KEY POINTS:
Sometimes I think we should pass legislation to guarantee seats in Parliament for life for Winston Peters and Rodney Hide. In this too-careful world, it's good to see two mavericks in full flight.
It was like watching Farmer John's bulls in the paddock next door.
Parliament's donkeys (they're known to stop bulls fighting) couldn't curtail these two as they backed off, pawed the ground, lowered their heads and charged.
On Tuesday, Hide got himself kicked out for refusing to keep his questioning within standing orders, but that was his aim. The television cameras would have been primed, and he paused at the door just long enough for the stills photographers to capture his best angle. Hide's now handsomely chiselled features were carefully arranged into an expression of manufactured outrage.
And you have to admire Peters' pluck, for consistently fronting up. The Minister of Foreign Affairs could easily have sashayed offshore to some vitally important meeting, and left the Prime Minister to stave off the attacks.
Which she does admirably, I must say, shrugging away the poke, poke, poke from John Key, claiming the moral high ground by conceding a conflict of evidence given to the Privileges Committee by Owen Glenn and Peters.
National sits on that select committee; Simon Power chairs it.
Yet National has already prejudged the outcome by accepting Glenn's evidence over that of Peters. If Glenn appears in person, a top QC could cross-examine him on his evidence with interesting results.
Just six months ago Glenn was uttering bizarre words about Labour's behaviour. He gave half a million dollars to the party, he said, to even the score over the Exclusive Brethren, but that didn't check out because his donation was made long before the 2005 election.
He also said Clark offered him a Cabinet post but no one believed that one. Clark's no fool and Labour allocates its portfolios by vote.
Then Glenn told the New Zealand Herald he was in line to be consul general of Monaco (when that position wasn't due), and don't forget the mystery about Glenn offering Sir Howard Morrison $1 million to stand for Parliament.
Why give this man credibility over Peters? He's become the Exclusive Brethren of this year's election.
Then again, National knows the committee probably won't release a verdict before this Parliament is prorogued, so Key figured he might as well go where his supporters are pushing him - cut Peters out of any future arrangement. But is that wise?
Commentators have been quick to dismiss NZ First's chances of getting back, based on the party's low polling and Peters not winning Tauranga.
But they've overlooked a new development. Ron Mark is standing in Rimutaka, Paul Swain's old electorate.
After Winston, Mark is NZ First's best-known MP, and has a large following. He's NZ First through and through - tough on crime, anti-foreign investment, against sale of state assets, working-class hero, bad boy made good. He's also a bloody nice guy and with a careful campaign, and has a good chance of taking that seat.
Was this pre-arranged all along? It's just too cute for Labour to stand a young unknown with no prospect of winning in such a safe Labour seat.
MMP is about backroom deals, back-scratching and winning at all costs. National and Act could well deliver the country a fourth Labour-led Government.
Why? The latest NZ Herald poll showed Labour clawing back support. National's own leaders admit privately they doubt election day will deliver them a clear majority win.
If they rule out NZ First, their only natural ally is Act, perhaps with three MPs, one being Sir Roger Douglas who, if Hide has his way, will be Finance Minister.
That's enough to scare the swinging voters straight to NZ First or Labour (same thing, essentially). There's United Future if the worm works for Peter Dunne, but I doubt it.
That leaves the Maori Party - likely to have seven seats, a sizeable chunk enabling National to govern.
But any whiff of that alliance before the election would give the die-hard, anti-race-based-funding conspirators apoplexy, to think their true-blue conservative party would embrace these radicals. Where would these voters go? NZ First.
And Winston Peters? Well, this week's Listener cartoon said it all. A boxing match - Hide's punched Peters down, and the ref, Sir Robert Jones, is counting him out while Peters lies back with a glass of whiskey blowing smoke rings at Jones.
I've always said you could set Peters' feet in concrete, bind him in chains, douse him in kerosene, set him alight, dump him in the harbour and he'd still emerge from the depths, brush off his suit, shake out his pocket hanky, smooth down his hair, light up a smoke and then just smile right back into Parliament.
