Speech of the Week

Jane Clifton writes at Stuff:

Nick Smith even detailed how he and Government colleagues had helped the “coupsters” find the plot meeting, as many had wandered round Bellamys lost. David Cunliffe had arrived looking like the Messiah in search of his apostles, so Dr Smith said he had given him directions to the private room. He had also assisted Jacinda Ardern.

“You grunted through a mouthful!” she contradicted him.

“You can’t even organise a proper coup without help from National MPs,” Dr Smith crowed.

Most helpful was “Nasty”, Mr Finlayson, who used his general debate speech to assist Labour MPs’ appreciation of their own history.

With several having attended a conference last weekend on the legacy of the late Labour prime minister Norman Kirk, he took the opportunity to correct the conference’s spelling of people’s names and several errors, and to remind them of some Kirk contemporaries whom they seemed to have “airbrushed out” of their retrospective, “including Roger Douglas, who was such a fine postmaster-general!”

The conference had been convened by the Fabian Society, which Mr Finlayson claimed was run by “a self-styled historian who runs a dairy in Mt Roskill”.

It had also been attended by Green MP Kennedy “I charge you with eco-cide!” Graham. “Lovely guy, just a shame he immatures with age,” Mr Finlayson sighed.

If they felt disrespected or patronised by Mr Finlayson’s comments, Opposition members had been reassured, during a question time exchange, about his motives. “I dwell in the land of high emotional intelligence!” he told Parliament with a theatrical flourish. “I speak from the heart.”

They probably dared not think what a Finlayson speech from the liver or spleen would be like.

The Finlayson speech is here. It’s wonderfully amusing.