The popular prime minister and his main men in caucus left Party Central and headed for the disaster. Key even fronted a public meeting in the Bay on Friday and the reaction afterwards was one of resignation - those interviewed by the media said they had not realised the difficulties involved in dealing with such a rare event.
Our politicians in the past 12 months have had a succession of rare, and horrific, events to deal with. The statisticians would surely say the two Christchurch earthquakes, the Pike River disaster and our worst shipping accident, in environmental and cost terms at least, are something like one in 100-year events.
Repeatedly, we've heard the Prime Minister having to explain how appropriately his team has responded to adversity.
No one has believed him 100 per cent but, with an absence of hard evidence, Key has sailed on in the polls.
This time may be different. Already Maritime New Zealand has admitted it was too slow in organising and training the thousands of clean-up volunteers.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce told the NZ Herald yesterday he hadn't asked if there was a big enough helicopter in the country to start lifting containers off the ship. When the ship sat in flat waters for the first few days, wouldn't every little bit of action have helped?
And it appears our politicians' slowness in signing up to international conventions may limit the amount of money we can claim for the clean-up.
Of course, none of this would have stopped the ship hitting the reef and the damage to the beaches and wildlife, with more than 1000 birds dead already.
Like any country, we could be better prepared - but that takes time, money and planning. Mine rescue initiatives and equipment, and how to best cope with a shipping disaster, were not far enough up our priority queue for that to happen.
No one will be able to hang Key on that and even with what we have experienced in the past year, that may not change in the future.
What Kiwis expect though is that they, and their leaders, will roll up their sleeves and get in and deal with problems expediently.
The spin doctors in Wellington can pedal as fast as they like, but they are going to struggle to convince that happened with the Rena disaster.