It's hard, as we sit here at the end of a draining week, to work out what was worse.

Was the tantalising prospect of a travel bubble with Australia, shattered by yet another vacuous, hyperbole filled sermon from the pulpit of bollocks and BS the biggest let down? Or was it the lie about the brightline test? Or was it the lie about the lie about the brightline test? Or was the government's insistence that Trevor Mallard is a good bloke they like to defend and the fact he's a bully isn't really an issue?

The fact all this unfolded in the one-year anniversary of level 4, just reminded us what a shambolic, disorganised, unprofessionally, ill planned for year this has been.

The upside is the bubble will come. It's close. It's late. Appallingly, economically ruinously late, but at least we'll have an actual real date soon.

I am convinced we are only here because of another lie. The one they told about Australia holding us up on reciprocation. It was busted by Scott Morrison the other week, thus sending our lot off on a mad scramble to try and save face and look like it wasn’t them all along holding us up.

That would have been bad enough, but then came the brightline and its adjustment. The next lie was laid bare, and you had to remind yourself it was only Tuesday.

Given Grant Robertson was caught on tape saying what he said, that was bad enough. But for the Prime Minister to then lie about the lie and say they stayed silent on the issue defied belief. And then Robertson tried to squirm his way out of a lie by saying it was simply being too definitive. I mean, honestly, did they workshop that bollocks without going beetroot red?

This all makes Mallard sadly less of a story than it deserves to be. Pre-Covid, we would have been aghast. Not just at Mallard obviously, but the fact his party can continue to support a bloke so lacking in morale fortitude.

He knew he'd done wrong, but doubled down on it publicly, hired lawyers at our expense, still didn't back down, only to settle having wrecked some man's reputation. And then it was exposed that you threatened him in the process, at a point where you knew you were wrong.

After all that to refuse to walk and have your party mates run defence for you, exposes not just Mallard as the morally vacuous dead weight he is, but also the Labour Party. Headed by the Prime Minister acting more like a mafia enforcer than a woman whose forged support based on the facade of kindness.

• Mike Hosking: Delaying the travel bubble is a control exercise, pure and simple
• Mark the Week: More broken promises and lies from this Government

What a week. What do they say about fish rotting from the head?