They were hunkered down behind locked doors in the Arataki Community Centre and plotting.

'It starts right here,” says Phil Twyford, senior Labour politician, MP for Te Atatu and the party's housing spokesman.

'The election is still 18 months away but it starts right here.” And it was appropriate the election strategy was being hatched right at the party's grassroots, Arataki, right in the middle of working class Tauranga.

'We want to get a Labour MP, a Labour list MP, based in this region serving this big, important and growing community.”

And to achieve that the party's building a campaign and building its forces. 'A fighting force to turn out the party vote for Labour in the Bay of Plenty region.”

The MP says there are a lot of party votes in the area – six electorates and between 50,000 and 60,000 party votes – and they need to mobilise that vote.

'It's always about the party vote – it determines how many MPs we get in the house. That's the logic of MMP [the Mixed Member Proportional system].”

'So we will get the Labour Party vote up so we have enough list MPs to deploy one to this region.”

The Labour heavyweight flew in from Auckland for the strategy meeting – dressed down in T-shirt and jeans but talking up prospects.

'We also intend to win back Waiariki [the Maori electorate which includes Tauranga, Whakatane, Rotorua and Taupo],” says Phil, still smarting from losing the only Maori seat the party doesn't hold.

'Because the Maori Party is the Maori wing of the National Party, it means Waiariki represents two seats on the National side of the house. We intend to change that,” says Phil.

At the strategy meeting were party representatives of the Bay of Plenty and Lakes region, the Bay of Plenty, Tauranga, Taupo, East Coast, Waiariki, Taupo and Rotorua. '

But basically we are working together as a region,” says the MP. 'Building a seamless party vote campaign across the region.”

Labour and Phil Twyford see the region's biggest issue as housing. 'There's a crisis in Tauranga – unaffordability and shortage. And that affects people right from the frustrated first-home buyer who can't get into the market right through to people who have fallen through the cracks and the homeless and those living in substandard homes.”

'Labour has strategies to deal with speculation. For starters banning non-resident foreigners from buying existing housing. Dealing with property speculation has to be a big part of the answer.”

'The other things are addressing the various planning rules that are obstacles to building more and better first homes. Only five percent of homes being built in Tauranga are in the affordable range – from $350,000 to $400,000.”

Phil says our parents' generation benefited from policies like State Advances Corporation loans – essentially the Government passing on cheap borrowing, cheap mortgages if people build a new house. That he believes, would stimulate a lot of entry-level houses.

And 'bumpy” is how the senior MP describes his party's poll fortunes lately.

'We need to get off the early thirties and up into the mid and high thirties to be in the game next year. We have to win the trust and confidence of New Zealanders as a viable alternative Government.”

But Phil says if you look at the current Government, it's been on the ropes recently. 'New Zealanders are profoundly uncomfortable with the thought their country is a tax haven, a shelter for the world's mega-rich to hide their ill-gotten gain.”

And Phil says New Zealand is seeing a Prime Minister who 'just doesn't get that the electorate doesn't want this country used as tax haven”.