Sometimes Oral Questions in Parliament are an incisive scalpel, cutting to the truth with surgical precision. With each supplementary question opening the wound further and pushing open territory for subsequent cuts.
Sometimes they're a blunderbuss, firing wildly in the hope of finding a chink in the armour.
The Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Both can be worthwhile tactics. If you haven't found a weak point, it can be worth tossing random grenades over the parapet in the hope that one of them will land somewhere opportune and open the way for a more surgical attack.
It was like that in Parliament today during the exchange between the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges.
Mr Bridges followed up a primary question with ten supplementaries, on a range of topics that ranged from finance, to nurses' wages, through housing, business confidence and transport; attempting even to find purchase in the territory of the Prime Minister's impending childbirth.
You'll get more of a sense of the tussle in the audio of the exchange.
