Judith Collins has for the past year played the game, kept her own counsel, and done nothing to upset the Beehive apple cart.

She bided her time, knowing that John Key likes nothing more than to be liked - even by her. If he had left her on the outside looking in for too much longer, she could have become restless and an agitated Judith Collins isn't something that would have rested easy with him.

When she quit Cabinet at the height of the election campaign last year it was in fact because of an email trail, implicating her for undermining the boss of the Serious Fraud Office, something she was subsequently cleared of.

There were many more unanswered questions though involving her director hubby at the milk company Oravida which was having a spot of difficulty selling product to China, and her dinner out with the bosses and a customs official in Beijing, that she could have surrendered her warrant over. But she hung on in there with the acquiescence of the PM against what seemed like all odds.

So she's back and even though she's now widely known as Crusher because of her law to crush boy racers' cars, it's not a well earned label because just a couple of vehicles have gone under the hammer, the most celebrated one when her successor Anne Tolley was proudly photographed posing over one flattened wreck in her stilettos.

Her more recent incarnation was Container Collins, when she decided the solution to our overcrowded prisons was to put the baddies in shipping containers.

Instead they had a rush of humanity to the head and built more prisons and five years ago she brought in Serco to give Corrections a helping hand. At Mt Eden, Corrections is now giving Serco the hand, while an investigation's underway over they're fit for purpose.

She clearly feels that she is and so does John Key which in her case is all that really matters.

He also felt that the youthful Act leader David Seymour was and offered him a Cabinet post, putting him in charge of regulatory reform. That clearly didn't appeal to Seymour, who if he was any dryer would internally combust, and that job most certainly wouldn't have assisted with the hydration he clearly needs so he turned down the post!