Microphone Problems Plague MPs

Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 8:14 pm
Article: ParliamentToday.co.nz

Microphone problem plagued MPs on Tuesday evening as they debated the state of the Crown’s finances.

The four hour set piece debate on the Financial Statements of the Government and financial performance of departments and other Crown entities got off to a rocky start after MPs held an urgent debate on the Auditor-General’s report into the state of the biosecurity system.

Green co-leader Russel Norman attacked the Government’s planned asset sales and joked National MPs would like the sound to be turned off as they did not like the story he was telling.

National MP Paul Goldsmith replied to Norman’s argument, but it was difficult to hear him as he attempted to use a handheld microphone.

Later David Parker was asked to try and use the Leader of the Opposition’s microphone which was thought to be working. However it wasn’t and Parker joked that taking that position was just not meant to be.

**
ParliamentToday.co.nz is a breaking news source for New Zealand parliamentary business featuring broadcast daily news reports.

Top Scoops Headlines

COMMENT > >

Catherine Austin Fitts: The Real Deal: Make Way For Killers & The Tax Haven Round Up

There are no scandals in Washington. There is simply a turnover. We are preparing for an escalation of the global financial war. The old team are simply being told to step aside. Make way for the killers. When G-7 concluded their emergency meeting in London last weekend, they announced that they were going to target tax havens. What does this mean? After months of G-7 central banks buying mortgage bonds and equities, the hunt for capital is on. More>>

Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham: The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets The Heart Of Science

Journal editors have a lot of power in science – power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science publishing. The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an entire medical journal... More>>

Richard S. Ehrlich: Racism At The Heart Of Fight Among Buddhists And Muslims

Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance. "It is like the K.K.K. (Klu Klux Klan) in America during the period of the civil rights movement," said Myo Win, a Muslim activist based in Yangon, Myanmar... More>>

Binoy Kampmark: The Mining Myth: Sustainability And Development

It has been a fiction that has held sway for a time. Mining booms create trickledown wealth. It is tagged as “sustainable” when it is premised on temporariness. Natural resources work for countries that possess them in abundance. Only on the periphery do we see the sense of foreboding that comes with these assets, be it the murder of such leaders as Patrice Lumumba in the Congo... More>>

Ramzy Baroud: Israel, Hawking And The Pressing Question Of Boycott

It is an event “of cosmic proportions”, said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor. More>>

Binoy Kampmark: Angelina Jolie: Breasts, Celebrity And Choice

Popular culture, and celebrity, have come to this. A well-endowed personality, a figure of celluloid appeal, has to justify to the other-worldliness of an action personal and specific to the person in question. That a woman has to have a mastectomy brings with it pains within and without – not merely the challenges to her body but her family and friendship circle. In the case of celebrity... More>>

David Swanson: How Your Town Can Stop Drones

Local resolutions have helped advance many issues, including war opposition, when they've been passed in large numbers. When we passed a resolution in Charlottesville, Va., last year opposing any attack on Iran, I heard from numerous cities that wanted to do the same. As far as I know... More>>

John Spritzler: Uri Avnery's Specious Attack On The One State Solution

Uri Avnery may be the most sophisticated defender of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He defends this ethnic cleansing while posing as a great friend and sympathizer of Palestinians, supposedly proven by his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and support for a "two state solution." More>>