The only thing that seems to have stopped the triggering bill was cowardice on behalf of one of the three parties in government. I don't want to name names, but I have heard that the party who handbraked that has a name that rhymes with Few Zealand Nursed.
Their rationale was that they didn't want to be seen to be voting for the legalisation of cannabis, and it would give them something to campaign on come 2020. That said, given the public will have access to the bill and all the information required, I can't see a process issue being a massive sticking point when it comes to the vote.
It was also the moment the Greens got a bit political. Obviously the Green Party has been leading the charge on cannabis referendum as it was in its confidence and supply agreement with the Labour Party, but they seldom play the political game. This time they put out Chlöe Swarbrick's explain-a-video and a statement in advance of Labour's announcement and I for one was chuffed. That's the sort of credit-grabbing that needs to be done more.
In the next bit of good news, Kelvin Davis was able to announce a substantial pot of money to introduce a programme for some of our worst offenders in prison who have committed the worst crimes.
These are some of the trickiest prisoners to try to reach and this Government is not just doing some dumb vote winning over-simplification like tougher sentences, but is actively targeting those prisoners with Māori-based programmes to reduce reoffending when they are released.
It's the aim of every government to try to reduce recidivism, but it's bold to make a song and dance and throw nearly a hundred million dollars at it when you could so easily be setting yourself up for failure.
It's this sort of new thinking and bold ideas that people wanted from a Government that called itself "transformative".
The high point of the week was the announcement of the Zero Carbon Bill. It's been delayed for a number of months, again I don't want to name names but I have heard that a party led by a man whose name rhymes with Pinston Weters may have been responsible. But it's finally here.
It's been led primarily by the Green Party and especially co-leader James Shaw. James and the Greens should be very proud of getting this over the line. It's a much bigger step towards addressing climate change than any other Government in New Zealand has managed.
A lot of commentators have said that because of the criticism from both Federated Farmers and Greenpeace that the bill must have landed in about the right place politically, and for that the Greens should be complimented. However, Climate Change does not care for how things land politically. The murder of our planet is not going to be halted by pragmatism, so I'm not wholly convinced that this is a magical climate change panacea, but we're getting somewhere.
Three whole transformative things in a week, and with the well-being budget still to come this month I think it might finally be happening. We may actually be doing this.
David Cormack has worked for the Labour and Green Parties and interned for Bill English while studying.
