Finger pistols at 2pm: photos from a week of Question Time

The election looms over Parliament’s debating chamber and as it nears the behaviour of MPs is amplified. It gets louder, brasher, more aggressive. Those feeling confident are likely to bray like schoolboys cheering their first XV. Those putting themselves in an underdog corner do not back down.

It’s exhausting, and that’s for the observers. For the participants it sometimes looks like blood sport. The penultimate week of Question Time was particularly intense and we bring you images and stories from above and from down at MP-level.

Tuesday is usually the powder keg for the week’s themes in attack and in defence. This week, Tuesday’s answers and ripostes were equal to the task, and the drama came on Wednesday. Above Christopher Luxon leads off his team’s questions on Wednesday with finger pistols. 

And, this time on Tuesday Chris Hipkins is right back at him. One advantage governments have in Question Time is time. Questions can only be so long, but you can pack a lot more information and counterclaims into an answer.

The major match-up of any Question Time is between the major party leaders. But really equal billing goes to the finance questions. Nicola Willis is a stronger Q&A exponent than her boss, but Grant Robertson is equal to it. 

Here Christopher Luxon keeps an eye on Nicola Willis’ plan as she implements it. A good questioner does not just read a list of questions, they change their approach based on the answers. 

It appears to me that Willis regularly gives Luxon feedback on his (and her own) own performance. ‘See, I skipped that question line and went with this one instead…’.

On Wednesday Michael Woodhouse was back in the chamber. A speedy recovery from a brutal career shock on the weekend.

Question Time is the only time in the Parliamentary day that every MP is expected to be in the chamber. As a result it’s actually a great time to catch your colleagues and maybe get some other collaborative work done. Here Michael Woodhouse passes a folder of notes to his near neighbour Shane Reti. 

You get to see a lot in the chamber. In her farewell speech this week former Assistant Speaker Poto Williams joked about how much you could notice from the Speaker’s chair.

“From the front of the Chamber you can see a lot of things playing out, such as when the National Party are running the numbers for their coups.”

‘Wait, did he just break a name suppression?’

On Wednesday Question Time hit a patch of turbulence when Rawiri Waititi popped up for a supplementary question during an interchange between David Seymour and Chris Hipkins. Waititi asked a question relating to a court ordered name suppression. That’s something an MP can get away with inside the debating chamber because of parliamentary privilege, though Parliament might still frown on it.

David Seymour and Rawiri Waititi are uneasy benchmates, typically pretending the other is not even there. On this occasion David Seymour was incensed at Waititi and complained to the Speaker. Next to him, Rawiri Waititi calmly inspected the chamber’s stained glass ceiling panels.

You can probably tell from his reaction that Seymour’s complaint was not successful. The Speaker pointed out that Seymour’s own questions had been against the rules, “out of order - almost completely out of order.”

David Seymour promptly got on his chamber phone (party leaders, deputies and whips have them at their desks) to call… someone. His deputy Brooke van Velden listened in briefly before reaching for her book of Standing Orders (Parliament’s rules) to do some research of her own.

At the front of the debating chamber the Clerk of the House quickly checked his memory was correct on the details of an area of Parliament’s rules that are not often used.

While not far away Mark Mitchell and Christopher Luxon were definitely not filling each other in on the details.  

Not all comedy gold  

Question Time is never all high drama. It tends to flag a little as it goes and always has patches where the questions and/or answers are handled in steady earnest tones and there isn’t much to engage the back benches. 

Even in these final weeks some interchanges are a bit pedestrian. At these times it’s worth watching the back bench MPs who really never get to participate at all. Instead they get to drift to their happy place. Or imagine how they would ask or answer this particular question if and when they are thrust into the frame.  

Some questions though are more like questionable performance art. There can be comedy gold in repetition, but it isn’t automatic. 

National’s Justice Spokesperson Mark Mitchell has been dredging for that luster of funny in the repetition mine for four months now. Every primary question he asks the Minister for Police is exactly the same. Week after week, month after month. This week he went for number 16. Mark Mitchell and Christopher Luxon found his crime question tactic hilarious. See, repetition equals funny.

It's a risky move though. It could end up seeming a little bit ‘National laughs about crime’.

Finding the gag less humorous is the Minister for Police Ginny Andersen, who has been adding context to the same partial quote for four straight months. If anything the tactic has given her an unusual kind of practice – months of trying out different responses to the same approach. As a result her question time performance has progressed from tentative, through defensive and into confident.

Someone else who has gone from strength to strength in answering questions is the Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall who could appear nervous on her feet when she took the role. You can see that is not really the case any longer.

Questions to Willie Jackson can also tend towards humour, but not because of repetition. Jackson’s performance is more about freeform improvisation. It’s certainly guaranteed to get a reaction. Here National MPs Scott Simpson and David Bayly explode in reactive guffaws. 

One last photo, because Question Time often doesn’t finish when the questions end in the debating chamber.

Frequently MPs seek out the media when it is over for a second bite at the cherry; maybe to re-litigate a point of contention, or to complain at their treatment. The possibility of the chance to ‘put their case’ seems to be a reason some MPs develop a liking for getting kicked out by Speakers.

On this occasion it was ACT Leader David Seymour who risked demonstrating the Streisand Effect by complaining further about Rawiri Waititi’s out of order supplementary question.

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