It is much too easy to win headlines – and then be treated leniently – for assaulting MPs

It’s rare for a politician in New Zealand to be mugged while out walking, broadcaster Barry Soper observed after Green Party co-leader James was assaulted in Wellington last week, although many had got into “skirmishes” when out doing their job.

The attack on Shaw prompted the PM to say New Zealanders should be proud of the access New Zealanders have to their politicians, whose job is to serve the people, but this assault showed they can’t take that for granted.

Soper recalled National’s Lockwood Smith once being forced to take a back door out of a university rather than face angry students as Education Minister.

But the last time a politician had been “supposedly attacked” while out walking was Keith Allen, a Minister in the Muldoon Government in 1983.

Our flyaway MPs should grab the opportunity to promote the welfare of a runaway Saudi teeneager

If they are not hard at work in their Beehive offices, as we regularly observe at Point of Order, our Ministers will be busy with engagements here and there around the country – or engaged in very important business overseas.

But the Point of Order monitor of Beehive press statements over the past week or so suggests ministerial globetrotting has been on hold during the Christmas-New Year holiday period.

This doesn’t mean taxpayers are being spared the cost of political jet-setting. Look what we found in a statement from the office of the Speaker, Trevor Mallard.

Yep.  Mallard has announced a junket for a select few back-benchers.

Putting the Sroubek puzzle together is challenging – perhaps a key piece is missing

What’s  the  piece  missing from the  public  gaze  on the  Karel Sroubek scandal and what’s behind the  heavy backing  given to  Iain Lees-Galloway  by  both  the  Prime  Minister  and   the Deputy Prime Minister?

The blunder  the Immigration Minister made  over the  convicted criminal Sroubek  is  one of the  most egregious  by  a  minister  in decades.  He  wouldn’t have survived  under Helen Clark – or, for that matter, most other  Prime Ministers.

In protecting Lees-Galloway,  both the  PM and Deputy  PM  stoked the fires of speculation and political tension, culminating in the stoush in Parliament  where the Speaker expelled first the  Leader of  the Opposition, Simon  Bridges,  and then the Shadow  Leader of the  House,  Gerry Brownlee.

MP’s Mandarin prayer is all very well – but what about those unanswered questions?

Raymond Huo, a Labour MP,  officially celebrated this year’s New Zealand Chinese Language Week by reading the Parliamentary prayer in Mandarin at 2pm on Tuesday.

News of the reading was contained in a press release from Silvereye Communications and is recorded at Hansard, but news media seem not to have paid much heed (at least, Point of Order found no media report of what transpired in a Google search).

It didn’t escape the critical attention of economist Michael Reddell, however, who posted his thoughts in an item  headed Shame on our MPs.

Is Twyford making a case for “three strikes and you’re out”?

When Labour’s Phil Twyford put a written question to Amy Adams, the Minister Responsible for Housing New Zealand Corporation, just before the general election last year, he was given a straight answer.

He asked for the net number of disposals of Housing New Zealand properties or houses since 18 October 2016, if any?

In reply, Adams said Housing New Zealand informed her it only records and reports information by month.

“For the period 1 October 2016 to 30 June 2017, there were 1,094 disposals and 1,275 additions, resulting in a net increase of 181 houses. This data is subject to final audit.”

Housing Minister Twyford is told to be succinct – but quality is beyond the Speaker’s control

Speaker Trevor Mallard chided Housing and Urban Minister Phil Twyford yesterday for “developing … the habit of putting additions on answers after he has answered the question”.

Parliamentary questions should be succinct, Mallard reminded the Minister. The answers should be succinct too.

And once a question has been answered a Minister doesn’t need to add to it, “especially in a way that’s likely to lead to disorder or discomfort in the House”.

That’s a nice way of saying Ministers shouldn’t embellish their responses with politically charged taunts.

Play the ball, not the player, in effect.