A neutron bomb differs from other nuclear devices, in that damage is more focused on biological material than on material infrastructure.

For large strategic neutron bombs, the idea is it kills your enemies but doesn't wipe out the countryside, allowing the victor to then take over easily.

The smaller tactical neutron bombs are designed to kill armored opponents who prove resistant to blast and heat. It is in this context that Labour spent months whispering of the neutron bomb that would finally succeed where all their other assaults had failed.

Sadly for Labour, they failed to find the neutron bomb and instead found Acme explosives left behind by Wile E. Coyote. And as any Roadrunner fan can testify, these tend to hurt poor old Coyote far more than the target Roadrunner.

Best Play of the Week

When John Key first announced his "portfolio" if he wins will be Tourism, on top of PM and SIS, I was a bit disappointed. I had been hoping he would appoint himself Minister of Infrastructure - as the commitment to National's investment in infrastructure comes very strongly from Key himself.

I also tended to see Tourism as one of those "soft" portfolios that every Minister wants - sport, tourism, arts, foreign affairs - they tend to be feel good portfolios with little political risks.

But then I thought about it some more. Tourism accounts for 9% of our GDP or around $14 billion a year, and employs around 10% of the workforce. In tough economic times, tourism may be one of the easiest ways to help grow the economy. It also brings in much of our foreign exchange.

Having the Prime Minister take the portfolio started to make a lot more sense. Also add on the political dimension that you associate the PM with positive promotions for NZ, and my initial disappointment turned into a solid B+ rating for a very smart play.

Worst Play of the Week

No surprises here. Labour gets an E for explosion - their neutron bomb killing off what credibility remained for Party President Mike Williams, and the radiaition seeping through to Helen Clark.

I'm not one to say that Labour doesn't have a right to check the authencity of what John Key said in relation to the H-Fee, but the way they went about it was fatally stupid. Here's how:

1. Having your Party President personally fly over to trawl through 12,000 pages of documents. They should have asked the Australian Labor Party to send someone in to take some copies and courier them over. Having Williams personally do the dirt digging sends a signal that the dirt digging is the top priority for Labour (which of course it is, but they should be aiming for plausible deniability)
2. Flying over two weeks before the election. It looks panicked and desperate. The H-Fee allegation made the news in 2007 - they should have researched it mroe fully at the time.
3. Hyping it up, before knowing the facts. You think they will have learnt from 2007 when Mallard talking about H-Fees in the House allowed Key to snooker them by revealing his invokvement with the SFO and how he was actualy helping the SFO - not a suspect. But they didn't learn, and for weeks and months they have whispered about their neutron bomb. They (or an ally) even sent material anonymously to journalists using the alias Batman.

If National wins the election, and gets to form a Government, it would be unthinkable that Williams could possibly continue in any of his Government board roles. You can't have sitting as a Director of Government companies a man who drags over 20 kilograms of documents back from Australia to try and prove the Prime Minister (if Key wins) is New Zealand's biggest fraudster.

Electoral Finance Act Breach of the Week

Hopefully not a breach, but a story to illustrate how restrictive the new law is.

The author has had some fun this week putting up a billboard in Tauranga featuring Winston with his "No" sign, now photoshopped to read "No cheques, cash only". Winston voted for the Electoral Finance Act on the grounds of more transparency being needed around political donations, so we thought highlighting his own lack of transparency was fair game.

Now a few people have siad, hey wait this EFA can't be too bad if you can run a billboard like that. But what they don't realise is we are probably restricted to running just one billboard in Tauranga - a second one could see us prosecuted.

This is because it is possible the billboard is not just an election advertisement but also might be a candidate advertisement, being an advertisement "that relate to a candidate in the candidate's capacity as a candidate for an electoral district"

Now one can spend only $1,000 incl GST or $889 excl GST on candidate advertising unless you register as a third party. And even if you register the limit is then only $3,556 excl GST. That doesn't go far - in fact just one billboard.

Now I don't think the billboard targets Winston in his capacity as a candidate. We are targetting him in his capacity as Leader of NZ First. But we did place the billboard in Tauranga where he is standing - mainly to make sure he would see it, rather than thinking it would affect or influence the local outcome.

We can't get a definitive ruling on whether a particular advertisement would be deemed an election advertisement, let alone a candidate advertisment, so unless we want to risk prosecution we can't do a second billboard in Tauranga.

So please don't tell the author the Electoral Finance Act is not a real restriction.

Scandal of the Week

I thought the Owen Glenn scandal was done and dusted but the Ombudsman managed to pry out of the Government e-mails from MFAT staff that showed Winston was pushing for Owen Glenn to be appointed Consul to Monaco, and expressing anger at MFAT officials over why it was taking so long.

This led to the revelation from Helen Clark that after Owen Glenn told her he had dinated to Peters' legal fees, Clark instructed MFAT to tell her if Peters pushed for Glenn's appointment again. Now Clark had said that she didn't know who to believe between Peters and Glenn, when Glenn told her of the donation in February and Peters denied it.

It sounds like she did very much know who to believe.

Normally I would only give a B to a new twist on an old scandal, but as the news broke around 12 hours before our billboard on the Owen Glenn donation was due to go up (a wonderful coincidence of great timing) I have to elevate it to an A.