Political diary

MONDAY

Most prime ministers have watersheds in their careers; John Key has waterbeds. A week after bizarrely describing the Maori Party's Whanau Ora programme as being a bit like a waterbed - "if you push down on one side, it's going to rise on the other" - the Prime Minister cannot resist making another waterbed quip at his post-Cabinet press conference. Key is questioned on the likelihood of some people not being fully compensated for the pending rise in GST.

"I'm sure you'll try and find the one person that's worse off," he tells the media. "And we'll be doing our best to make sure we can't deliver that person for you." He then adds: "Maybe they'll be lying on a waterbed somewhere at that time."

TUESDAY

The trials and tribulations of being an MP in one of Parliament's minor parties ... At 1.45pm on Tuesday, the Green Party's whips' office gets a call from the Government saying Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully is going to make a ministerial statement to Parliament about New Zealand's relations with Fiji when the House meets at 2pm. By the time Keith Locke, the Greens' foreign affairs spokesman, is told, he has just 13 minutes to put on his tie and jacket and get to the chamber from the Greens' offices across the road from Parliament Buildings, while also thinking what he is going to say about a statement he has not yet seen. Locke is third up to speak after McCully and Chris Carter, Labour's equivalent to Locke. As it happens, Carter gets tipped off earlier in the morning and is given a copy of McCully's statement a couple of hours before the House sits - enough time to digest its full meaning and significance. Locke understandably feels a bit miffed that he was effectively denied the opportunity to make the best contribution he could. So much for an informed democracy.

WEDNESDAY

Watch the fur fly in the blogosphere as the Labour-aligned site, The Standard, and David Farrar's Kiwiblog go hammer and tongs at one another. A posting on The Standard causes much media excitement with a shock horror expose that Cabinet minister Murray McCully owns shares in a mining company at the very time ministers are debating opening up Conservation Department land for mineral exploitation. Conflict of interest, surely, screams the blog. McCully quickly dowses the story by revealing he owns only 184 shares in the company, worth $31.62 in total. He's tried to sell them, but no one will buy them. And, anyway, he had not been present during any Cabinet discussions on mining. Undeterred by its piece of investigative journalism turning into a fizzer, The Standard ploughs on. Another contributor questions McCully's investment skills. Then, National-connected Farrar explodes into cyber print, accusing The Standard's contributors of hiding behind anonymity to smear McCully as corrupt. Farrar compares The Standard's fix on McCully with its downplaying of the conflict of interest allegations surrounding Winston Peters, donations to NZ First and financial assistance to the racing industry when Peters was propping up the last Labour Government. Yet another contributor to The Standard responds, labelling Farrar as a known hypocrite and idiotic. But Farrar can claim a small victory. This time the post on The Standard attacking him is not anonymous, instead carrying the name of Lynn Prentice, an Auckland-based Labour Party activist.

THURSDAY

Someone in the Security Intelligence Service has a dry sense of humour. It seems the spooks have been rushed off their feet handling requests for information under the Official Information Act and the Privacy Act after last year's revelations that the agency had been keeping tabs on Green MP Keith Locke since he was 11. That and the release of files on Bill Sutch, whom the SIS long suspected of being a Russian agent, saw such requests total nearly 380 last year, compared to just 46 the year before, according to the agency's annual report. A proportion of those requesting information held on them were not known to the SIS "and this appears to have been a disappointment to some of them". The demand for such information meant the declassification and transfer of security-related records - which date back to 1919 - has had to be put on hold.

Historians, however, can sleep easy. The SIS says it remains committed to releasing documents to Archives New Zealand, the next transfer being files from the World War II period and early Cold War days. The tabling of the SIS's annual report is typically accompanied by that of the equally top-secret Government Communications Security Bureau. The agency's grand vision set out in its statement of purpose - "Mastery of Cyberspace for the Security of New Zealand" - sounds like someone has been watching too many Star Wars re-runs.