The bald truth about politics

Clayton Cosgrove. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Poor Clayton Cosgrove. Despite millions of years of evolution, middle-aged males like him have yet to come up with a truly witty response to being told they are going bald.

The increasingly follicle-challenged Labour front bencher was not about to try after finding himself on the receiving end of a bit of parliamentary repartee as cruel as that delivered by National's Paula Bennett.

Answering questions from Cosgrove in her role as Social Development and Employment Minister, Bennett accused him of "plucking numbers from thin hair".

It was a brief, but welcome moment of levity during an otherwise dour question-time notable for being the first since Darren Hughes resigned from Parliament and the subsequent questioning of Phil Goff's handling of the affair.

The Labour leader did not so much blow the opportunity to remind doubting colleagues of his calibre in the House as kill things stone dead with an initial 73-word question to the Prime Minister, asking John Key to detail the average shareholder return from state companies over the past five years.

In his defence, Goff has just launched a campaign against state asset sales. He was trying to make the point that the taxpayer would be better off if the Government did not sell its stake in SOEs and instead devoted healthy dividends to paying off debt.

Key replied by cautioning that while the average total shareholder return over the past five years was 17.5 per cent, most of that total return was from unrealised changes in value.

The Treasury had advised that those calculations were "not particularly robust and were, in fact, potentially misleading". He might have likened it to plucking numbers out of thin air.

Thin air or not, Goff seized on the 17.5 per cent figure rather than Key's preferred average net dividend of 4.6 per cent and questioned how the taxpayer could be the winner from selling off chunks of SOEs.

Key responded by accusing Goff of being confused over the numbers, "which is probably why the Leader of the Opposition wants ... to have a snap election because he is confused between our polling numbers and Labour's polling numbers".

Then David Parker got to his feet, prompting predictable cries of "leadership challenge" from National.

"I am making this point with the approval of my leader," Parker responded unnecessarily, provoking even more hilarity on the National benches.

Such are Labour sensitivities that Parker was obviously keen not to be seen to be upstaging his leader. But the leader had already been upstaging his colleagues by calling on the entire Government to resign.

That over-the-top call followed his finance spokesman, David Cunliffe, earlier demanding Finance Minister Bill English's resignation over his handling of the South Canterbury Finance collapse.

All this had Act's Rodney Hide asking Key later in question-time what his response was to "Phil Goff's secret election strategy".

The Prime Minister gave a one-word reply: "Tempting."

Indeed, so much for Labour bravado. The resignation of the Government and a consequent snap election would be the last thing Labour would want right now.