Prime Minister John Key ends 2009 as he started it - above the scandal and muckraking, says Mike Moore.
There is much mirth to be enjoyed in a year's reflection and a look ahead at the sport to be had in the future.
The Prime Minister smiles and sails on, changing tack with the wind. He has this non-political image. A sort of James Stewart, Tom Hanks, Henry Fonda, and golly gee, oh shucks attitude as though it's all so new and surprising. A bit like the young Anna Paquin on Oscar night.
He has put blue water between him and the mean image of previous National leaders. As with any new Prime Minister, it's been his year. Labour has to brand him as "just another smarmy politician" otherwise the Teflon will continue to slide criticism and contradictions off him.
The pugnacious pugilist Bill English, who increasingly looks like a middle-aged James Cagney, has kept his hands in his own pockets and out of ours in the main, picking the pockets of the international bankers, borrowing over a billion dollars a month purchasing political peace. Borrow and hope, as Muldoon used to say before he added a couple of noughts to the country's debt. We have gone from an average to a mediocre government.
Nick Smith had an effective year, although there is something extra terrestrial about him. I would not be surprised to learn he collects Star Trek dolls. He did good work reforming the costly Resource Management Act and pushed through his flawed climate change legislation. How come some select Maoris get a better deal out of this legislation than other Maoris and non-Maoris?
If Act demanded specific companies get special treatment, the police would be called in. Here is the bigger principle - is it right that settled, full and final Treaty claims can be forever reopened because of any new tax or policy introduced?
Transport Minister Stephen Joyce seems in command of his portfolio and gives confidence to bald men everywhere. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is a real danger to Labour. She is a cheerful, Westie battler whom people relate to and her approach to welfare is firming up National support.
List MPs' survival lies in staying high on the party lists; therefore most are firmly implanted in their party boss's buttocks. Chris Finlayson is different, he is on top of his portfolios, enjoys himself and can be very funny, acerbic and self-deprecatory in debate.
Brittle and vulnerable are the overconfident Judith Collins who keeps overpromising and Kate Wilkinson who can't handle a high ball and drops acid - folic acid.
If success is taking money from the many and giving it to your mates then the Maori Party has done well. They have cost the New Zealand people over $2 billion. That's about $8 million a week for each of the five seats that National promised to abolish. It's excused as smart MMP politics. Turiana Turia comes across as a kindly auntie and Pita Sharples as the good-natured principal of an intermediate school on sports day. They escape sceptical scrutiny from the lily-livered liberal media. Te Ururoa Flavell shows substance and could make them a New Zealand Maori Party, not just a Maori Party.
Hone Harawira is the kind of angry, insecure bloke I worked alongside at a freezing works in the Far North. He was honest in his vulgar vomit over non-Maoris but the real reason he should be ejected from Parliament is the way he wears his ties.
Hone gets the prize for the most famous line of the year, closely followed by former minister Chris Carter who, when excusing his overseas travel, warmed us with the news that his food bills were small because he and his partner were not big eaters.
Phil Goff has the worst job in politics; trying to rebuild an opposition party. This is hard because many around him believe that the people just wanted new faces and it was a failure of public relations that put Labour out. He is pressured by stern faces, who look like they have been in a wind tunnel too long. When Maori under-achievement is put on the agenda they will argue that the subject title is racist and dodge the substance. They are addicted to self-righteous slogans and comfortable cliches. It's easier to pontificate about other people's dietary habits and carbon footprints. One told a devout Pacific Islander that God is dog spelt backwards. They don't get it. Once they were warriors - now they are worriers.
David Cunliffe is capable and presentable. He is good, just ask him and he will tell you. Harvard-educated, business-savvy Shane Jones has shown character and grace on race issues which are the stone in the nation's shoe. He may be the second Croatian Labour Prime Minister after St Michael Joseph Savich.
Clayton Cosgrove is showing frenetic, forensic skill in holding National to account for their opportunist law and order promises. He will force the first major Cabinet reshuffle. Pete Hodgson, with all the grim enthusiasm of an undertaker at a multiple car crash, does what he has always done best - dig the dirt on people.
Goff is on top of the issues, hard working, focused and disciplined but can come across as rehearsed and boring. A bit like Ken Barlow of Coronation Street, the smartest guy there but would you want a beer with him? He is finding his own voice and spoke for the majority of Maori who will be disadvantaged by the climate change laws and captured the public mood on the seabed issue. Now he must capture the people's imagination and confidence by presenting a road map, a process to take us out of this mess. It will take a wider, comprehensive consideration of all our constitutional arrangements.
He has boldly reversed the reversal inflicted by outgoing Labour personalities when they ditched their seabed policy and then went to work for Maori interests. If the courts uphold Maori claims to the seabeds, that will be hailed as a good decision but if the courts go the other way it will be colonial oppression. How come some accused Goff of playing the race card when he points out 95 per cent of Maori are cut out from the climate change deal? They never accuse the Maori Party of that and that's the only card they have and it's the ace of clubs. I can smell another couple of billion dollars being promised with the bill sent to the next generation and even that won't settle things.
Rodney Hyde's indulgences have been exposed. He came clean after time in a tanning parlour and getting a long, painful waxing which I suspect he enjoys. The ever complaining, campaigning Greens had a good whingeing, winning year, unconcerned that 94 per cent of people think they are from the planet Zog - they only need 5 per cent.
You read it here first. Labour has a 55 per cent chance of forming the next Government. Can this be the only country in the world where there is not a 5 per cent market for someone who finds political demons to exorcise; immigrants, capitalists, people of a different colour or religion, money lenders, privileged Maoris, the media? Enter Winston Peters.
* Mike Moore is a former Prime Minister and Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.
