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Phil Goff has been confirmed as the Labour Party leader but it
appears he is no longer leading the charge on race relations.
Instead it was a junior colleague, rumoured to have leadership
ambitions, who launched a ferocious attack on the Maori Party at
Labour's first caucus meeting this year.
A chipper Goff arrived for the meeting at the Waipuna Hotel in
Auckland's Mt Wellington safe in the knowledge he is still Labour's
top dog.
"I'm afraid you'll just have to put up with me for another couple of years," he says.
There is no change in the leadership, but there is a change in tactics.
Goff is backing off race relations, leaving his junior colleague, Shane Jones, to take the lead in tackling the Maori Party head-on.
"I certainly am not going to tolerate any longer (the Maori Party's) betrayal of the Maori voters and that we are not meant to criticise them because they wear the cloak of Maoridom. That's wrong," says Jones.
He is targeting the spending of $1 billion in taxpayers' money on what critics describe as a separate Maori welfare system.
"At a time when Kiwis are in strugglers gully, that is wrong. It's very dangerous and it shows that this government just buys favours by giving money to a favoured few," says Jones.
Goff is setting his sights on his own MPs, telling them to lift their game.
"It isn't a warning. It's a message that 2010 is an important year politically. All of us will be working hard to stand alongside ordinary New Zealanders," he says.
It is crunch time for Labour, a make or break year in terms of making inroads into National's sky-high poll ratings. So it goes without saying if some MPs are not performing, others will be snapping at their heels.
Labour MP for Mt Albert David Shearer says Labour MPs are looking for opportunities.
"There's definitely a hunger, there are definitely ambitions. But that goes right across the caucus, it's not just with the newer intake," he says.
Grant Robertson, Labour MP for Wellington Central, says competition is healthy.
"Like any political party there's always healthy competition for places but we're working together."
