John Key's political skills will be tested on two fronts this week.

The first, and the most difficult, is whether there should be reserved seats for Maori on Auckland's new super city council.

Rodney Hide's entrenched position on this issue has set National's two support parties against each other and whatever the prime minister decides to do, one of them is going to be upset.

The ACT leader says he will resign as minister of local government if the Maori Party's demands are met. He isn't threatening to break the confidence and supply agreement his party signed with National after the election.

It isn't clear exactly why Hide is holding such a strong stance. He says it is because of ACT's democratic principles which preclude him from agreeing to council seats which would not be directly contested on a common ratepayer roll.

But there is an "agree to disagree" clause in ACT's support agreement which would give Hide a way out. He doesn't seem to want a way out, or doesn't feel he should seek one.

The Maori Party is deadly serious about the seats. Some of its MPs hold strong views, Hone Harawira in particular, and they would feel mightily aggrieved if the decision goes against them.

Tariana Turia, the Maori Party co-leader, says Hide is playing politics and pandering to "a section of the electorate he knows exists".

By that she means he is trying to carve out support from right-wing voters, that he is bidding to gain ground left open by the Government's much more accommodating approach to Maori than the one adopted by National under Don Brash.

The severity of this situation wasn't known until Tau Henare sent an email to his National Party caucus colleagues complaining about Hide's perceived obduracy.

Henare got it wrong by telling them the ACT leader was prepared to withdraw support from the Government, but the rest of his message made sense.

Henare was chairman of a sub-committee of the special select committee which heard public submissions on Auckland's new local government structure. The sub-committee dealt specifically with the Maori seats issue.

Henare's point is that the parliamentary process should be allowed to run its course. The committee, and the sub-committee, are preparing their reports on the legislation that sets up the council.

If the recommendation is that there should be Maori seats on the council it should then be up to Parliament to make the decision and Hide could hardly feel affronted by that.

The Government, however, would still have to take a position on it.

Key might try to defuse the problem through a compromise. A Maori advisory council has been floated as a possibility, although the Maori Party thinks it would be a toothless entity.

The prime minister's second test is the way he responds to the overwhelming `No' vote in the smacking referendum.

This isn't a political issue in the same sense as the Maori seats.

The referendum wasn't binding, he isn't being forced to do anything. He knows he has to react because if he just brushed it aside he would be seen to ignore a very large number of voters.

The question was: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

It was so loaded to get the response required by the referendum's promoters that their opponents doubt the result actually delivered a mandate for change.

Of just over 1.6 million votes cast -- 54 percent of those enrolled -- 87.6 percent voted `No' and 11.8 percent votes 'Yes'.

Police have the discretion not to prosecute for inconsequential smacks, and they haven't. It is the existence of the ban on smacking for purposes of correction that obsesses those oppose it and they won't be satisfied with anything less than a law change put through Parliament.

Key is right to refuse this course. It would be a huge distraction and embroil Parliament in another lengthy and divisive debate.

He has said from the start he believes the law is working and won't be changed unless and until it stops working the way Parliament intended it to.

So he is working on finding a way to strengthen the status quo.

"What I am wanting to ensure is that parents have a level of comfort that the police and Child, Youth and Family follow the intent of Parliament," Key was quoted as saying by the Sunday Star-Times.

Cabinet is limited because of the independence of the police but Key says it has "some options" to direct them.

Kiwi Party leader Larry Baldock and the Family First organisation, the main promoters of the referendum, will almost certainly denounce this as totally inadequate.

They will try to prolong the publicity over the referendum result -- in Baldock's case probably right up to the next election when it will be used to attract votes -- but the public is more likely to be in a mood to move on.

So is the prime minister. When he has made his move to shore up a situation which already exists he isn't likely to want to waste any more time on it.