Points of Order: Berocca, BAs, and the Beehive

A bouquet to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield for orchestrating (successfully, touch wood) New Zealand’s shortest lockdown. What looked like a repeat of August on Sunday night turned out to be anything but.

Applause too for the National Party who managed to get through the latest lockdown without losing any of their front bench – a first, having lost leader Simon Bridges to an ill-judged Facebook post emerging from the first lockdown, and misplaced deputy leader Gerry “interesting series of facts” Brownlee after his brief turn as Parliamentary Poirot during the August lockdown.

National also had a victory in Parliament this week, when the mysterious Privileges Committee ruled that it could post an amusing video of rookie MP Anna Lorck expressively detailing the powerful natural supplements her Grandad used to keep his skin looking good. The committee actually ruled in favour of the complaint that took the video down, but National was the real winner, because the Committee also ruled the video could be reuploaded with a minor edit. Considering using Parliament TV for “satire, ridicule, or denigration” was illegal until just four years ago, it’s a comparatively big win for humour in politics.

Pity poor Grant Robertson. The Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister carved out time in his day to speak to Magic Talk’s Peter Williams, but had to spend a sizable portion of his slot dismissing Williams’ questions about the Great Reset – a conspiracy theory. Robertson’s office later emailed Williams’ producers telling them he won’t be returning to the show – a move criticised by Don Brash’s Free Speech coalition, a group that loves free speech so much they want to compel people to do it.

Interjections during Question Time have a tendency to be a tedious rehearsal of campaign lines – “nine long years!!” “strong team”. So it was refreshing to have debate interrupted on Thursday by an interjection from Green Party transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter, who cut through her National Party counterpart Michael Woodhouse’s question by shouting the low benefit-cost ratio of building a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, something Genter famously opposed. More numerical interjections please!

New Zealand’s MPs are “significantly” more educated than those from Australia, according to new research from Blackland PR and the Democracy Project. Our 120 MPs have 174 separate tertiary qualifications and a full 90 per cent of MPs have a university degree, more than Australia (75 per cent) or the UK (85 per cent). While the patriots in Stuff’s Press Gallery office relish the opportunity to score one on Australia, we can’t help but wonder whether the research shows MPs are out of touch with the country they represent, where only 25 per cent of people have university degrees.

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