Claire Trevett: Trevor Mallard's dramatic exit and the hardest words - 'Sorry Winston'

OPINION:

Sorry has traditionally been regarded as the hardest word to say – and that is particularly the case when the one you are supposed to say it to is a certain Winston Peters.

But former Speaker Trevor Mallard clearly came up against words of even greater horror when he discovered he was also expected to say he had been "unreasonable and irrational" when he tried to trespass Peters from Parliament for his visit to the February protests.

There are limits when it comes to apologising for your trespasses over trespassing.

So some may well be suspicious about the timing of that apology from the Office of the Speaker: the day after Mallard stepped down as Speaker.

The apology came from the Speaker – the position – not Mallard personally. It was part of the judicial review Peters has taken in the court over the trespassing of himself (and other former MPs) for attending the protest, orders which were later revoked.

So it is that Mallard can now say that Trevor Mallard has not said sorry or admitted to irrational and unreasonable behaviour – that was a totally different person altogether. It was in fact the Speaker who did that.

The apology was issued under the name of the new Speaker, Adrian Rurawhe, whose entry into the job was rather overshadowed by Mallard's exit from it.

It is most fortunate Rurawhe's dignity and even temperament puts him at the opposite end of the equanimity scale to Mallard.

That is because his start in the role was marked by fireworks left, right and centre: not in celebration of his election, but around Mallard's departure.

These were not all directly Mallard's fault. But Rurawhe's first jobs on his first day in the job involved stopping newly independent MP Gaurav Sharma from using his first speaking opportunity in Parliament to try to haul Mallard into his list of grievances against Labour, and then apologising to Peters on behalf of Mallard for his earlier excesses in issuing trespass orders.

Illustration / Guy Body

It capped off a barking week in politics which began with the expulsion of Sharma and a protest. It had an odd symmetry in its barkingness.

Mallard had a baptism of fire when he was elected Speaker, and he got the last rites of fire as he left the job. The baptism of fire was in the high jinks of the National Party, bluffing Labour into thinking they didn't have to numbers to vote Mallard in and threatening to put up another contender.

The last rites of fire came from Opposition politicians (and Peters) issuing scathing performance reviews both of Mallard's time as Speaker, and pre-emptive reviews of his future as ambassador to Ireland.

Act's David Seymour noted pithily one of Mallard's great achievements: "It is difficult to make Winston Peters look like the innocent party in any situation, but Mallard has managed that."

National's Christopher Luxon was more measured, acknowledging Mallard's support for new MPs and efforts to make Parliament a better place to be – while also noting National had had issues with him. Peters was not measured at all.

All of this is just a dress rehearsal ahead of Mallard's actual departure in October, when he will deliver his valedictory and go to boot camp to transmogrify into a diplomat. Spare a thought for his personal trainers.

Adding to the symmetry was the return of the February protesters to Parliament's grounds in the same week Mallard stepped down – although this time he did not treat them to his special playlist, and all the recent rain in Wellington meant Mallard decided that watering the lawn was not as essential as it had been in those balmy, dry weeks in February and March.

Then there were the first steps of Hamilton West MP, Sharma, as a newly independent MP, courtesy of an expulsion by the Labour caucus.

Mallard began his own political career as the MP for Hamilton West – and he is ending it sitting right next to Sharma on the backest of the back benches in Parliament.

It proved a very convenient place to call out "liar" when Sharma accused him of narking to Labour's whips after he went to Mallard for help (and to ask for the taxpayers to cover his legal bills to take Labour on in his war of attrition, to which he was not entitled).

It is against Parliament's rules to call somebody a liar, but Mallard was quick to readjust to his old life as poacher again, having gone from poacher to gamekeeper when he became the Speaker.

The excitement of it all resulted in some rushes of blood to the head among some in National as well. Suspicion in National's ranks about the timing of Mallard's resignation in the week Sharma was expelled from Labour resulted in the suggestion National could give one of its speaking slots to Sharma to allow him to continue to slug away at his erstwhile Labour colleagues under Parliamentary privilege.

It is a stupid idea, especially when your leader has been saying all week that issues around Sharma are issues for the Labour Party and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to deal with.

It is a doubly stupid idea when you contemplate the potential for future revenge – and your own track record with problematic MPs.

It would break something of an entente cordiale between the two large parties not to wade in on each other's problems. Labour has largely stayed out of the muck on a string of National's MPs – right through from Jami-Lee Ross to Sam Uffindell. That is a result not so much of the PM's "kindness" ethos, but of the ethos that people in glass houses should not throw stones.

Quite why some in National would decide it was a good idea not to return the favour was baffling - such antics are best left to the likes of Act.

The suggestion was promptly and rightly scotched by Luxon, who told the NZ Herald on Wednesday he had no intention of doing Sharma any favours or giving him speaking slots. That was not least because National had very few speaking slots and wanted to use them to talk about other things; things he hoped might win him an election, such as education and the cost of living.

The final icing on the barking week's cake was the news that Luxon had gone back to the vicinity of Te Puke on Friday, visiting the Seeka packhouse on the outskirts of the town. He famously got into trouble after posting about his last visit to Te Puke during a week he was actually in Hawaii.

At a meeting in Rotorua he took a leaf out of his old mate Sir John Key's playbook of turning trouble into a joke. He began his speech with a cheery, "Aloha! Welcome to Honolulu," and noted he was heading back to Te Puke that day.