KEY POINTS:
School's back this week, not just for the kids but for the National Party caucus, too, in Wellington.
It is meeting today at John Key's official residence, Premier House, or the old "Murder House" as Attorney-General Chris Finlayson remembers it from his childhood.
A lot has happened in the 50 days since the whole caucus met.
There's the economy, of course, and the dismal outlook having got more and more depressing with each passing week.
I doubt that was the cause of the din coming out of Premier House as the MPs met over the teacups before the formal meeting.
It was much more likely to be about the remarkably tough women that Key has got in his cabinet.
Three women have made their marks in the past few weeks and won a lot of public support.
Police Minister Judith Collins has been dubbed Crusher Collins since she touched a popular nerve with her desire to crush the cars of the criminal boy racers and make them watch.
You can tell she relishes even uttering the words.
She will also have wide support for her aim as Corrections Minister to spend a lot less on building prisons, perhaps prefabricated buildings on existing sites.
But Collins has also showed she is not one-dimensional. She did the right thing in visiting early the grieving family of Halatau Naitoko who was accidently slain by a police bullet and publicly showed the sort of sensitivity the situation demanded of her.
Education Minister Anne Tolley, who Labour have targeted as a potentially weak minister, has made a strong start, cutting a swathe through dysfunctional boards of trustees - well two in the last two weeks anyway.
She has installed commissioners in Selwyn College and Hillary College with the promise of not hesitating to sack more if she thinks it is deserving. Tolley the Terminator?
Then there is Paula Bennett who won overwhelming public sympathy for exercising her mother's instincts to step into a fight at a shopping centre in the holidays.
Bruiser Bennett became her instant nickname at Parliament.
The past couple of weeks have been more of a trial for her as her role in supporting a young gang member has emerged.
But she will have lost very little support for her actions in having taken in her daughter's boyfriend while he was on bail and awaiting trial for violent offending, or for the letters she sent to the sentencing judge in 2007 and the parole board last year pleading his case to let him out early and turn his life around.
Key did not know about the letters, but that is down to a misunderstanding rather than an intention to hide them. She thought he knew about them because her office had told his office about them, or at least one of them.
What appeared to concern Key when he did find out was whether she had tried to use her position as a Member of Parliament to exert influence.
She was an MP at the time and not a minister but even so, there are precedents for discipline if the line is crossed.
Ten years ago this month, Ian Revell was forced to resign as deputy speaker for trying to get off a $40 traffic ticket by complaining in writing on parliamentary letterhead. Mind you he also threatened to try to block the reappointment of district police commander at the time.
There is case that Bennett was simply stating her occupation as any other person in that position would be expected to do.
But former Immigration Service chief Mary Anne Thompson expected her position to be ignored when she sought to help her relatives to get visas to get into New Zealand.
The lesson for Bennett's colleagues is to be over-careful and if in doubt, consult the boss.
