But if he had been expecting nothing more than tea and savoury scones when he met members of the Te Ara shared pathway group in Oamaru, those notions were quickly dispelled by 19 year-old single mother Alora Munro.
Mr Key met six young mothers at the Orwell St Chapel as part of a whistle-stop tour of South Canterbury and North Otago, but was quickly embroiled in a detailed, two-way discussion on the cost of food, rent, child care and the daily difficulties of being a parent.
Miss Munro took him on over the Government's child care and welfare policies - and then asked him what he hoped to gain by meeting the group.
Although the teenager said she had asked some hard questions of the Prime Minister, the discussion was not all a one-way street.
''He seemed to be taking it on, but he asked a lot of the right questions too, I feel.''
Miss Munro said young mothers were not looking for a handout from the Government, but they did want it to provide ''better stepping stones'' so they could be the best possible parents.
''There are young mothers out there that really want to get off the benefit and get jobs, but the Government has put some things in place that make it hard.''
Te Ara group facilitator Amanda Acheson said the mothers, aged between 19 and 26, had hoped to convince Mr Key to support young mothers and groups like theirs.
At a press conference, he rejected recent claims Dunedin and Otago were the slow-coaches of what Labour leader David Shearer has said is a ''two-speed'' economy, saying economic growth was good across the country.
''Certainly, it has been a bit stronger in certain parts like Christchurch, but that's because we are undertaking the single biggest infrastructural rebuild in the history of New Zealand.''
''If you have a look at the rural sector around New Zealand, which dominates every area other than Auckland and Christchurch, it's having a record year, so I figure, as a country, we're doing pretty well.''
On the future of 85 jobs at Invermay, near Mosgiel, Mr Key said although the Government was talking to AgResearch, it was unable to interfere.
''We are going through a consultation phase, and it's far from a done deal that people will move, but we don't make those decisions.''
Unemployment in Dunedin and Otago would not be dealt with differently from anywhere else.
''There's no silver bullet. In any three-month period in New Zealand 100,000 jobs are lost or created. Our job is to create them at a faster rate than they are lost.''
''Broadly speaking'' the Government was doing enough to create jobs throughout Otago, he said.
''Some of the data I have seen has Dunedin and Otago actually at lower levels of unemployment.
"You're also seeing a huge amount of potential growth going to take place in Christchurch ... some of that work can and will be outsourced to Otago and various regions.''
He said infrastructure was also important for regional development, and the Government saw the introduction of ultra-fast broadband to rural areas in the South as an important step to increasing regional ''connectivity''.
