John Armstrong writes that the backbone displayed by Brownlee and Bennett will please the National traditionalists, but we'll have to watch it bend again in election year.
So, John Key's Government does have a spine (of sorts) after all. Those of a centre-right persuasion who despair of National's constant knee-bending to pragmatism - rather than displaying some old-fashioned backbone - would have been heartened to some degree by Gerry Brownlee's discussion document on opening up the national
parks and other "high-value" parts of the conservation estate to mining.
National's traditionalists would have been even happier with Paula Bennett's prescription for getting people off benefits and into the workforce.
They would also have been pleased with the Minister of Social Development's handling of her policy announcement, which was slicker than Brownlee's management of the politics surrounding his.
While National seems to have finally bared its teeth with its policy on mining, it has picked a funny way of going about it. If you are going to pick a fight with the conservation lobby, you may as well go for broke and make any political pain worth enduring.
The Government, however, finally settled on only a handful of sites for potential exploitation, two of which are right on the doorstep of the large and volatile political marketplace that is Auckland.
In picking parcels of land in the Coromandel and on Great Barrier Island as part of what is supposed to be the first tranche of suitable sites, National could not have chosen better locations for the anti-mining movement to wage war on the policy.
The very notion of modern-day mining on Great Barrier, which is devoid of the necessary infrastructure, is ludicrous. So much so it did not take long for one idea to gain currency - that Great Barrier had been included on the list of such sites so it could be dropped later to show the Government was willing to compromise.
The trouble now is any move in that direction will be viewed as a cynical ploy rather than a genuine sign National is listening to the public in what the Government insists is still only a consultation exercise.
In contrast, there has been relatively little fuss over National's intention to tighten up on welfare, even though the package of measures will affect far more people than any mining operations.
The short debate over Bennett's package ended up being prolonged by Attorney-General Chris Finlayson's finding that the work-testing of sole parents breached the Bill of Rights and was discriminatory because the policy does not apply to everyone in the category.
The time-honoured way ministers deal with these rulings is simply to ignore them. The Social Development Minister went a step further, with Bennett declaring in this case most people would not mind a bit of discrimination.
The relatively muted reaction to her "Future Focus" package was, in part, down to most of its contents - unlike mining in national parks - being a manifesto commitment.
Another major factor is the international shift in thinking, which has seen strict obligations imposed on beneficiaries while, at the same time, offering them more incentives to take a job. Tight Budgets and the looming cost explosion of looking after the baby boomers in retirement have made governments of both the right and left far less generous in terms of entitlements.
This may explain why Labour offered little criticism of the detail of the package. It had been doing much the same in government in terms of work-testing those on the unemployment benefit. Where Labour was more hesitant was in expanding work-test requirements to those on the domestic purposes and sickness benefits. Bennett, with the support of Cabinet colleagues, is much less coy about doing that. Even so, there is a sense of deja vu surrounding her announcement this week.
A fair chunk of the contents (as well as the language) echoed National's 1996 reforms, which included requiring those on the domestic purposes benefit to seek full-time work if their youngest child was 14 years or older, or part-time work if the youngest child was aged 6 to 13.
In some respects, the 1996 reforms - struck down or revised by Labour after 1999 - were more radical than Bennett's. The widow's benefit was also work-tested. Under Bennett's policy, that will be exempt - as will those women who are over 50 who gave previous care to children, which qualifies them for the "woman alone" category of the DPB.
As Finlayson's ruling declared, this discriminates against the bulk of sole parents, including men, who have no equivalent of the widow's benefit.
Cabinet papers show officials recommended axing the "woman alone" category - but ministers were not prepared to go that far even though that category would have been "grand-parented" for those currently accorded that status. Indeed, there is a fair bit of "grandparenting" in the package to ensure no one is made worse off financially.
Though the reality was rather different, this week's headlines still predictably spoke of a "crackdown" on beneficiaries. That, no doubt, delighted Bennett and the Prime Minister, who quipped about beneficiaries sometimes needing "a kick in the pants", while she declared the "dream is over" for those on the unemployment benefit who did not make honest efforts to find work.
But talking tough is no substitute for results. These will be easily measured come election time - in Brownlee's case, the number of applications for exploration permits and, in Bennett's case, the numbers on the DPB and other benefits.
However, Bennett's ministry has admitted there is no way of accurately forecasting the number of people who will move from benefit to work over a year as a result of the changes announced last Tuesday.
Bennett has thus been careful not to set any targets or deadlines that might come back to haunt her. She knows factors beyond her control - namely the state of the economy and the supply of part-time jobs - will be the determinants of success.
Other research has credited the in-work payment that was part of Labour's Working for Families package as a major factor in the reduction of DPB numbers during the last decade - at least until the recession saw numbers ballooning out again.
The other crucial factor is the ability of Work and Income to case manage individual beneficiaries and find the right mix of training, childcare arrangements and so forth, which will keep them in part-time work.
For that reason, work-testing of those on the DPB will initially start with 4500 beneficiaries deemed to be the most "work ready". That is a tenth of the number who are eventually expected to be work-tested - Bennett won't put a date on when - and a fraction of the 109,000 in total picking up the DPB.
Bennett is parking contentious matters in the working group being set up to look at further measures to cut welfare dependency. Until it reports, she will retain a strictly neutral position. By then, however, it will be election year - and National's backbone will be bending frantically once more.
