Let's hope Rodney Hide stuck a few mothballs in the pockets of his now legendary canary-yellow jacket before stuffing it back in the wardrobe following last November's election.
Is there anything more stomach-churning for an Opposition politician than watching helplessly as the enemy demolishes the very things he or she painstakingly put in place while in Government?
You won't hear National saying as much. But the minority Government has quietly begun what in the end might be the biggest shake-up of the core public service since the 1980s.
The public relations campaign mounted by Barry Matthews to hold on to his job as the head of the Corrections Department is added reason why he should lose it.
It is difficult to put a finger on it, but something does not feel quite right about Labour's approach to Opposition.
The honeymoon with voters is not yet over for John Key's minority Government.
What was it that Mike Moore - the politician, not the film-maker - once said about Auckland being New Zealand's answer to Los Angeles?
With or without Punch, the show must go on.
To borrow the immortal words of Australian politician Bill Hayden, some might argue National could have put up the proverbial drover's dog as leader and still won last month's election, such was its huge lead in the polls over preceding months.
By anyone's measure, this has been a bruising and exacting week for the Maori Party.
What the Treasury lacks in imagination, it surely makes up for in persistence.
Tariana Turia and her Maori Party colleagues did not need the patronising lecture they got from Labour this week to tell them their ground-breaking deal with National carries huge risks for them.
In the wake of the Prime Minister slipping and falling while going walkabout in a Christchurch shopping mall, those of unkind mind have noted the same thing happened to John Howard in the lead-up to last year's Australian election.
Expect the unexpected. That is the nature of election campaigns.
Increasingly, the story of the 2008 election is a tale of two election campaigns.
In the two years since John Key took over from Don Brash as National's leader and dragged his party much closer to the centre of the political spectrum, there have been frequent complaints that National's brand has become little more than "Labour-lite".
No politician worth his or her salt would ever say it. But if ever there was an election to lose, then next month's is starting to fit the bill.
For John Key, the winning or losing of the election may now hang less on tax and more on his syntax.
Why hasn't the Prime Minister sacked Winston Peters outright from her ministry, thereby stopping Labour choking on its entanglement with NZ First?
Whether the Prime Minister goes the whole hog and sacks Winston Peters outright from her ministry is now largely immaterial as far as his political prognosis is concerned.
