Ministers propose, Parliament disposes, the old saw has it, and each year our Parliament disposes more and more law.
No politician ever sets out to ensure less law is passed, and this is largely if not wholly the consequence of an electoral system which obliges political parties to produce a new set of policies every three years.
And elected governments must perforce enact new legislation or amend existing legislation in order for those policies to have legal force.
To which must be added hundreds if not thousands of regulations which may or may not have the approval of Parliament but which exist simply because the executive wants them to exist or believes them to be necessary, and the Wellington cardigan-wearers consider them important.
As is often the case, it is the business of the courts to determine with precision quite what Parliament meant when it passed legislation, and for the growing army of lawyers to hold our hands and calm our agitation when "the law" in whatever form threatens to involve us.
The year past saw 70 Government Bills become the law, some of them of vast and lasting consequence.
All governments in their first year in office begin by sprinting, spend the middle year jogging and the third by walking to re-election or defeat - often backwards so as to admire the view.
In the case of the National-led coalition, it has been something of a gallop.
DNA testing for every person arrested for an imprisonable offence became the law and will have a very long tail, as some recent court cases have demonstrated.
On the other hand, the legislation intended to erase the activities of "boy racers" may do no such thing but merely move the problem out of easy reach or promote a new means by which insolent youth can continue its ancient custom of thumbing its nose at authority.
Attempts to modify anti-social behaviour by creating new laws is a long-standing parliamentary tradition, rarely successful.
Thus, while the community can anticipate some success with the change to the domestic violence law which gives police the power to issue on-the-spot protection orders, it would be unwise to expect too much from the Sentencing (Offender Levy) Amendment Bill, which is designed to make criminals - who usually have no funds they can claim as their own honest gain - compensate their victims, nor from the Gangs and Organised Crime Amendment Bill, which proposes to "clamp down on criminal gangs and their drug trade", for which the legendary King Canute himself might have been more usefully engaged.
Of course, by far the most significant legislation passed by Parliament in 2009 was that which modified other earlier important Bills, including the changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme in time for the Government to show off at the Copenhagen conference on climate change.
It is legislation that may have to be revisited, and probably frequently, when its full hiccups and implications dawn on the citizenry and the aforementioned legal profession returns from its holiday.
The Government is promising more, much more (there are already 65 Government Bills being processed) in the next 12 months, including changes to taxation which will all require authorising legislation, and it will yet again tackle the problems of youth with a range of new sentences and other interdictions, probably without success.
Then there is the expectation surrounding what the Prime Minister has enticingly called an "elegant" solution to the vexed and much maligned foreshore and seabed legislation.
And while some incumbents in Parliament know how to spend the taxpayers' money and keep thousands of public servants in jobs - they asked 18,566 written questions to no known good purpose - an average of 600 or so for every week Parliament sat (this is by no means a record number) - others with extensive knowledge of the byways and minor corridors of power can really work wonders.
Hence the example of the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill which, somehow, during consideration by the cross-party primary production select committee, authorised a way by which a Northland boat-builder with a long-standing wish to use part of a public esplanade as a commercial slipway granted his desire.
When this was drawn to his attention, Mr Speaker was not best pleased that private benefits had been included in a Government Bill, and amendment is certain to result.
A "small victory for democracy", as one MP noted.
May there be many others in 2010.
