SATIRE
“Order!” bellowed the bewigged cetacean who occupied the Speaker’s chair, and among other names was often referred to as Mr Speaker. “The house will begin its business soon, but first there are, as is now the custom, certain ceremonies which must be performed before we can move on to real business”, he said in a tone in which the more discerning listeners may have noted a slight impatience.
“Firstly, in deference to the as yet unwritten law that Mouldy wonderfulness and infallibility must take precedence, we yield the floor to the Mouldy Tea Party”, he continued and settled back into his chair with a resigned expression.
The entire Mouldy Tea Party caucus, who all happened to be in the House (a very rare event), rose and made preparation. Several of them wore on their heads feathery objects resembling the result of an explosion in a wig factory. They looked as though they had large dishevelled birds nesting on their heads. Others had what appeared to be unwashed gravy stains on their chins, quite possibly from having recently indulged in the Colonel’s mashed potato and gravy. Their preparations included upending the ceremonial mace and tying an old NZ Railways flag to it.
They then grouped themselves in the centre of the chamber and began the interminable whakatautau-ing, waiata-ing and haka-ing which is compulsory at these times. After about thirty minutes they began to run out of puff and retired to their seats after delivering individual denunciative diatribes aimed at the white supremacist colonial settlers who had cruelly forced them to eschew cannibalism, thirty-year life-spans, cold tea, slavery, musket-wars and the other joys of pre-colonial life.
Mr Speaker, sensing that the chamber had quietened down, woke up, blinked a few times and rose to his feet. “The Groan Party will make their introductory presentation now,” he said and sank back into his chair.
The noticeably non-diverse Groan Party caucus came forward and stood in the recently vacated centre, after replacing the NZR flag with a flag of four quarters, which included the “Palestinian”, Houthi, ISIS and Hezbollah flags in each respective corner. They then began to whirl their black and white tea towels and chant in unison.
“From the liver to the brie,
all our food will be free,
We don’t pay for our clothes,
As everyone very well knows.
Two, four, six, eight,
just you watch our eyes dilate,
ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen,
we love words that are obscene.
Don’t you know that we aren’t green,
you should just see our latrine,
We’re the real Marxist Greens
we just love those yummy soybeans.
We won’t eat any dairy,
All our legs are very hairy.”
Then followed a number of unconvincing speeches in support of Hamas and every other gay-stoning, undemocratic, corrupt regime they could think of.
At last, they too had exhausted their loathing of everything democratic and decent and wandered back to their seats, fastening their tea towels around their necks, but not quite tightly enough in the opinion of many present.
Mr Speaker again arose and called the Labour Party to take their turn. Mr Chopkins stood and spoke.
“I realise that the future is Mouldy,” he said. “Therefore I am closing the closet door as a ginger white male and colonialist oppressor, and re-opening it and emerging as the only full-blooded Mouldy in OurTearRoar, and to ask me to do a DNA test is racist and makes the asker self-identificationophobic.”
He sat down to thunderous applause from predictable portions of the chamber, as Willie Relaxin’ rose to his feet, and was invited to speak by Mr Speaker.
“I have been giving things some mahara,” he exclaimed. “I’ve decided that all the iwi in the motu need to do more mahi, especially Nga Mihi, who has become a real nuisance, poking xhit’s nose into everybody’s emails. Now, that’s all the Mouldy I can speak because as you know I don’t have much of it in me, unlike our leader Mr Chopkins. But I will now show my diversity by singing a song from one of my predominant ethnicities.”
He whipped a kippa out of his pocket, and having placed it on his head and coming to the centre of the chamber, began dancing while giving a rousing rendition of Hava Nagila. To much applause, (but none from the Groan members), he finished with a flourish and sat down. A few other Labour MPs performed, including Careerin’ McAnutty who performed an interesting juggling act with a hammer and sickle, which ended when the hammer dropped onto his foot, and he was assisted out of the chamber for an X-ray, still clutching the sickle.
Mr Speaker at this time ruled that the far-left members had had sufficient exposure, and requested offerings from the coalition benches.
Melissa Ree stood and made a speech in Korean, and apart from “annyeonghaseyo” which a few understood, almost all members understood as much of her speech as they had of the Mouldy speeches. Winsome Putters then came to the centre of the chamber carrying two swords and a set of bagpipes. He crossed the swords on the floor and he performed a rather sprightly sword dance while playing the bagpipes.
When everyone had recovered from that, a few members came and performed some Irish dances. The opening expressions of ethnicity continued for some time.
At last, as most members had now left the house, Mr Speaker declared that the opening was over and called the house to order.
Rawiriririri Waitititititi then raised a point of order, and demanded that in future only Mouldy expressions of ethnicity should be permitted in the house. Mr Speaker observed that, were this course adopted, then most “Mouldy” members would be unfairly denied the opportunity to feature their most predominant ethnicities.
Rawiriririri Waitititititi responded that this did not matter as the Mouldy Tea Party was not interested in either fairness or other ethnicities.
Mr Speaker then declared that as it was now dinnertime, the house was adjourned. Thus ended another afternoon of democracy in OurTearRoar.