Labour Leader Helen Clark said today that the Prime Minister's speech to the National Party conference had failed to live up to the expectations created by her spin doctors that she would relaunch her party by giving the speech of her life.

"This tired and defensive speech was not an election winner," Helen Clark said.

"Its only proposed new initiatives were those which have already failed in the current term of Parliament - attacks on the Holidays Act, abolition of the Employment Court, a reduction in rights for workers, and roading reform.

"Those moves aside, National promises more of the "business as usual", which has produced economic and social failure.

"There were no signs of flesh on the bones of Max Bradford's rhetoric that hands-off policies have failed. Nor are there likely to be.

"The Prime Minister needed to produce in this speech a vision for New Zealand and a clear set of policies to achieve it. She did neither. Her last chance for a relaunch has been squandered," Helen Clark said.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>