KEY POINTS:
Yesterday was a This is Your Life day for Helen Clark.
It began at 9.30am, when she rolled up at 12 Fife St in Miramar, driving past the Historic Places plaque and into the marquee on the lawn.
It was the 70th anniversary of the state housing system and Helen Clark was there to visit the first state house ever built.
It was a trip back to earlier days for Helen Clark - she was last here 20 years ago for the 50th anniversary when she was Housing Minister.
Much is now made of how she carried a coffee table into the house - an echo of Michael Joseph Savage, who had carried a table into the house back in 1937 on the first day of the scheme.
It's now the only state house left on the street. The other ex-state homes have two-level modern homes squashed in where the lawn used to be.
It's a sturdy house, butter-coloured with a blue trim, and everyone talks about how they don't build them like they used to.
The only things that have changed are the copper in the washhouse and the kitchen bench, which is now stainless steel, according to Russell McGregor, grandson of David and May McGregor who were the first tenants.
It reeked of simpler times until Helen Clark pointed out state homes weren't built for simpler times at all, but were to cope with the wash-out from the Great Depression.
Winnie and John Nysse live here now, and the spread they put on for their landlords - Helen Clark, Housing Minister Chris Carter and local MP, and fellow Cabinet minister, Annette King - made Helen Clark quite nostalgic.
Once the porch was duly lopped off the state house-shaped cake, and the speeches were done, the Prime Minister looked over the crowd in as wistful a way as is possible for Helen Clark.
"I was a very young Minister of Housing when I came here last."
It wasn't the end of memory lane, Helen Clark also hosted afternoon tea for Lillian Ward, the face of a new publicity campaign for the National Cervical Screening programme. Suddenly, Helen Clark was back as Minister of Health in the late 1980s.
"This reminds me of the announcement I made in 1989 of a $36 million campaign for a nationwide screening programme. One is hard pressed to think of a major campaign since then."
The carefully staged photo opportunities to highlight two events marking Helen Clark's long career in politics seemed more than coincidence.
It may have been a subtle jab in the ribs of her nemesis, John Key.
The point, perhaps, is that he was off building his personal fortune on the money markets while she stayed at home busily building 3000 state houses a year.
