Jacinda Ardern might just have out "malcolmed" Malcolm Turnbull.

Turnbull last Thursday, in what we called a stroke of political genius, made Peter Dutton come up with 43 names on a bit of paper before he'd call a spill, and the magic of that was it gave Scott Morrison 24 hours to drum up the support he needed to be a genuine contender to Dutton and thus give Turnbull the replacement he wanted, if he had to go.

Meantime here, Ardern, who at last after several false starts, has finally realised her back is to the wall with business, went for yet another reset.

But this time came armed with a genuine idea.

The Business Council is, of course, nothing more than another working party. But in the working party is the potential genius.

And what she's doing, whether they know it or not is buying the silence of business.

The Chair is the boss of Air New Zealand, another excellent move.

Air New Zealand is publicly owned but also happens to be spectacularly successful, largely liked, and respected. Who better to head up the group than the CEO?

Now if the plan is to work, you then round up reasonably high profile members of the business community, names we know representing large swaths of workers, and a good cross-section of New Zealand business.

And in doing that what you are achieving is getting buy-in from them. They are signing up for the plan. They are on board with the government because they are in the pay if not debt of the government.

That is perhaps worded in a slightly more Machiavellian way than it needs to be, but nevertheless, there is an underlying truth, once you're on a government board you work for the government.

If you have a problem, you are part of either the problem or the solution.

The government has worked out that it's easy to lob grenades from the outside, so get some of the lobbers in the tent.

The quid pro quo will be business feels they have access to the government, they have the government's ear.

That will eventually potentially bite them because there are only so many times you can be fobbed off. If your view of the world is fundamentally different to the government's, which I suspect most of it is.

But in the meantime, they've drunk the cool-aid and bought into the plan.

So next time the confidence numbers are out, the answer is, "our business advisory group is onto it".

The workplace changes are dangerous, the answer is, "our workplace advisory group is looking into that".

There isn't a problem in the world a government can't send off to a working group, and in doing so shut down the chatter and the bad headlines, at least for a while.