KEY POINTS:
Parliamentarians gathered yesterday for the first question time under the new National Government - but instead found themselves creating what could have been an episode of the comic farce Fawlty Towers.
Both sides went into the House primed for action - an Opposition ready to put the new
National Government through the wringer and a Government eager to show what it was really made of.
Instead, those who had become so adept at answering questions over the previous nine years suddenly found they had little idea how to ask them. Those now responsible for answering them seemed to be under the misapprehension that the people in Opposition were still running the show.
So Phil Goff was called "Minister of the Opposition" by John Key and "Prime Minister" by the Speaker, which Mr Goff neatly riposted with a "nearly".
Even the usually exacting Attorney General Chris Finlayson tripped himself up. After bailing up Chris Carter for the serious crime of leaving a "the" out of the tightly prescribed wording of his question, Mr Finlayson called him the "Minister of Education".
Michael Cullen was called "minister" by Gerry Brownlee, prompting Dr Cullen to ponder if such confusion was due to National's apparent instructions to officials to avoid words such as "strategy", "collaboration", and "co-ordination" in Government reports.
But the exchange between Education Minister Anne Tolley and her opponent Chris Carter topped them all.
Ms Tolley was saved from a pillorying over a blunder made in the election campaign by her opponent's inability to actually ask the question which set out to do so.
Three times Mr Carter stood up to ask the initial question and muffed it by adding extraneous words. He did no better on his follow-up questions, which fell foul of the rules because they did not begin with words such as how, why or when. Eventually Dr Cullen stood and used a point of order to give him a lesson on how to begin a question.
"Wassup?" yelled Mr Key - and by the time Mr Carter was done, the howls of laughter drowned Ms Tolley's answers.
But there was some new information to be gleaned. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark's ministers were always "hard working and competent" when she was asked if she had confidence in them. Yesterday, John Key revealed his were "talented people who are working hard for New Zealand".
Labour whip Darren Hughes showed the game of Gerry-baiting had lost none of its novelty - when Mr Key mentioned "stationary energy" Mr Hughes chipped in "we call that Gerry Brownlee".
Mr Key also showed he could handle a question with hidden stings. He negotiated a potential minefield of questions ranging from tax cuts, the 90-day probationary period and police spying on activists to state house numbers and climate change deniers.
He even landed some good hits back.
This new sitcom known as Question Time finally ended as it had begun.
A Pete Hodgson question about the light bulb ban got Gerry Brownlee so exercised that when he stood to answer it he instead mistakenly called for the right to ask another one. He yelped out "supplementary" at the baffled Speaker with such vigour that Mr Speaker was probably tempted to allow him one.