by Catherine Delahunty
#Housewatch is the new Green ‘name and shame’ anti-abuse campaign from the House of Parliament.
Irritated and occasionally sickened by the personal abuse allowed by the system in the name of ‘robust debate’ we have decided on a tweet exposé system. The Green MPs won’t be tweeting about the juvenile and slightly funny repartee or the loud and rude chanting, but about incidents of genuinely offensive personal attacks e.g. on Members’ bodies, personalities, mental health, gender, sexuality, age, disability or culture. After all, we have been role modelling good behaviour for years and it isn’t enough!
We don’t want to hear about people being too short, too fat, too blonde, too disabled etc. This is not a 19th century boys’ boarding school it’s the House of Representatives! We don’t want the school children in the gallery to witness this awful behaviour. We like a good laugh, but not the personal put downs and time wasting sneers.
So any MP who thinks they can say whatever, just because their comments won’t be recorded in Hansard, had better think twice.
Any other MPs who want to be ‘housewatchers’ — we welcome you to the team!
Clicking the #housewatch hashtag will take you to the Twitter search page and you will see all the #housewatch tweets (there won’t be any there for a while hopefully).
Green MPs Twitter accounts
Russel Norman @RusselNorman
Metiria Turei @metiria
Sue Kedgley @SusieKew
Keith Locke @keithlocke
Kevin Hague @KevinHague
Catherine Delahunty @greencatherine
David Clendon @DavidClendon
Kennedy Graham @KennedyGraham
Gareth Hughes @GarethMP
Green Party @NZGreens
Published in Featured | Justice & Democracy by Catherine Delahunty on Tue, June 22nd, 2010
Tags: #housewatch, MPs behaving badly, question time, twitter
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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They do chanting?! Gawd.
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Wait till till the Labour Back Benchers lay their hands on some vuvuzelas!
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They do chanting?! Gawd.
And that it is not bad enough to bother reporting on. Gad! What a work place!
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Its like a pack of starving mongrels, that sensing the weak position of one of its members, devours it for lunch.
They only reinforce their own ignorance and stupidity with this mindset – and we all lose because of it.
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Go for it. The whole idea of parliamentary debate is to attact the flaws in the issues in order to bring the truth to light.
Personal attacks do not achieve that end and are therefore irrelevant.
That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be jokes if the jokes relate to the issue and not the person.
On the other hand if everyone agreed or even fainted agreement then truth would be obscured; that is the importance of the dialectical process.
See Socrates and Hagal
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By the way, I want it guaranteed that Maori cannot close entrance to the beaches if they’re allowed special treatment on foreshore and seabed which I do not believe they have any more right to than any other person. Also, that they cannot extract any payment from people visiting those areas, and if that should be attempted the customary right should be extinguished. But then I also expect that any other owner of land thinking they own the foreshore and seabed near their land should be told in no uncertain terms they have no special rights to exclusive use of foreshore and seabed either.
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I don’t want to pay for endless litigious oratory and opinion.
These people were employed as our Servants!
That means they buy the mini-bar et al.
As I have often observed – the Greens Are the best behaved Party in the house – and I say that, not as a Party Member (me dad keeps signing me up fo’ Labour) but as a tax-payer.
This could be a very long and therapeutic letter I’m sure….
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OF BOARDING SCHOOLS AND PARLIAMENTS!!!!!
Catherine also mentions the boarding school mentality that is prevalent among NAT/ACT and Labour politicians; this is a very disturbing trend.
I went to two boarding schools in Australia in the sixties when caning kids for the slightest misdemeanour was all the rage.
where bullying and dyking (pushing kids heads down the toilet)was even ignored and thought of as character building.
Where pedarist priests were constantly on the lookout for little boys with problems of insecurity.
The two founding philosophies of the boarding school concept are contradictory; pseudo christianity and the ideal of Plato’s Spartan state.
Such ideals were embraced zealously by the British Empire, and the winners of such institutions are the psychopathic heads of state tomorrow, that being parliament as Catherine has described.
Such institutions cause alienation to the bonding of ones family and have no empathy to a childs emotional needs.
I am proud to say that I ran away from one boarding school and was expelled from the other. I was developing character!
I hope that boarding schools go the way of priests, monarchies and dodo’s!!!
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by doing this the Parliament tv maybe no longer economically viable…we all know that the real reason to watch it is to listen to the insult flying across the place
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I listen to the House regularly and don’t mind the jibes but was surprised to hear how abusive MPs are recently. Using disability terms as insults or cheap jokes is unacceptable. I hope raising awareness about their disgusting behaviour brings an end to it.
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Long as the Hon.Member for Anywhere is allowed to call the other Hon. Member for Anywhere Else – ‘a shiver looking fo’ a spine to crawl up’.
I want Some Entertainment for my Tax dollar!
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Yeah, talk about a intense place to go to work every day.
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