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Given the week\'s events, here are my observations of our new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

Firstly, he is a vast improvement on the old one but already the cracks are showing.

He came in to see us this week for the first time, he wants to come in when the house isn\'t sitting, so good on him.

He arrived early; we told him to arrive at least on time because the last one who barely ever came in, despite the fact she was from Auckland, didn\\u2019t arrive on time. She was often late and she was late because she was one of those people who was a shambles, invited shambles and had that air of \'I\'m not quite ready\\u201d about her.

Hipkins is organised and low key. I can report he is the same off mic as he is on mic. This has, and will, serve the party better than if the predecessor had stayed on.

You might not rate Hipkins given his performance in education and the police, not to mention MIQ, but he isn\'t polarising the way the predecessor was.

You either quite like him, or you\'re not fussed - he\'s no lightning rod.

But being Prime Minister is hard and even with the optics of a disaster to help in his honeymoon period, he has already made two glaring mistakes.

The first was the road workers he has now apologised to for the gun incident in Hawkes Bay post-Gabrielle.

The incident he didn\\u2019t believe, the incident he dismissed, because the Police Commissioner, who is a wet blanket when it comes to guns and gangs and general criminal upheaval, gave him bad intel.

Add to that the meeting in Hawkes Bay where the Government were generally eviscerated, I think we can say the honeymoon is over and old Labour and their tin ear and lack of delivery are back. \\xa0

The second was the question in the house from David Seymour. He completely butchered because, on his own admission, he didn\\u2019t prepare properly. Not prepping for question time, indeed the first question time as leader, is inexcusable.

Especially for a bloke who claimed when the media were in that obsessive \\u201dOoh look we have a new Prime Minister", phase where they ran those mad stories headlined \\u201cWho is Chris Hipkins?\\u201d

Well, Chris Hipkins claimed he liked hard work. You can\'t like hard work then not do it on day one in the house. \\xa0 \\xa0

Next trick is, does he learn? We all err but the good ones learn and don\'t repeat it.

Being a leader, a good leader, is rare. Just getting appointed because there is no one else, which is sadly the Hipkins story, is not enough.

Having been about the place for a while isn\'t enough, being a decent bloke and turning up on time isn\'t enough.

So a couple of weeks in, the shine from the hi-vis disaster response is well and truly gone.

Is it too soon to say different leader, same old crap?

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