Very early in my relationship with him Doug Anthony set my definitive expectations about how Ministers who wish to be taken seriously should go about their business.

I was working with him on a difficult issue, and went to see him for the next in a series of meetings on that issue.

“What have you got for me?” he inquired.

I opened by saying “I suspect that what I am about to say won’t please some of your constituents very much”.

“Don’t you worry about that” he said, “that’s my job. We’ll work out what needs to be done, and then it’s my job to work out who we need to get on board to get it over the line”.

In other words, good policy making is a two-stage process. Get the policy right, then get the politics right.

By contrast, the current degenerated practice is to derive the policy from the politics, which is bother a disaster and a disgrace.

The sad thing is, as experiences with Doug showed, when you start with a policy framework derived from the best available information and a rational process of reasoning, it is surprising how many you can win over

How different might our approach to climate change have been if we had started with the required policy framework and then turned our mind to the politics of it. For Howard and his successors it was all politics, no policy.