Kiwi health officials will decide tomorrow whether the suspension of the Victoria transtasman bubble should be extended as the Australian city battles an increasing outbreak.
A recess week saw Act dreaming big, the Nats played copycat and Covid-19 Minister Chris Hopkins danced on a pinhead over the vaccinations rollout plan.
Sunday: Act accuses National of being a copycat
In his annual conference speech, Act leader David Seymour noted National stole Act's ideas without giving themcredit for it. His evidence was National Party leader and Papakura MP Judith Collins using his phrase "honest conversations".
"I heard Mike Hosking interview a woman from Papakura and she kept saying it too. She copies me a lot," Seymour said.
Further evidence landed a few days later. Act came up with a meme taking a jab at socialism.
After the Ministry of Health changed the start date of the vaccine rollout to the general public from just "July" to "from the end of July", Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins insisted it was not delay but merely a "clarification".
"July is July, it'll still be from July," he pointed out.
He noted the Government had never said what end of July it would begin. That subtlety was clearly lost even on the likes of the Auditor-General, who had assumed along with the rest of New Zealand that it would be from early July.
Covid-19 Minister Chris Hipkins explaining what July means. Photo / Mark Mitchell
It adds to the lexicon of justifications which Finance Minister Grant Robertson kicked off with his U-turn on increasing the brightline test, which Robertson justified by saying he had been "too definitive" when he had earlier ruled it out.
Hipkins' earlier contribution related to a farcical Ministry of Health graph on the rollout which purported to show how many people would be vaccinated and when.
Hipkins later said that graph was only intended to be "illustrative". Illustrative of nothing other than that as time went on, more people would be vaccinated.
Thursday: Beware the 15 per cent goal.
Despite insisting on The Country that he was not trying to de-throne National's Judith Collins as the real Leader of the Opposition, Act leader David Seymour sends out a rallying newsletter to his troops later that week.
National Party leader Judith Collins and Act leader David Seymour. Photo / George Heard
It noted party president Tim Jago's call for the party to double its support from 10 MPs to 20 MPs – requiring about 15 per cent support.
It noted Act had climbed to 9 per cent in that night's 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, and asked for donations to help get the extra 6 per cent to hit the goal.
The last time Beehive Diaries remembers a small political party getting ambitious about becoming a medium-sized party was in early 2017.
Labour was in the doldrums and NZ First leader Winston Peters believed he could hit 15 per cent in the 2017 election.
Peters still believes the party could have got there, if only Labour leader Jacinda Ardern had not come along. Instead Peters had to settle for 7.2 per cent. Three years later that had dropped to 2.6 per cent and NZ First was out of Parliament altogether.
