The things they say in Parliament

Press, 13 November 1982, Page 15

The things they say in Parliament

BRIAR WHITEHEAD

Much has been written over decades about the standard of debate in the House of Representatives. Not much of it has been complimentary. The House is a debating chamber. Members are meant (ideally) to argue the virtues or faults of the case with eloquence, logic, conviction, and . wit. Often the Chamber falls short on all four. '

But pity the poor member of Parliament. Often he has had little time to prepare his speech; and with his thoughts poorly organised. lucid speech-making does not follow.

Nor is it the easiest thing

to stand up in the House and speak like an orator when you were a sheep farmer only 12 months ago. And especially when the other side of the House is abusive; or both sides are bored to death with the subject. The Speaker of the House prevents debate becoming. B disorderly by using his pre-

rogative to declare words “unparliamentary.” This keeps insults at a minimum. Instances of unparliamentary language did not exceed 40 last year. But the Speaker cannot do much about the other shortcomings of debating members of Parliament — long, rambling sentences that lose their thread, grammatical blunders, ambiguities, mixed metaphors, and liter-

ary misquotes. Hansard reporters and sub-editors do a marvellous job on the raw material of members’ speeches — but they wouid need to. Mixed metaphors, however, are usually left untouched. Sir Basil Arthur, member for Timaru, produced one of the recent best. “The so-called flower of farmer confidence, once badly frostbitten by the present Government, will turn against the Government and boot it into oblivion,” he prophesied in his Budget speech. Not many of the speeches in the House are colourful. The House enjoys Norm Jones on his feet — ultra conservative on social issues and full of gutsy prose and anecdotes.

Trevor de Cleene, a

Palmerston North lawyer, entertains the House with strings of literary and Biblical allusions, and courtroom experiences.

But most speeches are run-of-the-mill. Phrases are in and out of vogue. “Kneejerk reaction” has been done tb death. “At this particular point in time” and “As far as I’m concerned” have been heard innumerable times this session.

Members of Parliament manufacture their own words when their vocabularies suddenly dry up. “This is an aggravatory problem,” said a Cabinet Minister last week. Other Ministers joined in the Haig-talk with “deliverability” and “externality.”

But few can beat the effort of one member of Parliament on' the Opposition side

in a flurry of agitation about the Prime Minister. “He is the most baddest behavioured Prime Minister we've ever had,” he said. Hansard staff have no hesitation in naming the members of Parliament whose speeches give them least trouble. Mostly they have been practising lawyers, university lecturers, or teachers. In other words they have had the chance to polish their skills outside the House. Four Christchurch members of Parliament feature on this approved list: Geoff Palmer and David Caygill, and Ruth Richardson and Ann Hercus.

Hansard staff do not publicly name the worst, but they do simulate despair at

the thought of editing their prose. Members might reserve a quotable quote for the appropriate occasion, but most humour in the House is spontaneous. “The front-bench of the National Party is not a row of extinct volcanoes,” commented Mike Cullen, member for St Kilda. “It is a row of drained duck ponds.” Had the comment been made a little less charitably than it was, the member might have been asked to withdraw and apologise, but the Speaker passed over it. Mirth is caused by mistakes from slips of the tongue. “You’d need to be born alive to understand socialism,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Warren

Cooper. Members, and Hansard, figured he probably meant "born again.” Some humour is unintentional; such as: “Abortion has become a way of life in New Zealand.” Sometimes imagery is picked up and carried on by successive speakers, hopelessly jumbling the original picture. Geoff Palmer might be one of the best speakers in the House but he is not immune from complications. “What has happened now is that New Zealand has looked at the United Kingdom legislation and copied it, which means that we are engaged in chasing our own legislative tail,” he said. “The United Kingdom copied our idea, we have copied it back, and we now see that we have two ideas, instead of the original one from which

our idea was copied.” There are worse examples. The speaker had to interrupt one member two foolscap pages into his speech, to tell him to come to the point. Then there are literary misallusions. The Clyde dam legislation required sittings of a special select committee during sittings of the House — a rare event — to speed up its passing. Justifying this, a Government speaker quoted from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” (so he claimed): “If it were done when tis done, t’were well it t’were done quickly.” Mike Cullen quoted another “Macbeth” passage back at him. The quote was actually from the Biblical account of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Scores of words have been deemed “unparliamentary” over the years but it is clear

that manners have neither improved nor deterioriated. “An old gummy ewe” (of one female member of the House); “skungy little man”; “the honorable curly member”; “what a bunch of bloody rabble”; “you are a dumb lady”; "braying of asses” and "you loudmouthed useless fellow," were all ruled unparliamentary last year.

But New Zealand can at least claim a standard of

Parliamentary debate that is kept at more courteous levels than in Australia. This example of expressions allowed in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly would not be permitted in New Zealand: “In'his efforts at self justification there is no lie too perfidious to tell, there is no depth too low to which he is not prepared to sink, there is no mire too odious into which he is not prepared to crawl . .

The New Zealand Parliament is guided by Erskine May's treatise on Parliamentary procedures in Britain in its judgment of unparliamentary behaviour. It calls unparliamentary anything which is “abusive, or insulting, or of a nature to cause disorder,” bearing in mind the “sense and temper” of the context.

A comment made in reasonably good temper would be allowed where the same comment said in anger might be judged offensive