In a week of public apologies from several high profile politicians, once again we are faced with a reality that Elton John warned us about. Not that Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting, rather the one about what seems to be the hardest word.

In the world of politics, it’s a word that seems to grow in significance with each day that passes without the public hearing it. Then, when it is finally used, it sprouts hastily concocted qualifications faster than a faked CV.

The word is “sorry”, and this week we’ve seen examples of how to say it, how to spin it, and how to say it and then not say it - all in the same breath.

New Zealand politics is certainly not alone in its inability to handle this most simple of terms. It took the Australian government decades to utter it. The US has a long history of producing leaders who can’t bring themselves to even think it. Special mention must be made of the “two Dicks”, Nixon and Cheney, one of whom went to his grave protesting that he was still not a crook, the other who in a recent hearing claimed to simply not recall what he was accused of doing wrong. 72 times.

More recently, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a contrite, and accepted, apology to the mother of a deceased soldier to whom he had written, or rather scrawled, a condolence letter which contained no fewer than 25 spelling mistakes - beginning with her son’s name. Ok, so it came on the back of a media storm flamed by that bastion of humility and responsibility in journalism, The Sun, but to his credit it came from the heart and it came quickly.

In stark contrast, here at home we have Hone Harawira, a man who proved via email that he could hold his own in a profanity competition with an oil rig worker suffering from Tourettes. Clearly, though, there was one word even he found offensive, and when he eventually managed to force it past his gritted teeth, it was impossible to decipher what it was that he was actually sorry about. It certainly wasn’t for his views on colonialism, or for taking time out from his job to visit that French museum from the Da Vinci Code. He did mention something about using words which some of us puritanical white folks with Oedipal issues might have found offensive, even racist, but then his mother popped up to remind us that those words were neither.

Rodney Hide did a little better, but really, he had to. Having the self proclaimed perk-buster taking perks is akin to a finance minister being caught with his hand in the till, a Christian values campaigner jailed for indecent assault or someone who despises colonial power visiting Paris. Ok, bad examples. Sorry.

See, that wasn’t so hard.