Political diary

Sunday

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble ... Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Chris Finlayson brews up a little surprise for an Opposition counterpart during his stint as master of ceremonies at the Young Shakespeare Company's awards in Wellington. All the world's a stage and Finlayson decides Labour's associate arts spokesman Grant Robertson, who is in the audience, should be invited on stage to present one of the night's awards. Robertson could have been excused for thinking this was a fine gesture of political bipartisanship after the previous week's sparring between National and Labour over Bill English's Budget. But Robertson had not counted on Finlayson's mischievous sense of humour. It turns out Finlayson is one of the company's sponsors and Robertson finds he has been handed the job of presenting the "CF Finlayson Award for Movement in Dance". He apparently took the ribbing in good heart.

Monday

For some reason best known to themselves, the Greens always hold their annual conference at Queen's Birthday weekend - and usually find a venue where it is even colder inside the building than outside. This year's start-of-winter gathering looked like following the familiar pattern - a hall in Dunedin with delegates sleeping on the nearby marae. Just to top things off, a polar blast was forecast for the weekend. So there was much glee among less masochistic delegates when it was discovered the marae had underfloor heating. That upside was offset by the downsides of delegates' snoring and the consequences of a lentils-based diet. Blaming the underfloor heating for the sleepiness of some delegates, co-convener Moea Armstrong put it nicely: "We have now got some slow-baked Greens."

Wednesday afternoon

As Sir Elton John crooned, sorry does seem to be the hardest word ... especially when you are a Cabinet minister. During question-time in Parliament, Grant Robertson (wearing one of his other hats as Labour's state services spokesman) asks ACC Minister Nick Smith if he is going to apologise for publicly revealing jobs were about to be axed in the corporation the day before staff were due to be informed of the redundancies. Smith replies that he had been of the understanding that staff had been informed before his speaking in Parliament's financial review debate and letting slip the information. He goes on to say he subsequently found out that only senior staff had been told. Then he adds: "I think the apology should be from Labour that allowed a huge expansion of ACC's head office that now means this Government has to deal with the mess it left us." As Robertson noted on Labour's Red Alert blog, Smith's reply speaks volumes.

Wednesday evening

The best barometer of who is on the up politically and who is on the way down (literally) can be found across the road from Parliament. Yes, with a new Government and a new prime minister, the life-size puppets on the walls of the Backbencher Pub have been recast and rearranged. Present for the unveiling are John Key and Bill English, whose previous latex incarnations were as Batman and Robin respectively. There is much laughter as the new versions are revealed - Key as the Blue Baron in a bi-plane replete with machine gun and English hanging off the right wing, ingloriously depicted as Snoopy. Key is delighted, saying "I've always thought of Bill as being cute and cuddly" before remarking on how blue English's eyes are, rubbing the puppet's stomach and then assuring him "there will always be a place on my plane for you, buddy". Having announced the dumping of Richard Worth from his ministry that morning, Key adds: "The day I've had today, it's a shame the pub wasn't open at 8am." English says the fact he is allowed to speak at the launch shows how much Key has changed. "When we launched Batman and Robin, he was the only one to give a speech because he said people came to watch Batman, not Robin." Another standout puppet is Act leader Rodney Hide, who dangles on the end of strings pulled by Sir Roger Douglas. The real Hide chooses to see the funny side, saying the good thing about having Sir Roger in the Act caucus is that there is never a shortage of advice. "And the advice is never contradictory. It hasn't changed actually in 20 years."