I'd like to warn you that I'm going to merge the contents of python-zlib into python-base. python-zlib is very small, and since zlib1g is now 'standard' anyway, it won't introduce a significant penalty to the python-base package.
I noticed that task-python-dev, task-python-bundle and routeplanner have unversioned dependencies on python-zlib, and that palm-doctoolkit has a versioned dependency on python-zlib (>= 1.5.2-4). The new python-base (>= 1.5.2-13) will provide python-zlib. I guess it's your decision if and how you modify the dependencies on that packages (e.g. remove python-zlib and depend on python-base (>= 1.5.2-13)). Thanks, Gregor