As the Government comes up to its first anniversary, one of its ministers stands out for me.

It is not John Key, though he has made three decisions that were politically risky and right. The first was to rule Winston Peters out of coalition contention before the election. The second was to embrace the Maori Party. The third was to ignore the result of the smacking referendum.

But on big economic calls he has yet to show any steel. He is offering no leadership on the need to raise the superannuation age and tax residential property investment, ruling those out before they put any heat on him.

The Finance Minister is slightly more open to discouraging property investment - the key to taking pressure off the dollar and re-orienting the economy to exports - but I am not holding my breath. Bill English is a Treasury-trained career politician whose ability to analyse the economy's problems has yet to be matched by the courage to do much about them.

His next Budget will be telling. This year's was a promissory note to the credit rating agencies, convincing them government spending would be reined back from 2010.

We'll see.

The most impressive member of the Cabinet is a complete newcomer, Steven Joyce.

He is not a career politician, which helps. In the best tradition of the National Party he has established a business, sold it and has the personal security to devote himself to the national interest for as long as he feels the work worthwhile.

Joyce is already the minister who gets things done. Every Government needs one.

He is doing the infrastructure projects, notably the duplicate broadband network, as well as those in his primary portfolio, transport.

He's done the little things, like the car cellphone ban on which the previous government dithered for years, and the big things like the Waterview connection, which I thought was wrong but he put me right.

Not the least of Joyce's attributes is a relaxed approach to reporters. He makes it his business to keep them informed and does the rounds of newsrooms more regularly than any minister in my experience.

Auckland's western ring road had to come into Waterview rather that take the more obvious route along the Rosebank Peninsula, he explained, because it had to be the city-to-airport route.