The pressing task for Labour is to construct a compelling critique of National. They pretty much failed to do this last term. The critique then was about stuff that National had yet to do, like asset sales, rather than past performance — aside from complaining about the deficit, which was never a winning line. Seems to me there’s political hay to be made in pointing out that growth under Key has been so much lower as to be nonexistent, regardless of why. Estimates vary, but the Bolger/Shipley years saw something like 3.2% average annual growth, while the Clark government presided over an average of 2.9% (they were beating their predecessors until the disastrous 2008). Under Key it's been 0.7%; per capita, we're still below our pre-crisis level.

National would like to be associated with growth, but you can make a strong case they don't care about pursuing it ahead of other economic goals. Where's the evidence to the contrary? (If you say “tax cuts”, you’re welcome to try to convince me that their primary aim wasn’t to redivide the pie.) The Nats seem perfectly satisfied stagnating along, and why wouldn’t they be when the public hasn’t called them on it? In fact, last year they pretty much stopped talking about catching up to Australia (smartly, since Australia have moved even further ahead post-crisis), instead telling us about how we were going to return to surplus soon, it must be true, Treasury said so.

In the short term any growth should be achievable with minimal negative effects because there’s so much slack in the economy. Growth would put people into work, rather than out of it (except maybe Alan Bollard). If all Labour's “growing the pie” bullshit leads to a coherent critique of National’s performance, then good for them (and good for us, if their nagging spurs National into actually doing something to end the stagnation). The use of cliches suggests they haven’t figured out how to grow the pie yet — aside from the all-purpose answer of SCIENCE! — but as they’re not going to be in power for at least three years, and because the last election showed voters are indifferent to Opposition policy details, this isn’t as urgent.