KEY POINTS:
It was hard to put a finger on it but something seemed to be missing from Don Brash in the three weeks since he stood down as National Party leader.
Exactly what became glaringly obvious yesterday as he gave his valedictory speech in the House. It was not just a farewell to Parliament. Dr Brash was also effectively waving goodbye to what has been a very public life for a very long time.
For nearly 20 years, first as Governor of the Reserve Bank and then as National's finance spokesman and, finally, as party leader, Dr Brash constantly wore the mantle of power or power-in-waiting.
All that was stripped away on the day he walked out of the Leader of the Opposition's office for the last time. The loss was made more brutal by the new leadership's unwillingness to give him a worthwhile job and John Key's revisionist take on what the Brash era means for National's future.
It is extremely difficult to feel comfortable when you are no longer wanted. That slightly goofy smile has worked overtime to compensate for the awkwardness that friend and foe feel towards someone who suddenly became so disposable.
But it was never going to be "Don Brash, backbencher". The limbo has been mercifully short.
Yesterday, he put any hurt feelings to one side, coming close to tears only when referring to the pain and stress that politics inflicts on MPs' families.
Otherwise, this was a departure marked by defiance. Some of that may or may not have been directed at Mr Key. With Dr Brash, it is always hard to know.
He took satisfaction from converting Orewa from a place into a date. Everybody now accepted that the Treaty settlement process could not drag on and on. Everybody now at least paid lip service to the principle that there should be one law for all New Zealanders.
Unusually for a valedictory speech, Dr Brash's was highly political. Time and again, he returned to the decline in New Zealand's living standards relative to Australia. And its failure to lift itself even one rung up the ladder, let alone regain a place in the top half of the OECD.
Such speeches are heard in silence as a mark of respect. But there was noticeable shuffling of bodies on the Labour benches when he decried the "politics of envy" where the party that won was the one that "can take $25,000 off a hard-working Kiwi and spread it around to win the maximum number of votes among those who aren't so hard working".
Despite his being frequently depicted as more powerful than the Minister of Finance during his time at the Reserve Bank, it was clear from the speech that his biggest regret was that he never held the finance portfolio.
How different it all might have been had he won the East Coast Bays by-election in 1980. He would have had time to learn the art of politics. He may well have been finance minister in the Bolger Government of the 1990s.
The economist instead took to the task of taming rampant double-digit inflation. The economist subsequently found politics was a far more confusing, unpredictable, contrary, frustrating and vicious beast to master. Yesterday afternoon that unequal struggle finally ended.
Dr Brash's colleagues gave him the standing ovation that was his due. Labour's MPs remained seated. However, many crossed the chamber to shake hands and privately wish him well.
As the throng around him melted away and the House moved on to other business, Dr Brash slipped his speech notes into his folder, bowed in the direction of the Speaker for the last time and then walked out of the chamber without even a backwards glance at the life he was leaving.
