John Armstrong: Welcome back, Winston Peters

For months it has seemed as if the real Winston Peters has been abducted by aliens and his double-breasted suits filled in his absence by a lookalike imposter.

How else to explain the surly, unsmiling figure who blamed everyone but himself for NZ First's abysmal election campaign, who accepted the "baubles" of office when he said he would not, who denied he is a member of the Government, and who has rounded it all off with an unconvincing impression of a foreign minister?

Not only was the clone behaving in ever more worrying ways, it appeared to be utterly devoid of the Peters magic.

However, on the evidence in Parliament this week, the Peters of old seems to have returned. He is back to his happy and irrepressible best in the arena he loves to dominate, poking fun at National MPs and seeking out Rodney Hide - a favourite foe - for special attention.

His verbal chipping at the Act leader yesterday saw him ejected from the chamber by the Speaker. But for once, Margaret Wilson's ruling, which followed numerous warnings about interjections, did not provoke the usual volley of protests from Mr Peters.

Such was his good humour that when Mr Hide called him a "Government poodle" - an insult all the more wounding for it being Mr Peters' preferred description of United Future's Peter Dunne in the last Parliament - the Peters smile, if anything, expanded.

His sunny disposition was no doubt bolstered by his possession of a clutch of leaked emails written by one of Don Brash's advisers, the contents of which appear to be hugely embarrassing to National.

But Mr Peters is also acutely conscious that his so-far stuttering performance as Foreign Minister is under intense scrutiny as National uses its first opportunities to grill him in Parliament since his return from the Apec and Commonwealth summits.

Murray McCully, National's foreign affairs spokesman, was not lacking material as he quizzed Mr Peters on the friction between him and Phil Goff, whom Mr Peters replaced and who has likened Mr Peters' relationship with Labour to that with his mother-in-law.

Getting grumpy about that would have played right into National's hands in helping it drive a wedge between him and Labour.

He instead made light of suggestions he had been at odds with Helen Clark and Mr Goff. And, for the first time in weeks, he looked comfortable about being a minister in a Labour-led Government, rather than trying to fight it.

While the joke-cracking and refusal to treat Mr McCully's questions with any seriousness was frustrating for National, it was also a much-needed morale-lifter for his NZ First colleagues.

When National's Gerry Brownlee raised one description of Mr Peters as nothing more than a "post-box" through which other Foreign Ministers communicated with those in the Government who really did the work, NZ First's Ron Mark shot back, "Better than being a tucker box" - a dig at Mr Brownlee's portly frame.

Most striking was Mr Peters' posing patsy questions to the Prime Minister and David Benson-Pope which cheekily contrasted the latter's difficulty in remembering events of 20 years ago with Dr Brash's inability to remember something that had happened just weeks ago.

The questions would have provided some respite for Labour had the Speaker not ruled them out of order. No matter. Mr Peters' gesture was more than Mr Benson-Pope's own colleagues have been willing to do to help him.