Threats Without Consequences: Parliament's 'Schoolyard Stupidity'

Thursday, 3 April 2025, 9:25 am
Article: RNZ

Phil Smith, Editor: The House

In Parliament, ignoring the Speaker, talking over them, or questioning their rulings are all serious offences - called "highly disorderly".

Any of these offences have led to many MPs being ordered to apologise, leave the Chamber for the day, or 'named' (with their pay docked).

This Parliament, those offences - along with using points of order and patsy questions (and their answers), as vehicles for attacks on the opposition, or on individual MPs - have become a daily commonplace. All of these things are against Parliament's rules and rulings yet the

usual punishments have not been forthcoming.

It is surprising that not one offender has been marched for this kind of behaviour. The few MPs turfed out so far have gone well past the usual, with behaviour referred to Parliament's own court for MPs-the Privileges Committee.

The Speaker Gerry Brownlee is no stranger to discipline, or to how to control a crowd of obstreperous, ill-disciplined, attention-seekers. He was a high-school teacher for more than a decade, including in woodwork - a subject where strict discipline is traditional and essential in a potentially dangerous environment.

Much of his teaching was done in the era when corporal punishment was still legal. One former MP, Mark Patterson, has recalled being caned by him while at Ellesmere College, though Patterson noted Brownlee "wasn't well-practiced".

As Parliament's Speaker, Brownlee has majored in pleas, remonstrations and threats. Increasingly he is being ignored, particularly by his own former colleagues on the governing-party benches.

Recently, he described their behaviour as "school-yard stupidity", saying "it's got to stop". He has described himself as "absolutely sick of this". But he is still to actually punish any offenders.

Getting the Speaker's goat recently are ministers answering questions by attacking the Opposition, their colleagues asking patsy questions to allow this. Also questions or points of order that attack the oppositions. And-considered worse behaviour under Parliament's rules-ministers making personal attacks on Opposition MPs.

This is not a tussle over the quality of ministers' answers. It is about much more basic behaviour and the Speaker is not winning.

Recently Brownlee asked the House: "How many times do I have to say, 'don't bring attacks on Opposition members into it', before I take some action?"

It was a rhetorical question, and really only the Speaker and time can answer it.

The Speaker threatens action for further offending, but when a minister calls his bluff he baulks. The worst offenders recently are the minister of finance and the leaders of ACT and New Zealand First - all very senior MPs. They seem able to ignore him, talk over him, talk back to him and ignore his rulings without recourse-and seem to be gaining confidence in this.

To better understand the level of disregard, and disrespect the Speaker is experiencing, and his reticence in addressing it, below is a recent example of repeat offending.

Last week, Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick was asking the prime minister questions about the effect of profit on the costs of public-private partnerships. David Seymour stood up and asked a supplementary "question" suggesting that Swarbrick did not understand profit because "someone's one-time business of a little hole-in-the-wall café on Mount Eden Road only lasted a few weeks."

Brownlee was not impressed, ruling that there was a growth in such "personal reflections, which are completely unacceptable under our Standing Orders, so they are to stop".

He did not, however, require Seymour to 'withdraw and apologise', Parliament's go-to first response for offensive speech.

On Tuesday, Swarbrick was asking follow-up questions of the prime minister on the same topic, when Nicola Willis asked a patsy. "Does the prime minister agree that the profit motive is a key principle of a capitalist market economy, and would he advocate other forms of economic philosophy such as, for example, Marxism?"

The Speaker intervened, ruled the question out of order as not within the PM's responsibility. He concluded his admonition with the promise that "those sorts of questions are going to be dealt with very severely from this point."

In most classrooms, the threat of "very severe punishment" for such attacks would quieten the unruly mob, but this Parliament is another beast.

Winston Peters immediately stood up with a follow-up question. "Does the prime minister, or any member of his Cabinet, tend to take the views of someone who started a small business, which went bust on them in about five weeks, and then come to this Parliament and start preaching to the rest of us?"

Peters had not only ignored the Speaker's explicit warning, but taken Willis' offence a step further by making a personal reflection.

The Speaker responded with a muted "I doubt he has any particular responsibility for that."

Ouch. Very severe. Mr Peters will definitely think twice in future.

*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.

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