John Armstrong: No work, no toilets on Planet Key

Prime Minister John Key says there is no reason for Maori water rights issues to delay the sale of Mighty River Power shares. Photo / Paul Taylor

On Planet Key, no one cleans toilets for the minimum wage. There are no toilets on Planet Key. In fact, no one works on Planet Key. If you do not like golf, there seems to be little else to do, however.

John Key has been accused of lacking vision. But his mind-boggling version of nirvana is looking more akin to The Stepford Wives. Even scarier, there has not been a word so far from him on how to pay for it.

Responsibility for the Prime Minister revealing his admittedly tongue-in-cheek idea of the perfect society is down to Greens co-leader Metiria Turei.

National has tormented Labour by dismissing their MPs as inhabitants of Planet Labour - a fiscal fool's paradise where the global crash apparently never happened. Turei has turned the tables by asking what happens on an equally mythical Planet Key.

During yesterday's ministers' question-time, Turei asked Key if his idea of nirvana was 270,000 children living in poverty while their mothers earned $13.50 an hour cleaning the toilets on his "plentiful" golf courses.

"We would not have toilets on Planet Key," he retorted bizarrely.

Turei then asked whether women would finally receive pay equity so that they too could enjoy plenty of family holidays. Mindful yesterday was Suffrage Day, Key replied that no one would be working.

But when she again asked if National would support her private member's bill for a universal child payment, he tired of her self-righteousness.

"She bags this Government ... then she wants to give millionaires yet more money to raise their kids. She is barking mad."

Key was ordered to withdraw and apologise for that name-calling.

But by then he had made another thing clear: the only greens on Planet Key would be the ones on all those golf courses.