Delahunty Catherine: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Delahunty Catherine: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Volume:669;Page:16488] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 First I would like to pay respect to the courteous patient supportive informative and amazing people in this institution—not us but the security staff who stand up literally hour after hour to look after our safety and our visitors’ needs; the messengers who juggle the dead trees from office to office so we can do our work; the kitchen crew at Bellamy’s Copperfields and Olivers and the room service staff. They are all hard-working and polite to us. Much respect also to the cleaners who make the spaces decent and liveable for us. They are people we never actually see but they clean up around our chaos. To all of the Clerk’s office the library and select committee staff Mr Speaker the Parliamentary Service team all our own staff and even the Bycroft’s biscuit tin—thank you for the great impartial service and support all year. 
I wish I could say that we MPs have been as polite and supportive as those other teams but through #Housewatch tweeting I have been monitoring the levels of personal abuse and it has been a curious spectacle. As standards and league tables are the fashion I will rank the parties. Members might be surprised who has been particularly and audibly personally abusive. 
From a party point of view the big disappointment of the year was the ACT Party which was ranking well. However when David Garrett left its ranking collapsed into an occasional courteous and policy-focused interjection apart from some strange loud groans from Sir Roger Douglas when he was goaded beyond bearing by dreadful communist collective planet-loving speeches from people like me. 
The Maori Party Peter Dunne Jim Anderton and the Greens have generally behaved with exquisite decorum despite considerable provocation. Hone Harawira did accuse someone of being very boring but there was more than a grain of truth in that one. At least large numbers of members are trying to work on their te reo and their pronunciation so as to respect our first national language. 
However the two monolithic parties have been locked in their co-dependent ritualistic abuse which is to be maintained at all costs. It is almost like watching one of those terrible marriages where the pair insists on living together but despise each other for using identical tactics in an endless effort to prove that they are different. Outstanding contributors to the level of personal abuse have been the Labour and National front-benchers. I cannot always hear them but the Speaker’s face often says it all. But there have been some standout personal efforts from the National Party backbenches. Paul Quinn has overcome a mortal shyness this year and come out of his shell and we are hoping he may find his way back into it. Chris Finlayson has matched Mr Quinn only with words containing far more syllables. 
My absolute favourite speech of last year was the  
Brokeback Mountain 
 wistful  
Romeo and Juliet 
 romance between Gerry Brownlee and David Parker. That was not abuse; those comments were actually funny as opposed to nasty snide patronising or petty. 
Also memorable was Todd McClay’s attack on Carmel Sepuloni for opposing union-bashing laws while wearing a “mock hyena print scarf”. Imagine what the Greens would say if it had been a real hyena! Imagine the shock across the nation if hyena-like howling and abuse disappeared from this House. 
I live in hope that our behaviour will mature. The public would love it and the children in the gallery would respect it. But in the meantime I will keep tweeting. It is a cheap form of therapy. In the spirit of the season I wish all the members in the House the better therapy of rest sunshine and being with people that we love. 
It has been tough for many people in 2010 and heartbreaking for others. We cannot pretend that Godzone is at peace with itself. However the Green Party is in good heart to contest an election next year under MMP which has brought a degree of sanity and representation to the Parliament. 
In the meantime we wish everyone here the best for a very green Christmas and a happy New Year.