On Tuesday, after a week off, and after a number of politically contentious and combative weeks, Parliament began with something that presumably everyone could agree on; a motion to congratulate New Zealand’s Olympic athletes. This kind of motion, where every party gives a speech brimming with heartfelt superlatives, is not rare in Parliament, but not enormously common either.
They are (and this will probably not surprise you), almost always about a sporting outcome. I say almost, but I can’t actually remember a motion of this kind for anything other than sport in the seven years I have been here. A little research revealed an equivalent round of speeches when The Lord of the Rings won a clutch of Academy Awards twenty years ago.
Photo: RNZ / Calvin Samuel
There were some genuinely accolade-worthy outcomes though. Dame Lisa Carrington alone was worthy of the speeches - now being just one gold back from the most medalled female Olympian ever, from anywhere - out-medalling American gymnast Simone Biles.
The way these things go, the person initiating the motion - almost always a government MP - gets an initial speech, and then the other parties chip in as well. Often it would be the Minister for Sport kicking it off (and Chris Bishop visited Paris in that capacity), but he was gazumped by his boss. Politically, it’s hard to pass up an opportunity to connect yourself with the happy buzz of success.
There was a speaker brimming with praise from every party except, for some reason, New Zealand First. These kinds of speeches always threaten to become a list of names and medals and can end up sounding like everyone cribbed from the same Wikipedia article.
To avoid that, the follow-up speakers usually look for some unique angle to add to accolades.
Labour’s Peeni Henare looked forward to the next event - the Paralympics, Green MP Scott Willis noted that women were particularly successful and credited Grant Robertson’s “strategy to address the inequities women and girls experience in sport and recreation –the Women and Girls in Sport initiative” for that.
For ACT, Cameron Luxton went all Hallmark and thanked athletes’ families. And for Te Pāti Māori, Takuta Ferris, who as it was already a love fest, aimed some of that praise at the Minister for Sport - National’s Chris Bishop, who had done an interview on Te Karere and acknowledged “the importance of te ao Māori, te iwi Māori, and the Māori culture to the performance of our athletes on the international stage, I thought that was marvellous by our friend over there”.
While MPs agree on things more often than you might imagine, this level of unified amity is more unusual, especially perhaps that love bomb from Te Pāti Māori to a government minister. Speaker Gerry Brownlee noticed it as well, saying “There's nothing like goodwill—we'll see how long it lasts”.
How long did the outbreak of love and appreciation last? Well, the next thing the House did was Question Time, so, …who has a stopwatch?
