The harbour was looking lovely on Thursday morning. The tide appeared higher than usual, as though the expected 3am swell from the Chilean earthquake was still lifting the sea level.

John Key has not made many political mistakes but even on his side of the fence there is a feeling he went too far, writes John Roughan.

It is time to think seriously about the flag, writes John Roughan. Seriously means it is not an exercise in artistic imagination, not yet anyway.

If Peters does a deal with National after the election - and he will, for reasons that will become obvious - he will want trophies, writes John Roughan.

Business people are more accustomed to putting sentiment aside for important decisions, writes John Roughan.

Sharks are by no means the only risk almost everybody can face but the others are balanced by a rational need, writes John Roughan.

When Nelson Mandela walked to freedom I fondly expected we in this country would see him somewhat sooner than we did.

It must amuse the All Blacks that we who write about them constantly contrive a mundane challenge for them. We need it, they don't. They are taking their game to a higher peak.

We never give enough credit to leaders of this country for their deference at crucial times to the governor of the Reserve Bank.

When my first child was born, in Britain, an elderly gentleman whose house we were living in took me aside a few months after the birth and said he would have a word to the vicar about a christening.

Campaign sex, they called it in the book Primary Colours, sex supercharged with the adrenaline of public life.

It is a bit of a chore to mow the berm. I live down a right of way and have to push the machine up there for a wedge of grass between my drive and the next. Too often I forget.

Match point can be the hardest to win. Anticipation makes some players choke, drop serve, let a tough competitor back into the match. Dean Barker's demeanour says he is not a choker.

Who decided to sound the alarm before they knew for certain it was a botulism-causing bacteria? John Roughan looks at the issue.

Consumers of fish who do not take pleasure in the kill should be considered in debate too.

Why is it that 20 years after a Treaty settlement awarded iwi a fifth of new fishing quotas, we do not have a deep-sea industry employing many more young Maori?

Little things mean a lot. William brought out the baby's chair and buckled it in the back seat of the car.

Conservation Minister is an enviable job. As lord of the estate you get to be helicoptered into grand and lovely parts of the country to meet good people, release endangered species and talk sense in defence of pesticides.

In all conscience, I think I could vote for the convention centre. It was a smart move of the opposition in Parliament to call the bill a conscience vote on problem gambling.

Australia's first female prime minister, like New Zealand's, had the misfortune to come to office on a vote of her caucus, not the country.

If by some miracle of time-travel we could go back several hundred years and wander on the Auckland isthmus of that time, some things would be familiar.

Privacy commissioners say the public should be wary about this but most people are not, writes John Roughan. They post much more personal information about themselves on internet sites.

Wind back the memory for a moment to 1990. NZ was reeling from six years of rapid economic reform. The fourth Labour Government had fallen apart and National, in the phrase of the day, had sleep-walked to victory.

When Russel Norman snarls about business and profits, it repels the mainstream Labour needs if it is to get close to the 40 per cent it needs, writes John Roughan.