Ousted deputy slides into very frosty chamber

Rodney Hide. Photo / Northern Advocate

He stared at the ornate ceiling. He stared at the wood-panelled walls. And when he wasn't staring at those things, he just stared into the void in front of him.

The only direction Rodney Hide was not looking was two seats to his left.

There she sat. Heather Roy was back, most definitely. This was no apparition even if Hide looked like he was seeing one.

Until the previous 48 hours when he suddenly started taking a less accommodating stance on her return to the Act caucus, Hide had talked of "finding a way back for Heather" once her two weeks of home leave - granted in the wake of her ousting as Act's deputy leader - was over.

But Roy found her own way back to Parliament yesterday - a week early and telling no one in advance, but shrewdly pledging her loyalty to the leader to trump in advance any card he might have been contemplating playing to have her removed from the caucus while she was away.

Flanked by family members and Sir Roger Douglas, her sole sympathiser in the five-strong caucus, she halted briefly outside the parliamentary chamber to feed her message to the media throng.

She then ghosted into the chamber and slid behind Hide's seat in search of her new and bottom-ranked one.

The words she and Hide exchanged while she passed by him were inaudible. But they could be counted on the fingers of a two-fingered hand.

She did get a welcome-back hug and kiss from a nearby MP. Tau Henare is a National Party one, however.

This moment of warmth failed to provoke any such gesture from her Act colleagues, the frost engulfing Act's enclave in the chamber only thickening.

Hide stared at the ceiling. He stared at the walls. He then chatted to Sir Roger, thus avoiding having to chat to Roy before the Speaker's arrival and, likewise, she having to chat to him.

She, meanwhile, struggled to conceal her absolute delight at her audacity. Hide wore the reflective smile of someone who knew he had been outfoxed.

Somewhere in another universe, John Key and Phil Goff were wrestling each other over the rates of consumption taxes in the OECD.

It must have sounded like only a distant hum in the ice garden in the back of the chamber as Act minds whirled in wonderment at whatever twist would happen next in the plot of this Neverending Story.

Labour questioned Defence Minister Wayne Mapp as to whether he had raised concerns with Hide about Roy's performance as Associate Minister of Defence.

But Mapp wasn't biting. He instead stressed he had enjoyed an effective working relationship with Roy. Mapp similarly dead-batted Hide's questions.

The National Cabinet minister is only a peripheral player in this unholy mess. National is utterly determined to keep it that way.

Just back from Afghanistan, Mapp could have been excused for catching the next Air Force plane back to Kabul. Dealing with the warring clans of that country may have suddenly seemed a lot simpler than the clan wars within Act.