KEY POINTS:
Helen Clark says she won't sack Winston Peters today but if she won't sack him today, she probably won't sack him at all.
But there is one caveat: if her MPs on the privileges committee sign up to a severely adverse finding that the evidence of Peters and
his lawyer Brian Henry has no credibility, then she will.
So Peters survives - if you can call being a suspended minister outside cabinet without portfolio survival.
National will be very happy with that outcome. The longer Labour is linked with New Zealand First, the better as far as they are concerned.
Peters may have Owen Glenn to thank in large part for his reprieve.
Glenn's decision to attack Labour yesterday (calling Helen Clark "self-serving", Mike Williams "a liar" and Michael Cullen a bully) pushed Peters and Labour a little closer.
The Monaco billionaire delivered highly credible evidence to the privileges committee on Tuesday.
He showed that a phonecall between Glenn and Peters was almost instantly followed up by Peters' lawyer sending Glenn an email providing bank account details and - this is the killer blow, as Greens MP Russel Norman called it - referring to the conversation Glenn had just with his client and with a reference to the exact time Peters had been talking to Glenn.
The evidence speaks for itself. It would have been better for Glenn to have let his evidence rest without the assault on Labour.
Peters had no explanation for the "killer evidence" to begin with.
But last night Norman - who has been very impressive on the committee - extracted an admission from Peters that he may have called Brian Henry straight after he had spoken to Glenn but he could not imagine what about.
There is one piece of evidence that could possibly salvage Peters and Henry and that is a record of a phone call, if one existed, from Henry to Glenn in the last three months of 2005.
It would not be hard for Henry to authorise his phone company to release that to the committee in order to save his "blood brother" and himself.
Doubtless there are some holes in the testimony of both Glenn and Peters but on the whole, you could drive a Tonka toy through Glenn's and a Mack through Peters'.
Peters suggested that just because some people at a lunch at the Karaka sales did not hear Peters thank Glenn for his donation, then he couldn't have thanked him.
Or that because Peters has good manners (well, especially where wealthy folk are concerned) if he had known about the donation he would have thanked Glenn for it.
Peters was supported at the hearing last night by friends and colleagues including Richard Griffin and Maori Trustee John Paki.
The hearings have been solemn affairs, and nothing like the circus some thought they would become. The gravity of what is at stake escapes no one, except perhaps Peters for momentarily last night he took a swipe at Glenn for having worn a beige sweater to a meeting in December 2006.
"I found that curious because he is meant to be an extraordinarily wealthy man, but that is just me," said Peters.
The point of describing the meeting, at which former NZ First ad-man Marco Marinkovich was at, was to highlight that Glenn had omitted to mention it in his evidence.
Though why he should have is unclear. It was a year after the events in question and it was about horse-racing.
Once Clark reads the transcript of the hearing, she will see that Peters does not really have a defence.
