A teen was reduced to tears after her speech about a friend’s suicide during a Youth Parliament debate was interrupted by senior National MP Anne Tolley.
Lily Dorrance, 17, was talking about mental health and describing her loss in Parliament’s debating chamber yesterday when Tolley, presiding as chair, rebuked her for reading from notes.
“It was such a sensitive topic and it came from my heart,” Dorrance told the Herald last night. “And she was trying to tell me because I was reading it it wasn’t coming from my heart.
“When she interrupted me it was awful …
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Anne Tolley has proven that the Peter Principle holds true.
The Peter Principle is a management concept developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”.
In other words, an employee is promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. The concept was explained in the book The Peter Principle by Peter and Raymond Hull.
Peter and Hull intended the book to be satire, but it became popular as it was seen to make a serious point about the shortcomings of people.
What is ironic about this incident is that Tolley has just been appointed by Speaker Mallard to head up the parliamentary anti-bullying committee!
To make things even worse the youth speaker was the Youth MP of ex-Speaker David Carter.