PM eager to peddle good oil

The Magic Circus of Samoa is due to open next week, according to the sign outside the field full of big top tents in Apia. In the meantime, for one day only, Samoa got Prime Minister John Key's tour around the Pacific instead.

His day in Tonga was formal, with black-tie dinners with King George Tupou V - an occasion for which the King was reportedly in fine form and kept his guests entertained until soon after 11pm.

However, Mr Key's first duty at Samoa was a kava ceremony and by midway through his day Mr Key had well and truly got into the island style.

Dressed in a blue island shirt over his pin-striped trousers, Mr Key found himself on Mano Lami's plantation, in a small open-sided hut in the countryside making virgin coconut oil destined for Body Shop body butters.

After shoving coconut shreds around a heated steel plate, he grabbed a handful and lifted it to his face.

"Don't eat it," he's quickly told. "It's dry as cardboard."

Instead, he applied himself to pumping his foot frantically at a pedal on the side of an oil press. He pedalled for a while, and then pedalled some more. He stopped to tell Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples - dressed in an identical island shirt - that if they didn't have name badges, people wouldn't be able to tell them apart. He pedalled some more, and stopped again to declare, "this is way better than running the country." Finally, some oil began to trickle out.

"Ha!" he said triumphantly. "It's the good oil."

Deliver the good oil he had - announcing the aid budgets for Tonga and Samoa were to be significantly increased over the next three years and indicating other Pacific countries would be similarly treated.

However, it was also a chance for him to see what he was getting for that money and in between official meetings he was happy to do so.

With leis strung about his neck, sucking from a whole coconut with a straw poking out the top, he wandered through Poutasi Village surrounded by staff and officials all similarly bearing coconuts. He was greeted by a guard of honour of men lining the road into the village, in order of age. Smoke rose from cooking fires, schoolchildren waited with leis. Mr Key was there to look at the difference New Zealand's seasonal employment scheme had made to villages in rural Samoa, as well as a NZ Aid funded marine conservation and research reserve.

After talking to a few men dressed in New Zealand themed T-shirts, kept as souvenirs of their fruitpicking days in New Zealand, he was diverted into a hall for some dance.

After the children did their own cultural performance, Prestige, the hip-hop dance crew Mr Key invited to accompany them gave a taste of the more urban version of dance. For one of the crew, Allister Salaivao, the trip is special. He is Samoan - but had never been to the country. While he may have rolled his eyes and quipped "this isn't Oprah" when a crew member began to sing Welcome Home as the plane came in to land, he admitted it was exciting to be there for one "overwhelming day".