KEY POINTS:
Common sense, like charity, begins at home. The common sense we hope parliamentarians possess when they assess important policy options needs to be seen in the way they order their own House. We struggle to see much sign of it in new rules they have issued for the filming of their debating chamber.
The House is about to start televising itself and so has slightly eased the restrictions it has placed on television news cameras. They will be allowed to show more than the MP speaking at any given time, so long as the wider shots are not used for satire, ridicule or denigration of members caught unawares.
If that sounds precious, the restrictions on still photography remain worse. Only pictures of an MP on his or her feet can be published. Wider shots remain prohibited unless, perversely, they are a frame of television film. Newspapers will not be allowed to use their own photographs of members in an unguarded moment. The reason offered by the rule-setting committee is that an unguarded moment can convey a misleading impression - a slumping MP caught in the blink of an eye might be made to appear asleep.
That is true, but the price of protecting members against that remote possibility is a complete ban on photographs of members who really are asleep, a much more common sight, as anyone who has visited the public galleries can attest.
It is hard to credit MPs' extraordinary sensitivity to photography in the chamber. They argue that it is their workplace and that nobody else exposes themselves to a camera all the while they are at their desk. But MPs spend comparatively little time in the chamber. After the 45 minutes or so of questions that begin each day's sitting, the benches empty and the parties maintain a bare quorum for routine legislation. Members take turns making up the quorum and those present are usually scheduled to speak. They are, or should be, alert to the debate and in a condition to be photographed.
Defenders of the rules say they are in line with attempts to raise standards of behaviour, such as the code of conduct recently drawn up. But the real reason for their reluctance to allow cameras free range in the chamber may be quite the opposite. Far from showing unseemly behaviour, free cameras might reveal something more interesting: the way members quietly cross the chamber at times for a civilised, and often companionable, conversation with a political opponent. Those moments might be reassuring for the public to witness but they would not serve the interests of electoral contenders. Neither wants their voters to have any truck with the other.
Nevertheless it is astonishing that Parliament's standing orders committee would attempt to impose these restrictions. Defiance of its existing rules has proved irresistible on occasions, and the committee cannot credibly intend to hold publications in contempt for making fun of some of the antics in the chamber. The proclamation against the use of pictures for "satire, ridicule and denigration" already makes the rules a laughing stock.
Satire, ridicule and denigration go with the territory of power in any free country. As Act's Rodney Hide observed, the ability to lampoon politicians is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. The Greens agree, so probably would most MPs if asked individually. But their collective interest is different.
Michael Cullen is right to say that media should not be too precious about it - there are other opportunities to observe the elected in unscripted moments. But it is a pity our representatives take themselves too seriously. It only diminishes them in the public eye.
