Phil Goff's decision to attack National Party Ministers for travelling too much in a recession is poor judgement.
All ministers travel - Goff should know that. He spent close to $2 million globetrotting while he was a Minister between 2000 and 2009.
To say ministers should be cutting back is misguided.
New ministers must forge relationships, especially in Trade, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Finance.
Is Murray McCully supposed to meet Hillary Clinton via the internet?
Should John Key only speak to the Queen over the phone? Get real Phil. And I suspect he knows it.
I think Goff decided that because he was coming off a successful week he needed to start the next one with a bang.
And last week was good for Goff. He got his teeth into issues of substance - issues that actually matter. He highlighted the number of jobs being shed every week - he highlighted the failings of the Jobs Summit. And John Key was unprepared.
So, Goff would have got excited to read the commentary over the last few days, suggesting he was on his game. And then this. Goff should have put up Annette King, his deputy, to pile into the travel debate.
She knows how these stories run. I once did a story on her trip to a WHO conference in Europe. She was away for 21 days. But she'd just got married and took her lovely new husband with her at the taxpayers’ expense.
We dubbed it the "golden honeymoon”. She went apeshit - but she knows the game and she should have launched this attack - and left Goff to run the bigger issues.
But now Key is right - it looks like a cheap shot.
Let's look at Labour's spending compared to National's $739,000 in three months. Labour spent $336,000 in the same three months, a year earlier.
But fast forward a few months and Labour ministers were spending around $1 million a month in the lead-up to the election. I'd be interested to know how much Labour spent sending their MPs to Mt Albert over the past 2 months.
Campaigning doesn't come cheap - especially when the taxpayer is paying.
All parties, most MPs and most ministers, no matter which side of the house they represent, at some stage abuse the travel perk.
Has Goff ever flown his kids up and down the country? Did Jim Bolger? Did Jenny Shipley? Did Helen Clark use the perk for Peter or her nieces or wider family? The answer to all these questions is most likely yes.
In fact, Key nobbled Goff's argument last night when he revealed he'd banned all ministers from taking their husbands or wives on taxpayer funded overseas trips.
That actually looks like he has done something in response to the recession. Shame, it went down like a dog internally. Privately, I understand some National Party ministers and their born-to-shop spouses weren't too happy!
But frankly, Key needed to do something. His approach to Ministerial Services cutbacks is to say, “bugger off, not us”.
National is spending about $1 million more on ministerial staff including press secretaries, because National pays them more - simple.
Helen Clark and Heather Simpson clamped down on the salaries of ministerial staff. Labour's press secretaries were paid peanuts in the early years. (No monkey jokes please!)
So if Goff wants to attack ministerial spending, he'd be better to focus on why Key can't find cutbacks in the wider Ministerial Services budget, and why he's paying people so much.
Attacking ministers for travelling makes him look cheap.
So Goff should go back to what he did so well last week - jobs, jobs, jobs. And he knows it.
On the jobs front, Key and his ministers should be worried. Sure ministers travel, but so does bad news - like job losses. Stick to the factory floor Phil - it's a better look.