This was meant to be a good week for the Labour Party.
It had scheduled its party list announcement for Monday, and then followed up with a substantial policy announcement on Wednesday. Having suffered months of taunts from the government and questions from the media about the supposed dearth of Labour policy, this was the week to change momentum.
But instead the party finds itself mired in a messy controversy about one of its star recruits, Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo, and just when his police bosses knew that the senior officer was set on a political career.
Supt Naidoo is the police national partnerships manager for iwi and ethnic communities, and generally respected as a high-performer. Or at least he was until now.
A clearly miffed Police Minister and senior National MP, Mark Mitchell, was soon asking what sort of confidential information on government policy Supt Naidoo might have had access to, while, Supt Naidoo’s boss, Commissioner Richard Chambers, publicly questioned why he had not known anything of his staff member’s aspirations earlier.
Labour fired back instantly, saying that Supt Naidoo’s integrity is ‘‘beyond reproach’’. The man himself, quite properly seeing as at this point he is still a serving police officer, has said nothing.
However, the war of words which has broken out is an ugly one and has dragged the police force - which should, which must, remain scrupulously out of the political melee - right into the heart of it.
There is likely fault on all sides here. Given his rank, Supt Naidoo was required to notify Comm Chambers as soon as possible about his intention to stand for election, and the commissioner seemingly feels that notice was insufficient.
But given an HR issue had been raised by this, the commissioner should never have then made a public statement at all, especially one which was inevitably going to be viewed through a political lens.
Mr Mitchell, meanwhile, should likely not have got himself embroiled in a police operational matter - although no doubt with his party political hat on he has few issues with Labour’s ensuing discomfiture.
Having been ranked at 13, Supt Naidoo is likely to find himself in civvies after November 7: unless Labour has a disastrous election night, that position should see him elected as an MP. Time will tell whether his career change is a well-advised decision.
More broadly, Labour’s list is a careful balance of experience, rising stars and new talent. Its highest-ranked candidates all have ministerial experience, and in the mid-range it has many MPs who either have been ministers or who have been regarded as ministers in waiting.
The party’s trio of Dunedin-based MPs can have few causes for complaint. Dunedin MP Rachel Brooking has been elevated to 11th on the list and looks a shoo-in for a weighty Cabinet post should Labour win in November.
Likewise, list MP and veteran minister Damien O’Connor, at 16, should make it back to the House, and in a senior role. Taieri MP Ingrid Leary has a much lower spot, but that is due to the expectation that she will retain her seat. Her task over the next few months is clear.
For several months now Labour has battled a perception that it has little policy to offer the electorate - a claim which skirts over the fact that much of its tax policy is already in the public domain.
It moved to counter that on Wednesday with its announcement that it, if elected, it would cap public transport fares across the country to $20 a week in the three biggest cities and $10 elsewhere.
This is a wallet-friendly initiative which many will favour, although it is in effect further subsidising a public transport system which is already heavily paid for by the taxpayer.
However, recent funding decisions have heavily favoured private and commercial motor vehicles over public transport. There is a place for both and if this scheme ever came to pass this could tilt the balance back toward the middle.
Questions remain about the logistics of it and how easy, and expensive, the rolling out of a nationwide scheme such as this might be - National is claiming that it could end up being 10 times more expensive than predicted. It is also correct that, effectively, the government will be paying taxpayers’ money back to them.
However, for many it will look like the sort of hip pocket policy that they want to hear in a cost-of-living crisis. It, at least, has Labour back in the policy conversation.
