KEY POINTS:
Labour will begin the 2007 parliamentary year with the resignation of one of its most colourful MPs, transsexual Georgina Beyer.
She will resign in the first week that the House resumes on February 13 and has signed up to star in a play that month at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin, titled Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, by Richard Alfieri.
Georgina Beyer, who competed in the first television series of Dancing with the Stars, is also considering contesting the Wellington mayoralty in October.
Her resignation will be the second from the Labour caucus of 50 and part of the rejuvenation that Prime Minister Helen Clark wanted under way before the next election.
Former Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton retired in July.
The next person on Labour's list is Southland union organiser Lesley Soper, who was briefly a Labour MP before the 2005 election.
Several other retirement announcements are expected before the next election, including Dover Samuels, Marian Hobbs, Dianne Yates, Jill Pettis and Paul Swain.
Georgina Beyer, a former mayor of Carterton, was first elected in 1999 as MP for the Wairarapa.
She previously announced her retirement but changed her mind and was elected on the list last election.
Parliament finished for the year last night in a debate that ranged from light-hearted to the hard-hitting political.
National deputy leader Bill English attacked Labour for the failure of Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor to resign over the death of Liam Ashley in custody.
To taunts over the inexperience of new National Party leader John key, Mr English said: "If this is John Key with his L plates on, wait till he gets his full licence."
Mr Key fired up the National backbenches with his farewell speech for the year, describing Labour as a "Walkman Government in an ipod world.
" ... their days are numbered, they're gone."
Mr Key believed the Government was "all smoke and mirrors, leak and spin, truths and half-truths".
And it had been caught "red-handed with their fingers in the till for $800,000 and they spent the entire year refusing to pay it back".
For his part, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen questioned Mr Key's failure to recall his position on the 1981 Springbok tour.
And referring to the British Conservative leader, he called Mr Key "David Cameron without the substance, David Cameron without the bicycle and only the VIP car."
He said Mr Key made policy on the hoof and that every statement was vague and meaningless.
Speaker Margaret Wilson told MPs that this year they had sat for 85 days, 477 hours and 22 minutes, passed 97 bills, asked 20,185 written questions, asked 988 oral questions, held 296 select committee meetings which had produced 293 reports.
"I think that is an example of an extraordinarily good workload."
