KEY POINTS:
Michael Cullen is a new man, lighter, more fey of spirit and finally, finally unburdened of pent-up memories of foul deeds by the media over the ages.
The minister and media met at a standing orders committee meeting in a bid to come to a compromise over a
ban on using television footage of Parliament for satire.
The recommended re-wording was to prevent any use of footage to misrepresent the proceedings of Parliament but to allow its use for satirical or humorous purposes.
Dr Cullen was having none of this rubbish so he set out to quash it.
The initial attempt was to bamboozle the media, by insisting that the ban on satire didn't really mean satire was banned, adding that "a lot of what you think is banned is not banned" and then that the media could indeed use the footage for satire "but it's a question of how you use it".
But the tactic moved into a full-blown diatribe at the suggestion that simply banning misrepresentation might do the job.
The real issue, he insisted, was of misrepresentation and manipulation of images - a tactic MPs wanted very clear rules over, "given the experiences and chronic inaccuracies of television reporting in particular".
There were not one, not two, but "four major factual errors" on a news bulletin last Friday night, he said, and they were important things like saying the Government was behind the colour coding of food when really it was just a select committee recommendation.
"If those kind of simple factual things can't be got right, if really television news doesn't understand that is a misrepresentation, then what does a misrepresentation look like from a television journalist's perspective?"
One journalist pointed out that he was simply talking about shoddy journalism and not satire at all.
The point, he said, was "if in attempting to be accurate they get it so wrong, what happens when you don't try to be accurate?".
At one point there was a prolonged squeal of stifled laughter which came suspiciously from the direction of committee chair Margaret Wilson.
She had no breath left to holler "order" and, besides, Dr Cullen was just warming up.
He decided the time was ripe to get vengeance for his ancestors so he harked back to a Labour Party conference in 1982 when Bill Rowling was shown on television laughing, after footage of a strong anti-abortion speech.
"That laugh did not take place at that point," Dr Cullen roared. "It was inserted! What on earth do you think the public would have thought? A gross misrepresentation!"
There was silence as those gathered tried to figure out exactly how this related to a ban on satire in the late 2000s.
An attempt by Nandor Tanczos to return a modicum of constructive discussion failed dismally as Peter Brown took his turn. Mr Brown went into bat for his caucus colleague, claiming media cruelty in its use of repeated footage of a grinning Ron Mark making "an unfortunate gesture".
Peter Dunne then had a go, referring to a news item about MPs' pay rises with footage of MPs howling like hyenas to the soundtrack of We're in the money.
"You are not seriously telling me that the public think that MPs debate to the sound of We're in the money?" asked Press Gallery chairman Vernon Small.
"I'm telling you that the public strongly felt on that occasion that the reaction they saw on television was the reaction that occurred," Mr Dunne said.
Dr Cullen chimed in noting what a privilege it was for the media to be allowed to film in Parliament at all.
