John Key's first week in the job literally got off to a flying start with his attendance at APEC and a series of bilateral meetings in the United Kingdom.

Best Play of the Week

Tim Groser gets an A for the announcement at APEC that Australia and Peru would join the United States in signing up to the P4 free trade agreement between New Zealand, Sigapore, Chile and Brunei. Of course Trade Minister Groser did not unilaterally make this happen, but he gets the credit when it occurs on his watch.

This helped set the scene for APEC leaders to pledge support for the stalled Doha trade talks. While bilateral trade deals are good, a mulilateral trade agreement is far better.

The credit crisis is going to cause an immense amount of pain and suffering. Workers will lose jobs. Busineses will close. Families may lose their homes. 2009 is not going to be a pleasant year.

But a small silver lining may be the impetus to conclude the Doha trade round. When world economies were doing well, their protectionist leaders were not inclined to risk unpopularity by removing trade barriers. What was the need? But now there is a need, and real pressure has to go on the European Union to stop blocking progress.

Worst Play of the Week

Gordon Brown gets a D for his new air departure tax. It will add $240 to an air ticket from the United Kingdom to New Zealand.

The claimed rationale for the tax is to help offset carbon emissions. But this is just an excuse for protectionism and tax gathering.

The United Kingdom has been in an emissions trading scheme since 2002. The UK ETS ran from 2002 to 2006, and since then they have been in the EU ETS. The whole idea of an ETS is to make carbon emitters pay for the cost of offsetting their emissions, and to reduce them over time.

The tax is about making it expensive for British residents to travel and holiday overseas, hence increasing domestic tourism. A nasty form of protectionism.

The United Kingdom is actually 15.6% below its Kyoto Protocol target for greenhouse gas emissions. Further proof that climate change is the excuse, not the reason for this tax.

If other countries decide to start charging their residents to leave the country by plane, this will have a real impact on tourist numbers. And as New Zealand is the most remote country on Earth, we will suffer the most.

I doubt John Key can get Gordon Brown to reverse a policy he has already announced. But maybe he could talk to his good friend David Cameron and get him to agree to axe the departure tax once or if he becomes Prime Minister.

Electoral Finance Act Breach of the Week

A novel complaint was considered by the Electoral Commission this week. A member of the public complained that Trevor Mallard's actions in releasing leaked copies of National's election policies was an illegal election advertisement, as Mr Mallard was publishing documents that could cause people to support National.

This was an crafty line of argument. Make it illegal for MPs to reveal leaked policies of their opponents by crafting them as an election advertisement. Such an advertisement is illegal to publish without the permission of the party secretary.

The Electoral Commission ruled that the policy documents were not election advertisments as they did not have campaign slogans etc on them. But I am sure National will include them in future drafts to make them Mallard proof! Of course the Electoral Finance Act will be just a bad memory by then, but who knows what the provisions of the replacement law will be.

Scandals of the Week

The two immigration scandals continue to bubble away and both Labour and National will nervously await full revelations. The Shane Jones scandal stays at an A- while the rumoured issues around immigrant job offers from Kanwaljit Bakshi move it from a C to a B-.

The release, in Ian Wishart's TGIF, of the offical advice to Shane Jones to decline the citizenship application from Yang Liu makes his actions almost indefensible. The fact that Liu was a donor to Labour (and National) means people inevitably conclude this is why he got special treatment. If National want to start the parliamentary session with a roar, they should be planning score of oral quetions to the Minister of Internal Affairs on this issue. People in Labour are very nervous about this.

But likewise I suspect Labour will be planning scores of questions to the Minister of Immigration regarding new National MP Kanwaljit Bakshi to try and ascertain how many job offers has he actually made to prospective immigrants, and what proportion of them if any, turned into actual jobs. National would be wise to pre-empt this issue by ensuring full disclosure that will either clear Bakshi, or allow judgements to be made on the full facts.