KEY POINTS:
So let's get this right. When Winston Peters said he had never campaigned by helicopter, what he really meant was that he had never campaigned from a helicopter.
A subtle difference, perhaps. Not for Peters. Not when he was desperately searching yesterday for some way of squaring his emphatic denial on last Sunday's Agenda programme that he had ever used a helicopter during an election campaign with the cold hard fact that he had been photographed doing precisely that.
Any other politician would have shrugged his or her shoulders, said it was a fair cop and blamed a faulty memory.
But there is never an argument Peters is willing to lose.
So yesterday he said his denial had been about campaigning "from" a helicopter. To suggest he had somehow stood at the door of a flying helicopter shouting at voters was "preposterous".
Indeed, it would be preposterous if anyone had suggested that - just as preposterous as Peters' credibility-straining attempt to rationalise his denial.
All this is utterly trivial, of course. But it is often the trivial which sticks in voters' minds. The helicopter story epitomises Peters' dreadful year. In the end, it may not be the convoluted sagas afflicting NZ First and involving Owen Glenn, the Spencer Trust, Sir Robert Jones and Parliament's privileges committee which see Peters failing to return to Parliament. It may be the helicopter which tips the balance.
For that Peters can blame Ross Meurant, his former adviser, whose mention of Peters' demands for a helicopter to be lent to him in documents obtained by the Dominion Post prompted Peters' too hasty a denial on Agenda.
Meurant's unorthodox lobbying style has also come back to bite United Future's Peter Dunne - another centrist politician struggling in this campaign.
There was some glee in Government ranks yesterday over Dunne facing questions about a donation to United Future made by the Vela family, which has large fishing interests, following Meurant's lobbying over a fisheries bill.
Dunne's embarrassment follows his jumping ship from the Labour camp to National's a week ago. However, at least his assurances that he did not change his party's fisheries or tax policy in return for cash were accepted by John Key.
On the other side of the political fence, the Greens were not accepting Peters' assurances, instead saying they definitely could not work in government with Peters until fresh allegations surrounding donations to NZ First were resolved one way or the other.
That is a potential headache for Helen Clark. But it may resolve itself. Clark will not rule out working with Peters. But increasingly she and the Greens are talking in ways which suggest they don't think Peters will make it back - thus intimating that a vote for NZ First is a wasted vote.
