KEY POINTS:
First, the party president drops a bombshell and announces he is stepping down.
Then, the guest speaker fails to show up, forcing a hasty reshuffle of the agenda.
When Grey Power's national president Graham Stairmand does turn up, he further endears himself to his hosts by praising one
of the party's former MPs who departed under somewhat acrimonious circumstances.
It was - as one of the party's surviving MPs described things - a morning of surprises at United Future's conference on Saturday.
To put it mildly.
Graeme Reeves' resignation as party president came as a shock to the 50 or so party members gathered in an upstairs room in Christchurch's Arts Centre.
Seeking to return to Parliament in 2008 - he is a former National MP - the politically savvy Reeves felt he should not risk being accused of using his seat on United Future's governing board to obtain a high slot on the party's list.
His announcement was hardly a morale-booster for his audience.
But United Future already has its back pinned to the wall. This was the first conference since the election sliced its parliamentary representation from eight to just three. The polls indicate the party could be down to two MPs after the next election.
Peter Dunne has been there before. But going back to square one must be very depressing and a reason why the party's leader was so grumpy on election night last year.
And now the bill for that has arrived - $72,000 in unlawful spending on election advertising. Advertising which did not work.
Sisyphus-like, Dunne must somehow roll the rock back up the hill. The post-election year conference was the opportunity to look at doing it differently as the party searches for relevance.
Judy Turner, the party's deputy leader, talked of United Future becoming the party of the "Radical Centre" - a seemingly contradictory concept that involves not merely refereeing between the extremes of Labour and National. It means pushing United Future into the foreground by promoting radical, innovative ideas, some of which are drawn from both right and left.
However, the question is why United Future's message is not getting through already when its leader is upfront with voters and one of Parliament's best communicators.
The messenger believes United Future is not talking the language of the families in mortgage-belt New Zealand.
Dunne thinks United Future has been too narrow in its focus. It has been a bit arrogant. It needs to deal with things as they are - not on the basis of what it would like them to be.
All this is code for saying the party's message is being distorted by the perception that United Future is chock-full of Christian fundamentalists.
The first step in rebuilding is to eradicate that perception.
That is not going to be easy. For example, one of the party's MPs, Gordon Copeland, has produced a private member's bill designed to cut the abortion rate by ensuring women get as much practical support as possible to continue the pregnancy.
Mr Dunne must be praying there is a God - one that does not select Mr Copeland's bill in the ballot to get on to the parliamentary order paper.
The bill underlines why the message is not getting through. United Future draws its ideas far more from the right than the left, thus coming across as more centre-right than centre.
That could be why the mortgage belt is not listening.