Claire Trevett: (Rubber) gloves off for grey vote

This week while Prime Minister John Key was in the United States talking enriched uranium with nuclear powers, politicians in New Zealand were talking impoverished pensioners with Grey Power.

Labour's efforts of last week - siding with Grey Power by launching an "inquiry" into aged care with the Greens - got rewards for Labour's leader, Phil Goff, this week at the organisation's annual conference.

Mr Goff got a standing ovation, as did NZ First leader Winston Peters, who has just joined the ranks of his beloved SuperGold Card holders with his 65th birthday.

However, National's Finance Minister, Bill English, and Minister for Senior Citizens John Carter got just "seated applause", according to the Herald's embedded reporter.

Mr Goff set the aged ones into paroxysms of fear about winters spent shivering and starving because of National's plans to raise GST. He then promised to reverse the cuts to home help. Cue much applause.

Bill English didn't have quite the same success. Under fire about the home help cuts, he could only resort to saying that he knew their pain because his wife forced him to clean the household toilet.

He neglected to add that it was because his own home help had also recently been cut after he was hounded into giving up his ministerial allowances for accommodation in Wellington - including cleaners.

Despite Mr Goff clearly winning that particular battle, Mr English rallied bravely by week's end, finding a more appreciative audience and a World Cup to open in one go.

Yes - this afternoon Bill English will officially open the hotly contested World Ploughing Championships in Rakaia in front of an estimated audience of 10,000 and competitors from 30 countries.

The event faces none of the controversies the Rugby World Cup has caused for the Government.

Maori Television did not put in a bid for the broadcast rights and tickets are affordable at $15 a day. Auckland's civic leaders had no input and there is no wharf.

With two strong contenders this year, things are also looking good for bringing that cup home to New Zealand after a 28-year absence. Bill English was on to a winner.

Things weren't going so happily for Mr Key's choice of World Cup, however.

Revelations that his grand plans for a "party central" on Queens Wharf for the Rugby World Cup could be a tent prompted Labour's Kelvin Davis to mock that "party central" was "a scout camp where rugby fans will sit around a campfire, with the water lapping at the jetty, singing Kumbaya or On the Ball".

He added: "If they are singing the latter, it certainly won't be in tribute to Mr Key."

Mr Key was insulated from the mockery, over in the United States. Happily ensconced on the coat-tails of a policy his own party was always only lukewarm about, he put on his best manners - he didn't tell those other leaders he could smell the uranium on their breath.

And while Mr English had failed to impress the elderly, Mr Key would have made at least one grandmother proud this week.

For there was the Prime Minister shaking hands with the world's bigwigs wearing a tie that seemed to be made from her curtains.