Nickie Muir: Has Key made a difference?

John Key.

The phone calls started after the press release. "It's an affair," said one.

"It's the buildings in Wellington that we can't get back into and my bloody car is still in one of the car parks. How come Japan can build earthquake-proof buildings and we have forgotten how to in the last 10 years? None of the old buildings are a problem. Bloody neo-liberal self-regulating building industry," said another.

Another phone call; "He must be over it. He's a family man. Eight years is a bloody long time in politics." (What does "family man" even mean? A son of a mother? A father of a son?) Then the cafe conversation: "I think he's fallen in love with a man - and it's just not OK to be gay in the National Party."

And I realised - it must be so draining to be the Prime Minister, no wonder he's wading out of the parliamentary gloop. Did Helen feel this way too? What is it with the Anglo obsession with who everyone is sleeping with? Latins just shrug and go, "And what?" when their leaders have affairs. Not that I'm saying he's had an affair - I'm just pointing out that the scrutiny would get tiresome.

So I get it - he must look around at his own swamp with Judith sitting quietly under the waterline, all ruthless amphibian ambition, and be desperate to flush himself out of there.

At least he'll never have to listen to one of the lower-ranked MPs asking moronic patsy questions ever again. Or have to explain himself to those pesky school-marm Greens.

I hope he goes and parties up large with pony-tails and three-way handshakes till Winston retires.

He's done his time. But has he made a difference?

I don't think so. Or not at least to the renters and tenters and the bottom 40 per cent who are working hard and still getting nowhere.

Perhaps not making a difference is a good thing in unstable times but I don't really get how "steady as she goes" can be translated as anything other than maintaining a status quo that's not really working - except without paying into the retirement fund that was created by a Labour Party.

He did maintain the "communism by stealth" (National's words not mine) in Working for Families, which has helped keep the economy afloat - also created by the Labour Party.

Key played to the myth of wealth as an indicator of moral superiority or knowledge rather than a shrewd and limited financial success on an anything but level playing field.

He sang the song of the self-made man from a state house. By his definition I could say that I too grew up in a state house and it would make just about as much sense - it would give lie to the huge opportunities I was given and was taught to take advantage of.

It would also negate the reality of that other country I live in now - so different from the one in which I grew up.