Rodney Hide
Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer used the c-word in the House on Thursday. Willie Jackson played gallant. The assistant speaker called the serjeant-at-arms to walk him out.
Cue the usual sermon. Double standards. Mana wahine. Oppression.
Wrong sermon.
The first point is that a woman swore. In parliament. The second point is what now counts as courage, and what now counts as defending women.
Parliament used to elevate the street. Now it imports it.
It is not just one word. It is the pile.
No ties. Hats in the chamber. Prayer dropped. Threats of violence – often from the women who once got the protection of manners. Each change alone is survivable. Together they are a steady decline in standards dressed up as progress.
Gallantry used to mean protecting women from that language. Now it means defending the woman who uses it. That is not liberation – it is a licence with a halo.
I know how seriously the chair used to land.
I used to needle Speaker Margaret Wilson. Once when she ordered me out I packed my papers deliberately slowly. Exasperated, she called the serjeant.
That evening I bumped into Clerk Dave McGee in an airport lounge. He explained what a touch-and-go thing it was. If the serjeant laid a hand on me, I was gone – in the standing orders, suspended for the rest of the year: in McGee’s plain English, out.
The office is hundreds of years old. Originally a royal officer with power to arrest without warrant. The Commons got one in the 15th century so the House could arrest people who offended its privileges. The mace was the authority to arrest. Later it became the symbol of the House itself.
He is not a bouncer. He is the House’s own muscle. Calling him is nuclear. Ordinary “leave the Chamber” orders are common. Serjeant escorts after refusal are rare. McGee recalled, after my turn in 2005, that the last one he could think of was under Speaker Gerard Wall in the mid-1980s.
This week the Serjeant was called again. Not for insolence over packing up. For the theatre that follows when coarseness is sold as mana and a mate rides in as gallant for the swearer.
Brooke van Velden said the word in May last year quoting a newspaper column. That was a misjudgement. Soft warning. No ejection. That was a misjudgement. Ngarewa-Packer put it on the record again in August referring to that episode. No sanction. That was a misjudgement. On Thursday the same word, a disputed aside about the chair, and out she went – followed by Willie, assisted by the serjeant.
Same vocabulary. Different setting. The chair still has one last tool.
The serjeant is still there. The standards are not.
Where does it end? When every sitting needs him. And he is attacked as a symbol of colonial oppression. Our Parliament becomes a rabble and Westminster is lost.
This article was originally published by Brash and Mitchell.
