The New Zealand Labour Party is staring down the barrel of a defeat that has all the hallmarks of that suffered by National in 2002. Understandably, some Labourites - MPs and supporters – want people to blame. The mainstream media seem to be in their sights for not giving the party and its policy announcements the attention they believe is warranted.

Across the Tasman, the media are in the sights of the Labor Party too, though it is in government. It recently announced an inquiry into the media, spurred into the review by its Green coalition partner, which regards the Murdoch press as hostile, on the pretext of the phone-hacking scandal that has enveloped News Ltd in Britain.

In this country, Labour seems to have forgotten how the pendulum swung in its favour during the first two terms of Helen Clark-led coalition governments.

Then, the prime minister was quoted on every subject under the sun, appeared in or on most media several times a week, and even allowed herself to be made up for an airbrushed photo on the cover of the Australian Women's Weekly.

Since John Key became prime minister in 2008, that pendulum has swung the other way. It is always galling for a major opposition party to be so thoroughly overshadowed, but them's the breaks. Labour's turn will come again.

Across the Tasman, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the party she leads are in every bit as much trouble as their Kiwi counterparts. After last year's election, soon after Ms Gillard became party leader, Labor found itself without a majority. It has been only with the help of the Greens and three independents that Labor can govern.

The compromises that must be forged when a government cannot govern alone, however, have forced Ms Gillard into a policy U-turn on a carbon tax, and to agree to the media inquiry.

During the 2010 election campaign, for example, she promised no carbon tax while she led the party. Now, pushed into changing her mind by Greens leader Bob Brown, she can plead only that circumstances have changed.

They have changed, too, on the vexed subject of asylum-seekers, a matter the prime minister thought she had resolved with help from Malaysia. That was until the High Court told her her plans were illegal. What to do next?

This week, a psephologist at the Australia National University predicted, however, that Ms Gillard, whom he described as determined and tough, might become its Iron Lady. Given her dire approval rating, that seems optimistic.

The current parliamentary term does have two years to run, but Opposition leader Tony Abbott is doing all he can to ensure the Labour-led alliance founders before November 2013.

In this corner of the Pacific, neither social-democrat party – and neither leader – is finding political life much fun just now. Ms Gillard might console herself, however, with a line much beloved by former deputy prime minister Jim Anderton.

A bad day in government, he used to intone, was worth 1000 days in opposition. If that's true, Miss Clark's successor might thus be wishing that he had Ms Gillard's problems.