Watch out for Judith Collins. She may be away laughing.

You know that 2017 is not looking good when 2016 ends with the new deputy Prime Minister, Paula Bennett, saying she’s a feminist “most days” — without specifying which days. How will anyone know which version of Bennett — feminist or non-feminist — they are dealing with when they want to question her about her Women’s portfolio?

This kind of gag was famously tried on the nation by that other well-known trickster John Key. Asked in Parliament in 2014 about his contact with blogger and attack-dog Cameron Slater, he performed the Dance of the Seven Hats, where he claimed to be several people at once and accountable to no one. Apparently, he was Prime Minister most days, but leader of the National Party during others. And that was when he wasn’t putting out the cat as Bronagh’s husband.

Key was a well-known shape-shifter, who could assume a variety of forms, effortlessly morphing into a different person for different audiences and saying anything that would please them. Bennett, however, doesn’t have that extensive shape-shifting ability. She switches between two modes: either wide-eyed, semi-injured innocence when she’s under pressure, or an irrepressible, bouncy Tigger when she’s on top.

The former was clearly on show in June after a leak from her office about a police investigation was seen as intended to damage the chairman of Te Puea Marae, who was housing the homeless when her government had signally failed to do so. (Yes, it was a mistake, and not intentional… no, no staffer would be resigning. I am deeply, deeply sorry…)

If she was telling the truth that her fingerprints weren’t all over the leak and she was actually giving a heartfelt apology, it sure didn’t look like it.

Perhaps the most convincing aspect of Bennett’s political persona is her surprise at ending up a heartbeat away from the prime ministership. Well, we’re pretty surprised, too, given her woeful performance in the social housing area — not least the recent reports of the enormous cost of housing the homeless in motels.

It’s not just Bennett either. Bill English obviously thinks he can play the same sort of tricks that made his predecessor so popular. His first cute move as Prime Minister was deciding not to have a Minister of Housing. Well, why would you when your party doesn’t actually have an effective housing policy? But while abandoning a go-to minister may have sounded like a brilliant idea that would instantly solve National’s political crisis over Auckland’s insane real estate market, it really only underlined the fact the government has given up completely — and handed the Opposition a very sharp stick to poke it with.

What National’s newly rejigged government has failed to grasp so far is that their bumbling attempts to imitate Key won’t work. Key was an accomplished actor with a terrific ability to impersonate a prime minister. He was undoubtedly our best political thespian since that well-known stand-up comic David Lange had his own turn in the spotlight impersonating a prime minister in the 1980s.

Over the past eight years, we’ve watched Key’s understudies imitate their master but, unfortunately, with little success. Their attempts at flip, insouciant answers — especially by Steven Joyce and Judith Collins — have been unintentionally comical and mostly overlooked. Let’s face it, no one ever paid much attention to the monkeys when the organ-grinder was so entertaining.

And anyway, we had a pact with Key that we have never forged with his underlings. The deal was he’d be our distraction and protection from the bad things like earthquakes and the GFC. As long as he did that, we’d forgive him almost anything.

And so he played the game we agreed he should play until he didn’t want to play any more. Key showed he clearly understood the showbiz adage: “Always leave your audience wanting more” — and quit.

I hope English, Bennett, Joyce and Collins are going to realise pretty quickly that the party’s major talent has actually left the stage and they’d better find a new schtick other than cute insouciance. The problems facing the nation — ranging from poverty to productivity — demand serious attention. (It was heartening, if bizarre, to have Bill English promise the Governor-General that he and Bennett would “take seriously the job you have conferred on us” as if there was the possibility they might not.)

Of course, there may be a few controlled explosions in 2017 that will demand attention and may not be able to be passed off as inconsequential.

Kim Dotcom has hinted in recent tweets that the government could be in for a shellacking via a big dump of hacked emails that will be released before the next general election. He claimed in an interview on a site called Spin Bin that Key’s knowledge of the damning dump was possibly the real reason he resigned.

Dotcom, however, has since been keen to point out that it is a rumour and he is merely passing it on — emphasising that the possible hack is nothing to do with him: “I never said that I have 2 [terabytes] of NZ Govt data because I don’t. There are rumours about a big leak coming out before 2017 election. We’ll see.”

Then there’s Nicky Hager. He warned during the faux-contest for Bill English’s coronation in December that Judith Collins would be a risky choice for PM, hinting that more compromising stuff about her would be released in the fullness of time.

Collins had an interesting response on RNZ: “I listen to [Hager] and I think, every time there's somebody trying to do their best, he’s after them. Whether it’s John Key, me or Helen Clark.”

You see the way she just slipped herself between Clark and Key as their natural heir? (She could just as easily have said: “He’s after them, whether it’s Cameron Slater, me or Jordan Williams.”) And note the plaintive cry of “trying to do their best” as she plays the underdog card.

Nevertheless, Collins is definitely the one to watch in 2017. Her new portfolio of Revenue won’t give her the same publicity as playing at being the scourge of boy-racers but if she manages to bring in more tax from multinationals like Google and Facebook, as well as stamping down on tax-dodging generally, she’ll be away laughing — quite possibly up the greasy poll of the National Party to the very top.

And possibly swiftly down again if Hager is correct.

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