Tweeting each other badly leaves MPs all-a-twitter

Halfway through extolling his Government's generosity to workers, Prime Minister John Key reveals he has something even more exciting than a tax cut up his sleeve: evidence that not all is happy within the Labour ranks.

The hard proof for this comes in the form of a "twitter" message from one David Cunliffe.

The Speaker initially prevents him reading it out - ruling that tweets from a Mr Cunliffe do not fall within the scope of a question about tax cuts.

Mr Key evades this by trying to table the tweet instead - a process which allows him to read out at least part of it.

National has long mocked Mr Cunliffe for his vainglorious tendencies - and so Mr Key is beaming when he tells Parliament that Mr Cunliffe had "tweeted" to his fans that he should be given more chances to ask questions in the House and would "kick [National's] proverbials" if he only had the chance.

This sends Mr Cunliffe rocketing to his feet, claiming to be falsely accused of a crime so vile.

He seeks a personal statement to clear the matter up.

Such statements are rarely made - and usually sought by MPs embroiled in serious trouble.

This time, Mr Cunliffe stands and gravely intones that not only does he not have an account with Twitter, but "I have never sent a tweet and I have never even, to my knowledge, received a tweet".

"So whoever it was who made that statement, it could not have been me. I leave it to members to surmise who may be behind this jack-up."

He later decides to relieve them of the suspense. His investigations have revealed the imposter had set up bogus twitters in the names of not just one, not two or three, but four Labour MPs - leader Phil Goff, Shane Jones, Clayton Cosgrove and Mr Cunliffe himself.

The twitter site administrators were told of the perfidy days ago, and the imposter uncovered as a "right wing blogger".

Labour's ranks are delighted to see Mr Key deprived of his moment of glory.

When Finance Minister Bill English stands soon after, it is to a chorus of "tweet, tweets" and claims he had "set up" Mr Key for the fall.

It is the second time in as many days that National has been tripped up by the internet's social networking sites.

On Tuesday, Labour confronted Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee with the Facebook page of one of his own political advisers, urging people to snub their noses at Earth Hour by turning all their lights on instead of off.

Mr Brownlee's response was to haul out the Luddite defence, claiming the intricacies of cyberspace remained "a place of great mystery" to him and he had no idea what "young ones" got up to.

So when Speaker Lockwood Smith blames April Fool's Day for further uproar during Mr Brownlee's question yesterday, the rejoinder from Labour's Darren Hughes is inevitable: "Who better to be answering a question then?"