In the Prime Minister's not-so-good books on Monday; possum in the media's headlights on Tuesday; political road-kill by Thursday.
The longer the week went on, the more strained, watery and forced Hekia Parata's smile and the more evasive, disconnected and empty of meaning her jargon-filled replies to questions.
The Minister of Education's misery levels rose in inverse proportion to her plunging credibility, as she found herself being hounded by the Opposition inside Parliament and the media, teacher unions and parents outside Parliament following her monumental gaffe in announcing alterations in funding formulas without first assessing the full impact on individual schools' teacher numbers.
The obvious question is whether this blunder is the one on an ever-lengthening list of happenings this year which have blighted the Government and which finally tips the balance and sees a significant number of those who voted National at last year's election shift allegiance.
Whatever, it is all sweet music to the ears of Labour, which did by far the most of the Opposition running.
Not that Labour had to do very much.
Rather than back down completely and remedy Ms Parata's pre-Budget bungle by reverting to the current formulas, the Prime Minister produced a compromise which only further alienated teachers and parents.
This episode has underlined the importance of Labour's not-always beneficial alliance with the always noisy education unions.
That enabled Labour to "own" the issue, leaving the Greens very much playing second fiddle.
The lesson the Greens are taking is that if the party is going to move permanently from niche status to the political mainstream, make lasting inroads into Labour' s core support, and, in its dreams, even supplant Labour as the dominant force on the centre-left, it must be highly visible on mainstream issues like education.
Not only that. With no track record in Government to highlight, the Greens will have to consistently do better than Labour in terms of persuasive argument and impact.
It is a tall order. Even so, heading into their Queen's Birthday weekend conference today, the Greens can justifiably claim to have outshone Labour in the six months since last year's election.
That is in large part thanks (dare one say it) to a high-octane performance by Russel Norman.
The party's co-leader has launched a full-on and continuing assault on National's proud claim to be the most trusted party when it comes to managing the Government's fiscal books.
In doing so, Dr Norman's real aim was to show the Greens, too, are now a party equally aware of the public's strong desire for balanced Budgets, even if a capital gains tax is necessary to achieve it.
Labour has been left trailing in the dust.
Whereas the Greens have simply carried on from where they left off at last year's election, Labour's new leadership has had to undertake a major policy rethink following the ballot box walloping by National, while David Shearer has inevitably taken time to find his feet.
The Greens have profited accordingly, hitting 17% in one poll, while in others holding the gains made in the election which saw the party win nearly 12% of the party vote - just under half of what Labour registered in its worst performance since the 1920s.
That era was when Labour was on the rise - and the last time there was any real seismic shift in the political landscape of the scale the rise of the Greens may produce.
Since then there has been no shortage of pretenders to Labour's throne. Most of them briefly flourished when Labour had fallen out of public favour.
All have failed to lift the crown as Labour has recovered and voters have in turn reverted to their default setting.
That was the fate of the Values Party, the precursor of the Greens and whose 40th "birthday" was yesterday marked by a day-long forum before the main conference.
Recognised as the world's first national-level environment-focused party, Values recorded a healthy 5.2% of the vote on the back of Labour's landslide defeat at the hands of National's Sir Rob Muldoon in 1975.
Two elections later and wracked by internal division, Values stood in only 17 of the 92 electorates and was accordingly rewarded with a scant 0.2% of the vote.
Can the Greens defy history? The going will get harder as Labour regroups. And the Greens know it.
They believe they have one crucial advantage that other parties out to break the National-Labour oligopoly lacked.
That is that in a world of finite resources, political debate will be increasingly framed in the Greens' terms. Maybe.
It has not escaped the Greens' notice that Mr Shearer wants to "green" Labour for similar reasons and with that in mind, appointed his hugely capable deputy Grant Robertson as the party's environment spokesman.
However, economic growth is the immediate priority in most voters' minds - one reason why Dr Norman has sought to retain the political initiative on economic policy.
The necessity for the Greens to be across almost every issue has seen a major beefing-up of resources and intellectual firepower in the co-leaders' offices at Parliament, while former cabinet minister Laila Harre has taken the newly-created position of Issues Director based in Auckland.
The Greens have also put more effort than other parties into raising the profiles of new MPs.
The benefits are already starting to show.
While making maximum use of social media like Facebook, the party is also looking at more of an on-the-ground presence in traditional Labour strongholds like south Auckland.
While all this is in line with the conference's theme of "Growing the Greens", National's noticeable shift to the right has produced a new dynamic.
A National-Greens government is now out of the question, if it ever was in question.
The polls are now starting to point to the possibility of a Labour-Greens Government post-2014.
Labour's fear is that a high ratio of Green MPs and corresponding representation around the Cabinet table will make governing extremely difficult.
John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald political correspondent.
