COMMENT: NZ First leader Winston Peters dug up an old bone to chew on.

COMMENT: Having delivered the offal, Prime Minister Bill English is preparing to present the pudding: tax cuts, writes Claire Trevett.

COMMENT: Prime Minister Bill English has torpedoed his own campaign line of certainty.

COMMENT: Labour leader Andrew Little's week of cunning plans included installing Jacinda Ardern as deputy and getting into NZ First leader Winston Peters IOU list.

Labour leader Andrew Little's Chinese horoscope reveals Bill English and Winston Peters are a perfect match.

COMMENT: An odd affliction seems to have affected PM Bill English in Europe: he has forgotten John Key's name.

COMMENT: The departure of John Key and rise of Bill English as Prime Minister prompted some unexpected reactions.

COMMENT: Alas, poor John, an ominous rumbling noise started in the bowels of the party's massive backbench rump. It could not be ignored.

It's less than a year until the next election and judging from all the talk there are set to be more deals on the table than at a Trump casino.

COMMENT: Labour is slowly shedding its stockpile of former leaders as both David Cunliffe and Phil Goff retire - leaving just David Shearer standing in 2017.

Having been forced to show his surplus, Finance Minister Bill English is having to parry all manner of raids on the kitty.

The surplus has opened the curtain on the John Key and Bill English Tax Cut Show.

COMMENT: The Prime Minister has sounded the warning for his three-yearly check of the best-before dates of ministers.

COMMENT: It was Real House Roosters of the Beehive kind of stuff, an A-grade brouhaha.

It came as something of a shock to get off the plane after a week in New York to hear calls for a state of emergency to be declared in safe little old New Zealand.

COMMENT: Claire Trevett assesses New Zealand's term at the UN's top table.

No man is an island according to John Donne, but poor old National MP Nuk Korako must have felt that way as he stood to defend his member's bill in Parliament this week.

Labour leader Andrew Little's first move on the first day back at Parliament after a month's recess was to announce he had found the silver bullet to solve the housing crisis.

COMMENT: Yesterday, Andrew Little was at the New Lynn Community Centre to deliver the policy he hopes will win Labour the next election.

Today is Labour's centenary, which the party intends to celebrate by releasing its 2016 housing manifesto.

The Shewan report should have been a major victory for Labour.

COMMENT: You know things are getting weird when Treasury Secretary Makhlouf starts channelling the Victorian era and Oscar Wilde to talk about Auckland.

Prime Minister John Key has done so many u-turns this week he is in danger of coming to the attention of his boyracer-car-crushing minister Judith Collins.

COMMENT: For those who travelled to Taji with PM, his decision to extend the deployment of 120 troops to train Iraqi forces had a sense of inevitability.

COMMENT: Late phase of election cycle adds further tension to Act and United Future's need to back National while keeping their own supporters happy.

COMMENT: What the Maori Party sees as credit, National knows some will see as blame - and it suits National to let the Maori Party take the blame.

COMMENT: Like a good piece of art, the one-page agreement between Labour and the Greens had something in it for everyone.

COMMENT: The Government did not need to win any votes from the Budget - it just needed to ensure it did not lose any.

COMMENT: Housing issues of all shapes are popping out for the Government like a game of whack-a-mole.

COMMENT: It is not often that the big surprise in a Budget is something that will not be in it at all.