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This afternoon Cheryl Gillan will address the Assembly for the first time as Secretary of State for Wales.

The purpose of her visit?

To update AMs on the content of the Queen's Speech.

The Welsh Secretary's intention?

To continue to stress the "respect" that will, she insists, be at the heart of dealings she has with the government of Wales.

The Labour party's intention?

To paint her as the visiting Governor General, deigning to leave her English constituency for the day to drop in on her people. Someone had better whisper in the town crier's ear and tell him that Chesham and Amersham is rather a long way from Cheshire. It's in Buckinghamshire ...

Mrs Gillan seems pretty relaxed. She can't be looking forward to her session in the chamber. She has, after all, a bit of a reputation for not dealing with the slightest curve ball particularly well. But to me, she almost feels like a woman who has one or two things up her sleeve, one or two things that make her think it's more than possible the government in Cardiff will probably - mostly - join in the anthem called "reciprocal respect".

So far she's announced she's pressing ahead with the referendum and that it'll be held next March - just as the idea of putting it off until next Autumn was growing in currency in and around the Assembly. I doubt she'll be much longer before she's come up with the wording of the question that will be asked of us all. She's made practical and far more supportive sounding noises around the bid to devolve powers over housing than many of her detractors had expected.

Sounding positive is one thing, WAG might say. Actually giving us the powers that we've identified and voted for in the chamber quite another - and they would, of course, be bang on. But there's no doubt the language adopted by Cheryl Gillan, so far, has been that of getting on with the job, of governing with practicality, with delivery in mind, rather than ideology and confrontation. She sounds like a woman who's perfectly well aware that she needs to establish her devolution bona fides early on but the flip side of that is that she doesn't come freighted with a deep-seated ideological position on either policy or the difficult compromises that brought the Government of Wales Act 2006 into being.

She seems to mean what she says about respect by the way but it can't have escaped the attention of some of those around her that by taking a soothing line, she may also wrong-foot some of those who detest her government most.

She managed to avoid the Labour Party's colourful and very loud welcoming party. Nick Bourne and his adviser were less lucky. They walked past with a broad smile and just the slightest shake of the head at what a spokesman later called Labour's "childish fancy dress show".

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