"Why do you ask?" she bristled.
"Well, you'd think he'd be able to tell us."
"No," she said, "he hasn't."
Then Hone Harawira and Greens co-leader Metiria Turei were called to the platform. Turei, declaring her background to be anarchism, said her concept of life was that we all lived in a cage with wild monsters trying to tear down the walls that protected us.
These monsters were corporate capitalism, she said, and she saw her job as trying to push out the walls of the cage and increase our living space. Weird.
When Harawira spoke he said he gave Parliament "just enough respect to get my pay". People asked if he felt lonely in Parliament now and he said he would be if he spent much time there.
He didn't agree with those who said it was time to move out of grievance mode. He had told his Te Aupori people after a recent deal with the Crown, "when someone has been thieving from you on Monday they are not going to stop thieving on Tuesday just because you've signed an agreement in between". Sad.
Sad for him and the only electorate that supports him. Not so sad, really, for the country that has to hold its national day on his turf. Our tolerance makes it all the sweeter to sing the national anthem together in the morning sun.
I wasn't going to go to Waitangi because the action has moved indoors. The Prime Minister's meeting with iwi leaders last Sunday was more important than anything happening outside. The Maori Council's decision to seek a Waitangi Tribunal ruling that iwi own water suggests the meeting did not go well.
The assertion of a Treaty obligation on state power and gas companies when they are partially privatised is the greatest test so far of the progress Maori can make with the Government.
John Key appears to believe a Treaty clause would seriously poison the share float. As a possible "mum and pop" buyer, I know it wouldn't discourage me, but Key seems to think it would lower the price and financial commentators agree with him.
This isn't a protest flag on the harbour bridge or a Budget allocation for a Maori Party project. This could hurt.
It is also important. The Treaty obligation in section 9 of the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986 became a constitutional landmark when Sir Robin Cooke's Court of Appeal applied it to SOE land in 1987.
After hearing argument for the Maori Council and the Crown on the circumstances, interests and intentions of each side in 1840, Cooke gave a working definition of the principles of the Treaty.
He said it "rested on the premise that each party would act reasonably and in good faith towards the other within their respective spheres".
Lands, forests, fisheries and treasured things were expressly in the Maori sphere. Government and good order were entrusted to the Crown. Cooke stressed that the obligation to act "reasonably and in good faith" was reciprocal. It applied no less to Maori than the Government.
Is it "reasonable" of them to ask that Meridian, Genesis, Mighty River Power and Solid Energy should continue to be bound by an obligation on the Crown to observe Treaty principles? I think so; the Crown will remain their major shareholder.
Is it reasonable that those companies might be obliged to consider Maori interests if they ever want to change the flow of rivers or drown land? I think so.
On the Maori side, is it acting "reasonably and in good faith" to invoke the Treaty simply to oppose partial asset sales? I don't think so.
Management of the state's assets is in the Government's sphere.
Protesters forget the Treaty cuts both ways. With good faith on both sides, the Government and the Maori Party can take another big step.
