Muldoon Alert No 2

Tracy Watkins blogs on Winston Peters this week:

 Peters unfairly got it into his head that his troubles started when Espiner did a story about the emails; an accusation which somewhat skirted around the point that it was National which released the emails in the first place.

He then proffered as evidence of his TV One theory the fact that there were no parliamentary questions set down for him today on the troop saga – another omission for which he appeared to personally blame Espiner.

Now, while most journalists would give their right arm for a shot at writing up the day’s list of parliamentary questions, the arcane rules of Parliament insist that these remain the preserve of the opposition.

Peters then insisted that Espiner either start behaving responsibly or stay home.

It’s never been entirely clear whether those same arcane rules allow MPs to toss journalists out of the parliamentary precinct on a whim. But if anyone was inclined to run a test case, it would be Peters.

I suspect the difference between Muldoon and Peters is that Muldoon just wanted to ban some journalists, while Winston would happily ban them all if he could 🙂