May 19, 2013 1:00pm by David Farrar

Some quiz trivia questions

I ran a quiz night at the CNI National Party conference in Rotorua last night. The local MPs wrote the questions, and there were a few interesting trivia ones in them which I thought I would share. The answers are written in white and are after the break, so you can highlight them to see the answers.

  1. The woman in Jack Marshall’s 1956 remodel of the NZ coat of arms is based on which movie star? 
  2. Which politician is quoted as saying “I was in politics for a purpose – my very life was politics. I suppose this was because I was more manly than most women; that’s why I never married”
  3. What Parliamentary event failed to occur in October 1946?
  4. What event took place at the beginning of each Parliament between 1896 and the early 1960s?
  5. What was the first Bill passed by the first Parliament in Wellington in 1856?
  6. Who was the first Deputy Prime Minister of NZ?
  7. There have been 17 Deputy Prime Ministers. How many also became Prime Minister, and who?
  8. Who was the first MP from the CNI Region to become Prime Minister or Premier of NZ?
  9. How many power stations rely on the Waikato River?
  10. How many escalators are there in the Coromandel electorate?
  11. Who served longest as Prime Minister of New Zealand? Jack Marshall, Norman Kirk, Bill Rowling, Geoffrey Palmer or Jenny Shipley?
  12. How many electorate contests has Sue Moroney MP lost to National candidates in New Zealand’s General Elections?

See how many you know, before looking at the answers

  1. Grace Kelly
  2. Mabel Howard
  3. The expiration of the 1943-46 Parliament was overlooked and the validity of Acts assented to after the House had expired was upheld by the Court of Appeal only in 1954
  4. A vote on whether alcohol should be sold through Bellamys
  5. The Bellamy’s Bill’, the Licensing Amendment Act, that permitted the sale of alcohol within Parliament; MPs even suspended standing orders to pass it
  6. Keith Holyoake in 1949
  7. Five – Holyoake, Marshall, Muldoon, Palmer and Clark
  8. Sir George Grey in 1877 when he was one of the MP for Thames (Thames was a multi-member electorate with two MPs then)
  9. 21
  10. None.  There used to be a set in the Goldfields shopping centre in Thames but they were removed several years ago.
  11. Jenny Shipley, who served two years. Marshall was 10 months, Kirk  20 months, Palmer 13 months and Rowling 14 months.
  12. Five times. She lost to John Luxton in Karapiro in 1996, Lindsay Tisch in Piako in 2002, Lindsay Tisch in Piako in 2005, David Bennett in Hamilton East in 2008, and to Tim Macindoe in Hamilton West in 2011)