Deborah Coddington: Bye-bye Beehive, now let's rip

No more question time, urgency, select committees, and general debate for me and the other MPs going off to enjoy their lives. We delivered our valedictories with friends and family in the public gallery, journalists in the press gallery, and other MPs scattered around the chamber.

Retiring MPs have nothing to lose, so they can let rip. It's tempting, but convention gets the better of them. Some do loosen up, like Mark Peck, who used to opportunity to talk about his struggle with alcoholism and supported Labour's Janet Mackey in her call for fewer personal attacks. This made me grin - Peck used to be one of the worst offenders.

Richard Prebble, as the most senior MP in the House, kicked off, and as the most junior member retiring, I was the last to speak. In between were National's Roger Sowry, Mackey and Peck, and the Greens' Ian Ewen-Street.

I used to think Sowry was a political lightweight but I was wrong. I worked with him on the transport select committee and he was a smart operator, never selfish with help and advice when I needed it. Select committees can be alien territory for new MPs unfamiliar with standing orders, and it was great to know I could pass a note to a senior MP and ask for help without being ridiculed. Sowry's departure is a loss for National.

During question time, Sowry's acidity and gimlet gaze earned good hits on ministers. When Sowry got to his feet with a supplementary, I always pricked up my ears. Yet in his valedictory, the retiring Kapiti MP sent himself up: "I can well remember my first parliamentary question. With much excitement I rang home and alerted them to the fact that I was about to ask a question and that they should listen on the radio.

"The House was quiet and I stood and asked the Minister [of Conservation] what he was doing to keep rats off Kapiti Island. The House remained silent and Mike Moore, who was then the Leader of the Opposition, leaned forward and in a loud voice shouted: 'Stopping the member from visiting!'. To the laughter that I thought at the time was far more vigorous from my side than that of the Opposition, I learned an important lesson: never ask a patsy question."

Janet Mackey came into Parliament in 1993 when, she said, it "was still full of formidable and daunting people. The first time I went to get into a lift in the Beehive, David Lange, Jonathan Hunt and Koro Wetere preceded me. I got in, the doors tried to close, and the buzzer sounded to say we were seriously overloaded. David Lange suggested that it would help if I got out."

David Lange's legendary wit strikes again. Mackey would be one of the thinnest, tiniest ladies in the entire parliamentary complex - when she turns side-on she disappears. Yet this scrap of a woman, as a solo mother with three small children at home in Gisborne, for 12 years represented the East Coast electorate - one person for an area she reckons is as big as Wales (which has 600 MPs).

And for those who grizzle about MPs' perks, consider this: Mackey, whose electorate stretches from Whakatane through the entire East Coast and south towards Hawke's Bay, drives about 60,000km a year in her own car and receives 19c a kilometre; whereas an urban MP who drives less than 5000km a year gets 96c a kilometre. Go figure.

It is well known that Ian Ewen-Street is leaving Parliament because he fell in love with a lawyer, Sue Grey, who was appearing before his select committee on the scampi inquiry. Sex for questions, screamed the headlines, and the result is the couple's darling baby, Ysabella, who so resembles her dad it's as if someone put Ewen-Street in the tumble dryer and shrunk him.

But I suspect Winston Peters won't feel particularly warm towards this Green MP after Wednesday's speech. One of Peters' MPs, Doug Woolerton, worked with Ewen-Street on a select committee. Woolerton has an outrageous sense of humour - very un-PC but somehow he gets away with it.

Ewen-Street: "I asked him what it was like working with his party leader, Winston Peters, and Doug said: 'He's like a racehorse, really. For 10 minutes every day his eyes are bright, his ears are pricked and his nostrils flaring. He races around the track and just hates to be beaten. But after the roar of the crowd dies down, for the rest of the day he's just like the other horses - he's back in the stalls snoring and farting and rolling in the hay'."

And me? If you think I've gone soft, think again. I'm off the public purse. I don't have to be nice any more. I'm joining the staff of this organ and I'm counting the days until September 17 when the gates are open and I can really let rip. As John F. Kennedy said, "Forgive your enemies but remember their names."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY