KEY POINTS:
Handed what Labour MPs consider to be the choice portfolios of housing and accident compensation, Maryan Street's first seven months as a Cabinet minister had witnessed a robust performance marked by all-round competence and some much-needed innovation.
Sooner or later, however, something comes along which trips up even
the most capable of up-and-coming ministers.
Street's undoing has been Housing New Zealand's failure to consider how profligate spending $65,000 on a two-day conference for senior staff at the luxury Tongariro Lodge would look for a state agency charged with helping the poor.
But Street is not the only one of Labour's new generation of Cabinet ministers under the political hammer.
Clayton Cosgrove continues to come under questioning in Parliament as National endeavours to reveal he knew more about problems with former Immigration Service boss Mary Anne Thompson than he has been letting on.
David Parker is another of Labour's "fresh faces" currently struggling to sound convincing. As the hydro storage lakes dry up, the Energy Minister is projecting a "crisis, what crisis?" demeanour to the possibility of the lights going out this winter.
Having said six weeks ago that there was a less than 5 per cent probability that there would be serious electricity shortages, Parker was at pains in Parliament yesterday to avoid making further predictions.
Parker must tread a fine line. He cannot sound too gloomy for fear that he puts another damper on economic confidence. He cannot sound too optimistic in case the rains do not come and shortages eventuate.
Not surprisingly, Parker was celebrating the recommissioning of Contact Energy's gas-fired New Plymouth power station. Which is fine until you realise he is also the Climate Change Minister supposedly reducing the amount of electricity generated by thermal plants.
Cosgrove, on the other hand, looks increasingly confident that he has seen off National's efforts to demonstrate he knew far more about the Thompson affair far earlier than he has admitted to Parliament.
While they may be Labour's faces of the future, all three know the Prime Minister will be keeping a keen eye on their portfolios, particularly Parker's. Power shortages in election year would be the last straw for Labour.
Clark was also less than impressed with the handling of the Thompson affair during her absence overseas, although she is blaming officials rather more than ministers.
Awaiting the results of four separate inquiries, Cosgrove has breathing space. But the Opposition keeps digging deep for possible leads, yesterday basing an oral question in Parliament on some previously ignored ministerial replies to written parliamentary questions last year.
Street's faux pas _ ignoring the Prime Minister's advice and initially defending Housing New Zealand _ had Helen Clark hanging her out to dry in Parliament yesterday.
Clark has never been a Prime Minister to defend the indefensible to shield a colleague.
More difficult for Street to stomach, however, would have been National's housing spokesman, Phil Heatley, ticking her off for her association with a state agency more interested in playing croquet and petanque at luxury hotels than helping those forced to live in "squalid boarding houses in Mangere".
Heatley laid it on so thick he was obviously trying to provoke Street into saying something she would regret.
Looking distinctly unamused, Street took her punishment, however.
It may have been a bad day at the office. But for someone who was Labour's president during the 1990s when Jim Anderton's Alliance was running her party ragged, Street's taking the rap for her officials' failure to show political foresight, while embarrassing, is relatively trifling.
