Help with trigger - Mailing list pgsql-general

I'm new to PostgreSQL, but have worked with other databases. I'm trying to
write a trigger to default a timestamp column to a fixed interval before
another. The test setup is as follows:

create table test
(    date1 timestamp,
    date2 timestamp
);

create or replace function t_listing_startdate() returns trigger as
$t_listing_startdate$
    begin
        if NEW.date2 is null then
            NEW.date2 := NEW.date1 - interval '7 day';
        end if;
        return NEW;
    end;
$t_listing_startdate$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER t_listing_startdate before insert or update on test
    for each row execute procedure t_listing_startdate();

Insert into test(date1) values('May 4, 2012');
INSERT 0 1
test=# select * from test;
        date1        | date2
---------------------+-------
 2012-04-27 00:00:00 |
(1 row)

I'm obviously missing something ... and probably something obvious. Why is
date2 still null?

Thanks much
---Michael