KEY POINTS:
Phillip Field may have been absent from Parliament for six months, but it took him less than six minutes to make his presence felt on his return on Wednesday. The day's business had barely begun when he admonished National's Bill English for failing to refer to him by his Samoan chief's title.
"My name is Taito Phillip Field - not Phillip Field," insisted the Mangere MP sternly.
That was just for starters. Field went on to describe Keith Williams, the Auckland builder who first raised concerns about Field's handling of immigration matters, as an "unrepentant, unreformed alcoholic" and a witness "entirely without credibility".
Observing this display of belligerence, Labour MPs must have felt an awful sense of deja vu. They have long blamed a combination of pride and arrogance as responsible for Field's failure to acknowledge what he did was wrong.
Judging by Wednesday's performance in Parliament, nothing had changed in his absence.
It was an indication Field, now an independent and freed from the gag imposed by Labour, intends tackling head on anyone who questions his behaviour and integrity.
It was not what Labour wanted to hear. While technically shod of the MP, Labour continues to be tainted by association. It is going to take time to put some distance between itself and Field.
That task is not aided by Labour exercising his proxy vote in Parliament when he is away.
Any benefit to Labour evaporated on Wednesday when Field suddenly withdrew his four-day-old assurance that the party would be able to exercise his proxy in its favour.
Labour will still hold his proxy, but Field now believes he should be more independently-minded. He will assess his stance on legislation prior to each vote.
To cap off his busy first day back, Field then refused to rule out resigning from Parliament and holding a byelection in his Mangere seat. He later backed off slightly, indicating a byelection was not on his immediate horizon.
While all this left Labour somewhat dazed and confused, the crucial question is, how much more damage can he wreak on his old party?
In part, that depends on whether he is out for revenge. That is not clear. This week's erratic behaviour could simply have been months of pent-up anger and frustration finding release.
Things might settle down. He has certainly done Labour some favours. He could have forced Labour to institute inevitably messy expulsion procedures against him, but saved the party the trouble. He could have placed his proxy elsewhere and opted to vote consistently with the Opposition.
In accepting his proxy, Labour judged having his vote outweighed the flak it would receive in exercising that proxy. Then Field changed his mind. Labour is stuck with exercising his proxy without the guarantee of having his vote.
In retrospect, having lost its majority by chucking Field out of its caucus, Labour might have been better off sticking with the fall-back option of the Greens and cutting Field completely out of the vote-gathering equation.
It is not as if Labour is always going to need his vote to pass legislation. The Prime Minister has emphasised that all legislation passed so far in this Parliament has done so on a majority larger than one.
The bills in front of the House and select committees are largely uncontroversial. However, it could be argued that by exercising his proxy, Labour is maintaining contact with Field and ensuring relations do not deteriorate to the point where he starts attacking his former colleagues on a regular basis.
It might also deter him from calling a byelection - something Labour will not be particularly keen to fight.
That is not because it is afraid of losing. Field could expect to benefit to some degree from the divided loyalties of the Pacific Island constituency, which makes up close to half the vote in Mangere. But otherwise he is at a disadvantage.
He may feel wronged, but he lacks the vital imprimatur of martyrdom needed by a candidate taking on one of the major parties. He also needs the tide to be going out against Labour nationwide. That has yet to happen.
Up against Labour's highly effective Auckland political machine, Field would have to run a high-octane campaign of the kind he has never been required to run in the safe seat.
For all that, plus the fact that victory would resecure the Government's majority, Labour will still be wary of a byelection as they tend to be referendums on Government performance and a huge distraction.
Field, however, will not exercise the byelection option until he knows whether the police are going to charge him.
He would hardly want to be fighting a byelection under the shadow of court action. If he is charged, Field will likely largely disappear from view until his case is heard.
Meanwhile, the need to avoid prejudicing a fair trial would limit the Opposition's ability to keep questioning Field's behaviour. Things may go into limbo until the court delivers its verdict.
Less clear is what happens if Field is not charged. He will claim to have been vindicated. But after that? He will remain in disgrace. He cannot turn himself into some kind of backbench rebel and thorn in Labour's side. Independence relegates him to irrelevance.
The police not pressing charges will also take the wind out of National's efforts to keep the Field affair alive. Whichever way the police's decision goes, the net effect will be to take the saga off the short-term political agenda.
It will resurface as a major strand of National's 2008 election campaign advertising as a symbol of a tired Labour-led Government dedicated to nothing else but its own survival.
That charge is easy to make. National MPs repeated it endlessly this week. But they have yet to convince voters to connect the dots in the fashion Labour managed with Jenny Shipley's administration in the late 1990s.
The public perception then was of a minority Government without a proper mandate, corroded by self-serving behaviour and propped up by a raggle-taggle collection of independent MPs interested only in saving their electoral necks.
The Government has risked creating a similar perception, notably through its inept handling of the pledge card rort. Field, likewise, has been a huge embarrassment. Labour's handling of him has been driven by expedience.
However, Labour's healthy ratings in the opinion polls belie any notion the Government has gone rotten. National still has much to do.
