Perhaps the biggest blow for the Government out of the Northland result at the weekend, apart from the humiliation and the cocked up campaign, is the simple truth that on some of the things they want to do law-wise, the numbers no longer fall their way.

If you remember, this is in fact the second seat they've lost since election night. They lost one seat to special votes and now Northland. So in other words, they've gone from 61 to 59.

Dropping to 60 wasn't a major, given Act is basically a proxy vote. But 59 is trouble.

59 is no longer automatic. 59 is 'who's on board' with us, 59 is 'what do we need to trade to get this done'.

And on the resource management laws they're in trouble, which is a shame because what they're wanting to do makes sense.

It made sense last Parliament as well...but last Parliament they had exactly the same trouble. The Maori Party had cultural reasons for not supporting it. Peter Dunne had different, but specific, reasons as well.

Labour sort of hinted they would back them, but I never really worked out whether they were truly serious or not. Upshot was they had to bail and hope for a decent election result last October, which of course they got. Trouble is, what they got then, is not what they've got now. So in a nutshell, they're back to square one.

Their only option, short of watering the whole thing down, is to reach out to Winston and you know where that's going.

The Resource Management Act is your classic example of a law that started out okay but got hopelessly out of control. The Resource Management Act ties too much up in too much red tape, delay and cost. Whatever you want to do has a massive bill attached to it, with the ability to oppose anything being too easy.

As a result, the campaigners and activists can tie people up for years, going nowhere simply by using and abusing a mechanism that was never designed for such a purpose.

The counter argument of course is we don't want developers given a green light to bulldoze, concrete and level everything for as far as the eye can see.

But that is not what the reforms are about. Mainly, they're about making things easier and more transparent and faster. Arguing a case was never the problem, but stalling it while you argue it is.

So in this case good law is the victim of democracy. Common sense does not prevail because of the vageries of the political system. So ultimately, we're the losers.