few days before National ministers were sworn into office.
"You would choose to do it in a second or third term, but I considered it a privilege," he said.
"I think the toughest period in opposition is always going to be the year after you've been defeated in an election and you've got to start the process of rebuilding."
In some ways, however, he had the best of starts. Clark's instant decision didn't leave time for any trouble to brew and the changeover to Goff and his deputy Annette King was swift and clean.
"It was a bit of a surprise, and maybe a disappointment to the media, that Labour didn't do what it has done on some occasions after election defeats when there was blood on the floor," he said.
"It was a seamless transition, perhaps too seamless in the sense that there wasn't a sufficient degree of publicity and excitement around the leadership selection process that would have given a launching platform for the new leadership."
Those misgivings are minor, because Goff can't remember another unanimous caucus vote for a new leadership and it set the scene for the next 12 months.
"The traditional problems you have as leader of the opposition, coming in, is that you have a tired and dispirited team, and often a disunited team," he said.
"I didn't have to deal with those problems.
"I've got a team that is reinvigorated by 14 new MPs and the Labour Party had accepted its loss, accepted the decision the electorate had made that it was time for a change.
"After three terms, that wasn't unusual."
During the early months in opposition, Goff had to face up to the problems that beset the previous government in its last term.
He admitted it lost touch with voters in key areas, and that it had to start listening and reconnect with the electorate.
At the same time, he said, the party was proud of what had been achieved.
"We'd been elected three times, re-elected twice, so most New Zealanders had considered we had collectively done a pretty good job in government," he said.
"And there was acknowledgement of things we did that led us to lose some of the support we had."
As leader of the Opposition, Goff was dealing with a government which was trying to save the economy. It wasn't the time to snipe at it.
"I had spent nine years being relentlessly positive about New Zealand, representing its interests internationally, working as hard as I could to take New Zealand forward as part of the Labour team," he said.
"I wasn't going to suddenly enter Opposition and develop a style where everything the government does is wrong and be relentlessly negative about what was happening."
During the year, Labour supported numerous bills the Government put through Parliament, although Goff said most of them were carried over from the previous government.
And Labour offered to help with difficult legislation like the emissions trading scheme and ACC changes.
Goff said the Government acted in bad faith and he was disappointed but he won't change Labour's attitude.
"I won't be relentlessly negative but I will hold the Government to account. We've got a dual role in opposition - to come up with positive alternatives and to work with the Government in the interests of the country, but to hold them to account."
Looking back over the last 12 months, Goff was pleased with what he saw.
"New MPs are on a learning curve, they've got the advice and mentoring of longer-standing MPs and a core of enormously experiences ones with proven competency in handling ministerial responsibility," he said.
"It's a strong position to build from and I think they've performed very well. Caucus is strong."
Goff said the days when Labour was riven by factions is long gone.
"To tell the truth, that went as long ago as 1997.
"We don't have 43 clones in the caucus, we've got 43 people with quite strong opinions and from time to time they differ but they don't differ over any ideological divide."
It was right on mid-year that Labour had a huge boost. Clark's departure had left the Mt Albert seat vacant, she had held it for 28 years.
Labour was well behind in the opinion polls but it turned in a stellar performance.
"John Key was confident they would win it, he said it was a leadership test for me, he said I should be judged on the result of that by-election," Goff said.
"It could have been a real test as well for Labour's confidence, its morale and its sense of its own capabilities."
The party chose David Shearer as its candidate and, Goff said, set about getting alongside the community and understanding its concerns.
"We won Mt Albert by a wider margin than Helen Clark generally did in the past - 63 percent for Labour, 17 percent for National. It gave us the confidence that when we get our act together, we can get the results.
"Whatever the polls might show, that's been the only actual test
of public opinion at the ballot box since the election."
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