KEY POINTS:
It is unparliamentary to accuse someone of "not having the balls" to do something. But it seems it is okay to refer to "rich pricks".
Assistant Speaker Marian Hobbs ruled out the reference to "balls" but ignored the mention of "pricks" as Parliament yesterday briefly descended into bawdiness
during an emotion-charged snap debate on the merits of the Government's buyback of the national rail service.
For anyone who thinks there is no difference between Labour and National, the stoush between Labour's Michael Cullen and National's John Key should have been compulsory viewing. They did agree on one thing: the railways were variously a black-hole (Key) or a bottomless pit (Cullen) down which money was either sucked or poured. But that was as far as consensus went.
The pair argued bitterly over when it was the best time to stop taxpayers' money draining into their respective black-hole and bottomless pit.
National, of course, is furious with Labour for buying back the country's rail and Cook Strait ferry services at what it says is an outrageously high price simply to lumber National with the thankless post-election task of making something Key described as a "dog" run profitably.
However, Key's prime objective in yesterday's debate was to label Labour as being variously deceitful, dishonest and deliberately misleading for not revealing the $200 million loan to Toll from its parent company in Australia.
Cullen appeared to be ignoring National's leader. But he was listening. And when he rose to speak, it was clear he would be taking no prisoners. He dismissed Key's speech as "a lazy Parnell wine bar ramble" and then accused National of lacking the balls to hold to its belief that state ownership was wrong and declare it would sell the reacquired railways.
It was difficult to know why Cullen was so incensed. Was it Key's claim that Labour in general and him in particular had been deceitful? Or the claim that the Prime Minister's chief of staff Heather Simpson had successfully pushed for the buyback in the face of the Finance Minister's opposition that the price was too high? Or was it a simple matter of personal ideology as he slammed National for selling out the country's infrastructure to foreigners?
He immediately withdrew his reference to "balls' as soon as he had uttered it. But Bill English still complained to Hobbs.
Cullen pointed out Key had accused him of misleading the public. "I sat here and took it." National "whinged and moaned" when anyone responded to their personal attacks in kind. Now he wasn't allowed to speak in standard English. When Cullen sat down, the next speaker, NZ First's Peter Brown, felt it necessary to say he would try and take some of the emotion out of the debate. It was a more than sensible suggestion.
