New Zealand Labour Party leadership election, 1996
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The New Zealand Labour Party leadership election, 1996 was intended to determine the future leadership of the New Zealand Labour Party. The leadership was retained by Mount Albert MP Helen Clark, who was the incumbent leader.
Labour were down in opinion polls with the Alliance party being seen as an increasing threat to Labour as the main left wing party in New Zealand. Labour was still associated with its Rogernomics image from the 1980s, which Clark was attempting to erase. However this was part of a wider divide inside Labour between its drastically differing left and right factions. Clark was of the left-leaning faction, attempting to restore Labour to it social-democratic roots, while those on the right-wing of Labour (such as Goff) were intent on retaining the deregulation and free trade policies of the 1980s, albeit more moderately.
Clark had led Labour for nearly three years since her own leadership challenge in 1993 against Mike Moore. She was relatively unpopular in the country at the time, however she was seen as a colossus within the Labour party itself by Goff and his allies. Clark had yet to connect with voters seeming aloof. Her widely acknowledged intelligence came across more as arrogance than aptitude.
Goff had been a cabinet minister for the entirety of the Fourth Labour Government, actually having more cabinet experience than Clark, who only became a minister in 1987. He was currently serving as the Shadow Minister of Justice under Clark. However, Goff was largely unknown, a dangerous factor only months from an election coupled with his hardline reputation as a Rogernomics-era Minister, an image Labour was trying to shake. This caused many fence sitters to remain with the status-quo.
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