W69, while I don't see Labour as radical, I do see them as the best chance for good incremental change in NZ. Sure they have centrist leanings, but some in the party wanted to bring in a CGT, a leveller in the tax treatment that everyone who lives here must pay, in some form. GST was brought in by Labour, but increased twice by National. That's not a tax that hits high income earners, or the wealthy, in the same proportion as it does for those who need to spend every dollar that comes in.
Apart from helping the govt balance the books and make it fairer on most of us, a CGT would mark a radical change in the perception of the usefulness of investment in housing, for example. I saw some of the stats on Q&A today, it's like a runaway freight train in Auckland at the moment. While some I know are selling down to encapsulate the gains, many more are jumping in, at or near the top. All this effort, good capital spent on a vain asset that employs just a few during the short construction stage, and a portion of a person for maintenance over its lifetime. A business can provide a far better return over decades, can employ many, can export goods, can improve the economy in bounds. Yet if you go to a bank looking for money to buy a building to trade from, or for funds to get started, you'll only get 50% of the lending for the former, nothing for the latter, no matter what your previous income might have been, unless you have some unencumbered property you can put up as collateral.
For me, any party that has small-business-centric policies will be worth voting for, because this is where the new jobs will come from, the new exports, the investment, the nous. I disagree with you about Labour's chances in 2017 too, they'll have a good chance by then, and I'm sure we'll see a lot more from Andrew Little. I note the sentiment about National vs Labour is already changing, on blogs and comments on the web.
The Labour LECs are getting organised right now, for a leadup into the winnable election in 2017.