Claire Trevett: Indigestion follows orgy of overeating

So ends the week of the Great Food Debate - one that began with crumbs, was heated up by the Prime Minister announcing a probable increase in GST and over its course ranged from full degustation menus to solitary bananas, Weet-Bix, snapper and latte.

It began last Sunday when Reserve Bank Governor Allan Bollard decreed we should be happy to eat the crumbs from Australia's table. John Key was not happy.

On Monday he said he wanted New Zealanders to eat their own cake, not Australia's crumbs.

By Tuesday he wanted them to eat the entire meal - entree, main and pudding. Then he said he wanted them to pay more for it by flagging an increase in GST.

This did not please Labour leader Phil Goff, despite Mr Key's soothing noises about the poor being compensated.

He questioned how ordinary New Zealanders would now be able to afford the family-size box of Weet-Bix the Government had given them by way of a 25c increase in the minimum wage.

By Wednesday, the Maori Party too was in full cry. It did not want its people to eat cake either - it wanted them to eat a banana.

MP Rahui Katene issued a press release fretting that Maori would eat cheap junk instead of quality food. She worried that a mother confronted with one banana costing the same as a big packet of potato chips would choose the chips.

She asked Finance Minister Bill English if he would support her bill to make bananas GST-free so Maori would not resort to cheap junk.

Mr English forbore from pointing out that it would no longer be cheap junk, just junk. He did not point out that the price of chips would go up commensurate with the price of a banana.

Nor did he answer yes or no. Instead, he answered with a riddle of subsets.

He told Parliament that some people said milk and bread were not healthy foods, but milk and bread should be exempt from GST.

However, others said only healthy foods should be exempt. Did that include milk and bread and, if not, which should be exempt, if any? Should it be agoods tax, or just a goodies tax?

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman was also channelling Confucius. "Prosperity is what we seek!" he proclaimed and launched into the parable of the snapper.

He told Parliament of seagrass beds being smothered beneath silt, depriving snapper of nurseries. He told of the plight of those who could no longer catch a feed off the rocks.

He said people who bought their snapper from the supermarket were contributing to gross domestic product as did children who swam in swimming pools.

But rock fishers contributed nothing to GDP, they were "a kind of economic traitor by refusing to participate in the mantra of GDP growth by refusing to purchase their kaimoana". His co-leader, Metiria Turei, nodded and smiled as if he had made sense.

Meanwhile, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett was not eating anything at all. She was midway through her own little 40 Hour Famine to help pay for cake for the victims of the Haitian earthquake.

She felt light-headed, she missed her latte. She looked at the benefits bill, all $7.6 billion of it - 5.2 million lattes a day. She felt like the little girl waiting on the sponsor-a-child ad.

Come week's end and Mr Goff was no longer interested in his Weet-Bix. He was too busy gorging on the political manna from heaven that Mr Key's announcement had handed him.

He unearthed a video of a Key press conference before the election where he promised he would not raise GST. Mr Goff then found a speech by Mr English last year saying he wanted to keep GST at 12.5 per cent.

So Mr Key's week ended - from let them eat cake to being force-fed his own words.