KEY POINTS:
Labour may well keep casting Phillip Field's proxy vote but it is already having to hold its nose while it does so.
What initially appeared to be the ideal outcome for Labour last week - the Mangere MP offering his proxy to his old party when absent from Parliament - has this week started to develop a rather unseemly smell.
An arrangement extremely convenient in restoring the Government's majority now has the look of utter expedience.
How can Labour justify accepting the proxy vote of someone whom it has just slung out of its caucus? How can it rely on the vote of someone whose behaviour has been described by the Prime Minister as immoral and unethical?
In asking those questions, the Opposition yesterday served notice on Labour that it will use every opportunity to tar the Government as being propped up by someone whose actions it has deemed unacceptable - just as Labour ridiculed Jenny Shipley's National Government in the late 1990s for being dependent on Alamein Kopu for survival.
The first opportunity came in Parliament as Labour readied itself to cast Mr Field's vote to win the first confidence motion of the year.
For close to 30 minutes, Act's Rodney Hide and National's John Key and Gerry Brownlee challenged Speaker Margaret Wilson to explain how Mr Field's proxy could remain valid when he had been away from Parliament for so long that he could not possibly remain within the rules for casting proxies.
It emerged those rules are so flexible Labour could keep casting Mr Field's proxy until the next election without the MP needing to front in Parliament.
He will show today for the first time in nearly six months, having previously been told by Labour's hierarchy to stay away.
However, now that he is an independent MP, Mr Field has been granted leave from Parliament by the Speaker under provisions that will keep his proxy vote valid as long as he is attending to "public business".
However, the arbiter of whether he is actually undertaking public business is none other than Mr Field. He does not have to account to anyone in Parliament as to how he uses his time outside.
Such leave has previously been granted to the Progressives' Jim Anderton, the Maori Party's Tariana Turia and United Future's Peter Dunne. But their circumstances were very different. They were leaders of political parties while also being those parties' sole MP. The arrangement allowed them to cast a proxy vote while meeting extensive work commitments outside Parliament.
Mr Field has been on "gardening leave" since last September while the police have been investigating whether to lay charges against him.
Ms Wilson said if MPs were unhappy with the rules, they should get the standing orders committee to have another look at them.
But she warned the rules applied to everyone. The Opposition needed to think hard about the repercussions of requiring the Speaker to inquire into each and every absence every time there was a vote.
All that was water off a duck's back for the Opposition. It had made its point. Even better, it had forced Labour to defend the rules enabling Mr Field to stay away from Parliament.
The last thing Labour wants to be seen to be doing is defending anything its former MP might be doing.
