A guide for MPs to avoid questions
Steven Price has an extremely informative and hilarious guide on how MPs duck awkward questions. It has to be read in context so I won’t summarise it here, but he describes the various techniques as:
- The Headbutt (Winston Peters)
- The Flip (Annette King, Nick Smith)
- The Dodge (Lianne Dalziel, Bill Birch, Murray McCully, Helen Clark, Jenny Shipley)
- The Smother Tackle (Jenny Shipley)
- The Block (Jenny Shipley, Steve Maharey)
- The Attack (Helen Clark, Tony Ryall, Winston Peters)
- The Amazing Shipley One-Size Fits All Multi-purpose response
It is a great piece of work by Steven – I wish I could hear the audio version. And it should really be taught to all new journalists!