John Armstrong: End-of-term silliness takes over at last question time

Something or someone had clearly got to Don Brash yesterday as Parliament's version of the Last Supper rapidly descended into a dog's breakfast.

For those MPs who have appointments pending with politics' equivalent of the Grim Reaper, yesterday's question time will have been their last.

In that regard, the more sombre atmosphere in the minor-party benches was in marked contrast to the raucousness of Labour, National and NZ First, who viewed the afternoon as the final parliamentary opportunity to embarrass one another.

For some reason, National's leader also chose the final question time to get really animated about the way ministers answer questions - or fail to.

Dr Brash's normal response to the Prime Minister's stonewalling is a slightly quizzical frown which says "this is all very tiresome".

However, instead of merely feigning annoyance and leaving the procedural arguments to more experienced colleagues, he seemed genuinely angry yesterday and bobbed up and down raising points of order.

His complaints attracted the attention of Winston Peters, who, as someone who likes to catalogue Dr Brash's supposed shortcomings, noted that one point of order was really a question and Dr Brash should have put it to the House as such.

It escaped no one that Mr Peters is the past master at using points of order as cover to raise all manner of things. And even he cracked a smile in recognition.

National was less amused. The NZ First leader, whose attempt to extract more information from the Prime Minister about Islamic terrorists in New Zealand only produced the less-than-startling revelation that Hindi is the same language as Urdu, had annoyed National by barging into its argument with Labour over student loans.

National, which is trying to paint Labour's sudden pledge to abolish interest payments as shoddy policy-making, had uncovered an earlier statement by Education Minister Trevor Mallard saying major changes to student loan policy were likely only "if the country struck oil".

As far as Mr Mallard is concerned, however, Labour has struck oil when it comes to votes. For one awful moment, it sounded as though he was about to start crooning Cole Porter's Let's Fall in Love as he reminded National of how everybody, just everybody, loved Labour's new policy.

However, National's attempt to press home its argument that the policy is unaffordable was suddenly interrupted by another Peters point of order.

It had nothing to do with student loans. He was merely reacting to the latest episode in an argument about whether Green MP Keith Locke was once a Pol Pot sympathiser.

Mr Locke claimed to have found evidence that a former National Government had backed Pol Pot's infamous Cambodian regime. Having just been handed the relevant bit of paper, Mr Peters wanted to assure the House this had not been the case.

"Would you please sit down," barked Speaker Margaret Wilson.

Mr Peters was so astonished that he promptly complied. Soon, however, he was back on his feet complaining she had gone too far.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," she responded with more than a hint of sarcasm, before moving on to admonish Labour's Chris Carter by suggesting his attempt to raise a point of order was a sign things were getting "a little silly".

With all parties suffering from election fever, it was always going to be a silly afternoon.