Week in politics

In hindsight, it was not the smartest thing John Banks has ever said.

Here is a blunt message for a couple of old-school Aro Valley-style socialists: Get off our backs. Stop behaving like a pair of tut-tutting old dowagers gossiping in the salons.

Whether you think the water claim to the Waitangi Tribunal by the New Zealand Maori Council is an audacious try-on or a legitimate test of legitimate rights, it is an issue that will make or break the reputations of many.

The Road to Economic Salvation is not so much paved with good intentions as littered with countless, soon-forgotten "vision" documents and their worthy, but illusory promises of halcyon days ahead.

The fact the Waitangi Tribunal's recommendations may be "ignored", as Prime Minister John Key bluntly reminded us this week, is indirectly one of the reasons it is held in such high regard by Maori.

The last time anybody looked up the National Party's official guiding principles, pragmatism was not listed as being one of them.

If Labour thinks National's new five-year targets for improvements in some of New Zealand's ugliest and most depressing statistics are little more than a political gimmick, then Labour should think again.

So much for the theory that Winston Peters was mellowing into Parliament's version of everyone's favourite, if somewhat cranky and irascible, uncle.

Still reeling from their public caning over the now-axed rejigging of class sizes and teacher numbers, National Party ministers got a blunt talking-to from the Prime Minister at last Monday's Cabinet meeting.

If Hekia Parata is to remain in the education portfolio for any length of time, she needs to stop spouting meaningless blather.