It took only two sitting days for politicians’ tempers to fray in Question Time.
When Parliament resumed today, no items were tabled and MPs went straight into the second Question Time for the year.
There has been some speculation that New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters and Speaker Lockwood Smith might disagree over how Parliament operates because of changes to its rules since he was last there.
Yesterday passed by relatively quietly, but today Smith threatened to throw out both Peters and Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee after they clashed over questions to Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss.
Brownlee and Peters continued to argue about the quality of a question asked by the New Zealand First Leader while Smith was on his feet.
Smith also drew angry glares from Peters and some other Opposition MPS when he ruled the question in order but cast doubts on how intelligible it was.
All MPs moved back from the brink after Smith called for “a deep breath’’ from MPs and he chastised them for being “childish’’.
Following Question Time, MPs returned to the interrupted debate on the Speech from the Throne.
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