Political editor Audrey Young looks at how Parliament's major players spent yesterday, the first anniversary of John Key's Government taking power.
John Key spent part of his first anniversary as Prime Minister boosting the National Party's fight-fund for the 2011 election, then opening a beauty school.
He attended a lunch at The Chateau on the Park Hotel in Christchurch where about 10 wealthy guests paid the National Party for the privilege of lunching with him.
It was the same city, though not the same hotel, where Act leader Rodney Hide had told his own paying lunch guests earlier this month that Mr Key "doesn't do anything" - for which he has apologised.
In an anniversary speech delivered to about 250 National Party members ahead of his lunch, Mr Key read out lists of his Government's achievements in the first year of Government - nine pages of lists.
He then went up to Auckland to open the Elite International School of Beauty and Spa Therapy in Newmarket.
The school was lucky to catch Mr Key in the country. November is a traditionally busy time of the year for international summitry.
Last week he was in Singapore for Apec and next week he will be in Trinidad and Tobago for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.
Mr Key follows the tradition of Prime Ministers before him and does not attend Parliament on a Thursday. He goes to other parts of the country.
Labour leader Phil Goff - who has also had his first anniversary as Opposition leader - does the same.
He made more headlines yesterday than the Prime Minister, speaking to Federated Farmers in Wellington and signalling a major shift in Labour's approach to monetary policy. He doesn't know what it will be yet, but said the volatility of the Kiwi dollar was too damaging and that Labour had been too orthodox in Government.
Mr Goff is himself a farmer and was able to grizzle with the best of them about the Resource Management Act and what a pain it had been recently when he put up his Versatile barn.
One of Mr Key's closest advisers, Transport Minister and first-term MP Stephen Joyce, also spoke to Federated Farmers, telling them how hard it had been getting used to the public service when he took office a year ago.
He would hold meetings with officials sitting around the large table in his office, with reserve officials standing around the walls. When one official left the table, another would slide into his place and even finish his sentences. The officials, he said, held further meetings after their meetings with ministers in order to establish what they thought the minister had been trying to say. Sometimes Mr Joyce had come across those meetings outside his office and added his own contribution as to what he thought he had been trying to say.
Back at Parliament, it appeared as though it was going to be a very uneventful question time given the significance of the day, apart from slightly more bellowing than usual from National MP Paul Quinn in the back rows.
Finance Minister Bill English suggested the Government had found a balanced approach to the global financial crisis between the slash-and-burn advocates (he did not even look Sir Roger Douglas's way) and the advocates of greater spending.
The Maori Party made a good fist of trying not to look unsettled by the upheaval going on in its party while Hone Harawira's future is settled.
A question by Act's John Boscawen to Nick Smith about foreign companies with cutting rights on DoC estate drew murmurs of approval from Labour - they share the same suspicions about the iwi deal being negotiated over the emissions trading scheme.
The last question of the day woke up the House. Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman responded to Labour's Pete Hodgson who criticised a policy change by quoting the Cabinet minute approving the change - from a Labour minute last July.
Mr Hodgson unleashed his own tirade against the uproar from the National benches, in the process ignoring the fact that Speaker Lockwood Smith had risen from his chair for silence.
Dr Smith punished Mr Hodgson by taking a question off him. Dr Smith did not believe Mr Hodgson needed any further punishment and was so incensed with Dr Coleman's putting the boot into Mr Hodgson as well that he read the riot act to Dr Coleman.
By 7pm the parliamentary complex was empty as the players headed back to their homes before beginning another week, and another year.
