Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why has Parliament become such a circus? - Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

I can't blame you if your assessment of Parliament today is that it's become a circus, because what happened today is kind of hard to defend or even explain.

Chlöe was kicked out, Brownlee suspended her for a week and all of the Government parties voted for that punishment - and that includes New Zealand First, before Winston Peters then got up to tell Jerry Brownlee that the punishment wasn't fair, even though he just voted for the punishment.

And then Debbie got up and said the C-word again.

Now, Chlöe did actually break the rules. I mean, this is another one of those seemingly arbitrary or hard to explain rules in Parliament - that MPs can't accuse each other of being cowards.

Nick Smith did it in 2003, he accused MPs across the house of not having the spine to debate a vote. He withdrew and apologized.

Steve Chadwick did it in 2007, she accused the opposition of being absolutely gutless and spineless. She withdrew and apologized.

John Key did it in 2015, quite famously when he yelled at Labour to get some guts over the war, but he got away with it and actually probably shouldn't have.

So Chlöe did break the rules.

But then, Debbie got up and said the C-word, and she didn't break the rules. So explain that. How is accusing other MPs of being spineless worse than dropping the C-bomb in the House of Representatives?

I mean, sure, one is aimed at someone and the other one is just a swear word that's been dropped. But when you get into explaining that level of nuance on offensiveness, I think you've lost the audience.

Plus, why is Gerry Brownlee all of a sudden the tough cop? 

I mean, this is the guy who was wringing his hands over the Māori Party getting kicked out of Parliament for 3 weeks for the haka in David Seymour's face and for refusing to turn up to the Privileges Committee and for them leaking the recommended punishment from the Privileges Committee.

But when Chlöe says basically the same thing that John Key once said without punishment, Jerry comes down on her like a ton of bricks.

Frankly, none of this makes sense anymore.

I mean, it does on a level of detail and minutia, sure, but explaining it to a normal person, no sense whatsoever.

But guess who's loving this? Chlöe's loving this, because Chlöe's learned from Te Pāti Māori and the haka that there's one surefire way to get attention, and that's to break the rules of Parliament and not be sorry.

What a circus.

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