Some more equal than others at top table

By John Armstrong

At some point next month - presuming coalition talks go smoothly - the Press Gallery will be invited to the Prime Minister's office on the ninth floor of the Beehive.

From there, the throng of reporters, photographers and television crews will be escorted up a short flight of stairs and admitted to an austere, windowless room featuring a large map of New Zealand pinned to the wall.

The photo opportunity will last a couple of minutes maximum. The media will be ushered out. The first cabinet meeting of the new Government will be under way.

Cabinet is the most secret of clubs. What happens in this inner sanctum is supposed to remain there, barring actual decisions and the sanitised version of discussions relayed to reporters by the Prime Minister.

Occasionally, a particularly bitter argument will leak out amid claims that a minister has been rolled by colleagues on some issue or other.

Months later, the relevant cabinet papers will be released under the Official Information Act. These dry minutes will shed little light, however, on the personal cut-and-thrust. You have to wait for someone's memoirs for that.

Life at the cabinet table is deadly serious. It can be deadly dull - but not always. Simon Upton is rumoured to have scribed his newspaper columns during more tedious debates. Other National ministers regularly passed notes around the table to amuse or tease colleagues.

But there is one constant. Although all ministers are collectively responsible for every decision, this is not a club of equals.

Real power resides in an informal bloc of ministers at the top of the table. If they agree, everyone agrees. "They" are the Prime Minister and those sitting to each side of her - her deputy, the finance ministers, plus a handful of other trusted senior colleagues.

Behind the throne (though not in the room) stand her shadowy political advisers, along with officials from the Prime Minister's department, the best and brightest the public service can offer. And looming always in the background is the colossus of the Treasury, which always has a very definite opinion on everything.