KEY POINTS:
Shock, horror! Winston Peters exits quietly and with some dignity. Well, sort of. And probably only briefly.
It is crystal clear Peters regards his stand-down from his foreign affairs and other portfolios as being very temporary. His request - accepted by the Prime Minister - for her to become the acting minister in each portfolio is evidence of that.
Normally, the portfolios would be divvied up and allocated to other ministers to look after.
The other concession he has extracted is that the Serious Fraud Office be left in no doubt that it should finish its investigations into NZ First's handling of large donations to the party as promptly as possible.
Peters will want to be back in his ministerial posts well before the election campaign. That will have been his bottom-line for going quietly - or what by his standards is quietly. He simply cannot afford to go into the campaign with the fraud probe still under way.
To expedite progress, he has officially dropped his antagonistic stance towards the investigation and is now offering his "total" co-operation.
Unofficially, he is still expressing his fury and unhappiness with the SFO. While Peters wasn't talking last night, his lawyer, Peter Williams, QC, was slamming the competence of the agency's initial inquiry.
The Prime Minister has essentially got what she wanted. She has achieved what many thought was impossible - getting Peters to stand aside without him throwing his party's support for Labour out of his cot. That will enable Labour to get its priority legislation through Parliament before the election.
National will be delighted that Labour is not rid of Peters completely. After the past week, Clark needs to put some distance between Labour and Peters. She probably won't want him back before she announces the election date around the middle of next month.
Overall, Clark and Peters have struck a deal in which each has got as much as they could expect. Peters has been punished to some degree. That was important for Labour. But he has been offered a route back from oblivion. That was vital for him.
