Audrey Young: Key on the ball after early knock-on in Rugby World Cup TV drama

Prime Minister John Key has just shown why he is Prime Minister.

His intervention yesterday in the debacle over the Rugby World Cup was perfectly timed.

It could not have come any later without the issue getting completely out of control.

But it probably could not have come any earlier, either.

Getting the state-owned rivals together yesterday was the logical response to the outrage that ensued after it was revealed on Tuesday that senior ministers were prepared to bankroll a joint TVNZ-TV3 bid to outbid MTS (Maori Television).

Admittedly, Mr Key did not show great prescience when he oversaw that decision the previous week. But at least his reactive instincts are finely tuned.

He might not be able to smell trouble in advance but he knows when to start running. The bid was made in the precise knowledge of the MTS bid.

According to notes leaked to the Herald and prepared for Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, photocopies of the MTS bid were delivered to the offices of Finance Minister Bill English and Associate Rugby World Cup Minister Gerry Brownlee on September 24 by a staff member of Te Puni Kokiri. The same leaked document says that at a meeting on August 14 between TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis and MTS chief executive Jim Mather, "MTS was advised that there was no current TVNZ bid and TVNZ did not intend to furnish another bid".

A spokeswoman for Mr Ellis last night disputed that any such undertaking had been given and Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman claimed on TV3 that TVNZ always planned to be in the running.

Mr Key's late leadership on the issue stands in marked contrast to his ministers, many of whom have contributed to the chaos.

Labour is pointing the finger largely at Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully over the saga, not least because he gave the Te Puni Kokiri chief executive a burst at a Beehive meeting. Mr McCully carries a fair degree of blame but more for what he hasn't done than what he has.

He has been absent as Foreign Minister for a large amount of time and neither his World Cup deputy, Gerry Brownlee, Mr Coleman, or Mr English have taken charge.

That leadership vacuum was exacerbated when Mr Key was absent during some critical stages of the MTS bid.

Dr Sharples is not blameless, either. It is clear that he and Te Puni Kokiri kept knowledge of the $3 million TPK commitment to themselves. And when Dr Coleman asked Dr Sharples about the bid, he dissembled, saying he didn't know much about it.

Maori Television has been given a reprieve from being gazumped by a higher bid. But its celebration should not be too premature. In a sense it has been returned to the position it found itself in after the TPK funding had been revealed.

It has been forced to deal with others, but is doing so willingly and not begrudgingly.

And there is no certainty that the International Rugby Board will entertain a three-way bid again - it rejected a previous bid from Sky, TVNZ and TV3 as anti-competitive.

That may be the critical areas that require attention from Mr Key and his trusted chief adviser Maarten Wevers.

Act MP Sir Roger Douglas yesterday hit out at Mr Key's intervention as unprecedented interference "bordering on Muldoonism".

Sir Robert was very popular and lasted a long time.