KEY POINTS:
The Maori Party's position on the privileges committee report on Winston Peters' $100,000 donation from Owen Glenn and the subsequent vote in the House will be important.
Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell is on the committee after Hone Harawira withdrew.
Apparently Harawira is related to Peters.
The Maori Party has been careful not to condemn Peters publicly and has wanted the process to take its course.
It has sounded supportive as it has explained how Maori feel about Peters.
Harawira on Agenda yesterday: "It's a strange thing: Maori don't particularly care that Winston has been very anti-Treaty. They see a Maori in trouble and they want to back him. It's just the way we are."
But while saying it does not want to join in the political attacks on Peters, it has not actually said the party supports him.
Flavell has been very quiet on the committee but at no stage has look as though he has been impressed by defences put up by Peters such as: "I could not have known about the donation because I would have thanked him immediately," or by Labour: "Are you sure than email is authentic because it is signed with a first name only" or "Are you sure you knew who you were talking to?"
He might abstain but it would be hard to see him joining a minority report with New Zealand First and Labour.
Judging by the types of questions and responses of Greens co-leader Russel Norman and United Future leader Peter Dunne on the committee, there will be enough votes to sign off on a report critical of Peters when it meets at 4.30pm today. That would make seven MPs from four parties.
Flavell's vote in favour of would add another vote to the majority, but its importance would lie more in adding another party to the critical findings, and making New Zealand First and Labour's opposition look purely political.
I guess it is possible that Flavell could vote with the majority on the committee but have his party abstain or vote otherwise when the report is debated in Parliament tomorrow.
In Parliament itself tomorrow, the House will vote on the report and its recommendations.
We can safely assume that the committee will not recommend anything so onerous as an apology from Peters - it tried that once before after the Peters vs John Banks altercation and Peters ignored it.
The privileges committee is powerful, as the cliche goes, but it rarely uses its power.
The findings will be important, and the language used and agreed to by most parties in Parliament will carry some moral weight.
But the power of the committee is this case has primarily been to provide a platform for the evidence to be heard - and contradicted.
Russel Norman was on Sky's Campaign 08 last night and when asked about Peters said he did not think the Greens could work in a Government with Peters unless the various inquiries into his party have been cleared up.
Harawira's appearance on Agenda was prefaced with an introduction by host Rawdon Christie as the Maori party's "post-election negotiation spokesman "which , I can report, is news to the Maori Party.
I suspect that was Hone's little joke.
Less of a joke was Harawira's response to Guyon Espiner's question about removing gst from food and to abolish income tax for those earning less than $25,000 (Agenda had got a Treasury estimate that it would cost $2 billion for the former and $3 billion for the latter).
Harawira: "Actually Guyon I could care less how much that costs...." and went on to talk about 230,000 children below the poverty line.
Hone then suggested taking the $5 billion from tobacco excise over five years to pay for it.
Only thing is - that Treasury's books estimate the excise to be only $151 million in the present financial, $154 million the year after that and $157 million after that.
Harawira did explain that the Maori Party had two post-election scenarios, one in which the Maori Party was the party holding the balance of power (Plan A) and one in which is was just a party in contention (Plan B).
