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Ryan Bridge: My take on the Māori Party House debate · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, that was as chaotic as you would expect. I
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: caught the first half of of Parliament's debate on hucker
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Gate yesterday afternoon. Winston Peters went full attack dog, Willie
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Jackson fought back White's he brought a noose into the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: chamber as a prop and Adrian Udhafi, the former Speaker
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Labor MP he had the most sensible and respectable take
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of the debate. I thought. I've had the pleasure of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: meeting interviewing him a couple of times over the years.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: He's a really humble guy, quiet, quite observant. He'll just
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: sit back and watch and you know, quick to a smile.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Loves a good argument. Not that you could hear that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: in the house yesterday, thads of interjecting, lots of noise,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and Adrian gets respect because he shushed, and I like
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: it when people do this. He shushed his own side,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: his own colleagues as much as he did the Treasury
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: benches when he was speaking. And he made two decent points. First,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the Privileges Committee is meant to be bipartisan. The fact
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that this punishment was was handed out and it was
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: so severe is kind of a in moot point. It's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the fact that it wasn't a bipartisan decision because now
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  Speaker 1: it's open season for governments of any persuasion to weaponize
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the punishments, potentially weaponize the punishments in future against their
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: political opponents. As he points out, this was the government
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: punishing MPs, not the Parliament, which it ought to be,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and hearinized the problem with parliament as a whole these days,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: there's no agreed standard of behavior that's universal to all MPs.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Getting physically up in somebody's grill is considered okay by some.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Now the House is meant to be about what comes
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  Speaker 1: out of your mouth, not how close to another MP
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: it is. Number two du Dafi scolded the Mardi party
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: for not apologizing for their bad behavior. He spoke of
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: his cousin, Dame Tadi Annatutia. She never skipped a vote,
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  Speaker 1: worked hard for her people and spoke on every bill
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: before the House. The question really is whether Tapatimarti actually
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: wants to be in Parliament or whether they want a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: separate one, which they state they do on their website,
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  Speaker 1: and that begs the question why are they there in
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  Speaker 1: the first place. All in all, aside from Adrian's wise words,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: there's a few hours wasted that the house won't get back.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays, or
• 2:27
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