KEY POINTS:
The boy from a state house who would be king looked like he had done it last night.
The 47-year-old John Key is close to fulfilling a lifelong ambition to become prime minister of New Zealand _ just six years after turning his back on a lucrative investment
banking career and returning home.
His timing was perfect and it was in Key's slipstream that many candidates rode to victory.
While Labour flicked and splattered as much mud in his direction as they could, not much attached itself to the man his opponents tried to label "Slippery John".
But with Labour breathing down his neck, Key will have little room to slip up. He has had a dream run so far. MP Murray McCully says that's because "he's very bloody good. This guy is really smart."
Certainly Key's past seems squeaky clean, almost too clean. His worst admitted offence is driving on a carless day 28 years ago. He claims he's never inhaled _ not even a cigarette _ and has the luxury of being able to give away much of his six-figure ministerial salary.
Today is likely to be a family day for Key, spent at home with his wife Bronagh, daughter Stephie and son Max at his $9 million Parnell mansion. If Key family tradition holds, he will cook a roast dinner tonight.
By tomorrow, he will be ready to hit the ground running, pulling together the numbers needed to govern and clutching plans for his first 100 days in office up on the ninth floor of the Beehive.
Those plans, announced last week, included fail-safe vote catchers like tax cuts, redundancy relief packages, getting tough on repeat offenders, increased police powers, changes to the education system, tackling hospital waiting lists and funding for a 24-hour Plunketline.
Already used to working huge hours as leader of the Opposition, colleagues say the workload won't faze Key. Former MP Katherine Rich says her former boss has a diary "that would leave most people tired and in tears".
As for what sort of potential leader he will be, the same descriptions keep popping out of the mouths of his admirers _ easy going, a people person, affable, a good listener, a strong leader, never loses control. To that end, journalists have unsuccessfully searched New Zealand, and abroad, to find someone, anyone, who has seen Key lose his temper or throw a phone across the room.
"He has a very strong sense of who he is and what he stands for," says Rich. He consults widely, listens and then makes a decision.
"You are never left in any doubt about what he thinks and what needs to be done."
That confidence, and the mana he now holds in the party, means Key will waste no time in reshaping the National Party in his own image. One observer in Key's inner circle says the "dinosaurs" ought to be worried _ a reference to Lockwood Smith and Maurice Williamson, in particular. But Rich argues that those years of experience should be respected.
"A lot of people think you can be an instant politician. You can't. It has to come from years of service."
In Key's case that's barely six but Rich defends him: "That's a long time in roles these days, isn't it?"
Whatever Key's plans for his Cabinet, he has a free hand. Apart from Bill English and Tony Ryall, fellow members of of the Dream Team, he has made no implied commitments.
MPs are expecting changes and they think voters are too.
The win is a sign that the public had signed up for "a generational shift", says one National MP. "He will want to have some new blood as well as some established faces."
The MP expects to see younger MPs, like Jonathan Coleman and campaign manager Stephen Joyce, with weighty portfolios.
"I don't think he'll be taking a lot of dinosaurs out and shooting them. I think he will simply have some explicit agreements with people that he expects to see them make some room further down the track."
That Key is capable of making the tough decisions and acting on them is in little doubt. In the 90s, he earned the nickname "smiling assassin" when faced with mass firings when Merrill Lynch ran into financial trouble.
McCully: "I think people inside the caucus took some time to understand that behind that very affable exterior is a guy who's very tough. You also have to be very bright, a cut above a bright senior Cabinet minister."
Backed by a B.Comm in economics and years of experience in the financial markets, money and numbers come naturally to Key.
"He processes numbers like nobody else on earth," says one MP. "This is a fellow who has every bank economist and fund manager on speed dial."
Broadcaster and political commentator Bill Ralston predicts Key will waste no time in reaching out to the Maori Party for support.
"I think he's got a weather eye very firmly fixed on the next election in 2011. He's probably the first leader of the National Party to actually understand MMP. Get your buddies on board early because if support erodes for National, next time round you're going to need them."
