John Armstrong: More than ready to sing the knight away

You hum it and Jim will sing it. Unfortunately, Jim did not get to sing it. Whether Parliament was deprived of hearing something very special or spared something truly awful, we will never know.

For Speaker Lockwood Smith stopped Jim Anderton in his tracks yesterday before he could launch into a solo rendition of A.R.D. Fairburn's satirical poem Roll Out the Nightcart which is sung to the tune of Waltzing Matilda.

Anderton's willingness to break into song and warble "who'll come a-hunting a knighthood with me" was less satire and more sarcasm, however.

The quality of the Progressive leader's vocal chords exercised the House during question time when Anderton stonefacedly asked the Prime Minister how many jobs would be created for unemployed New Zealanders as a result of knighthoods and damehoods being reinstated.

The question seemed to suggest the Government should be doing nothing else but creating or saving jobs. Anderton's intention, however, was to imply National was fiddling while the economy burns.

Key played safe. No jobs would be created by the move. But then none would be lost either.

A further attempt by Anderton to belittle Key's grand scheme for a national cycleway saw Key flicking through his notes. The Prime Minister's research staff had been busy. They had dug up Anderton's private member's bill from the 1990s which had sought to confer 'the status of knighthood" on some New Zealanders who had been passed over for honours during their lifetime, such as Gallipoli hero Captain William Malone.

Anderton's retort was to try and table the Fairburn poem. National MPs objected. However, Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee got to his feet to say that National had no objection to Anderton singing it.

Anderton, who has previously admitted to once having sung in a band "badly", was happy to oblige. But Lockwood Smith suggested the House move on to "more important things".

There was more hilarity as Labour's women MPs sought to put Women's Affairs Minister Pansy Wong through the mangle over National's axing of two investigations into pay equity.

Wong strode through this political minefield barely looking where she was stepping. First, she embarrassingly revealed she had not been consulted by State Services Minister Tony Ryall before he halted the pay equity reviews. Then she cited the 1972 Equal Pay Act as evidence of National's commitment to closing the gender pay gap.

Amid the laughter, Labour's women's affairs spokeswoman Sue Moroney wanted to know why Wong had ignored a pay equity protest in Hamilton outside a venue where she had later told her audience that the pay gap was too large.

Wong herself protested. "I hardly ignored the handful of protesters in Hamilton. I actually told them: 'Please take care. Don't get too wet."'

This brought the House down. Moroney later issued a statement saying Wong's "putdown"of the protest was insulting to the women involved. Those who know Wong will know it was Wong being Wong and her concern would have been genuine.

Her rhinoceros-in-the-strawberry-patch routine continued. Moroney asked which of three statements made by Ryall, Barrack Obama and herself respectively most closely resembled the aspirations of New Zealand women.

Wong replied that her aspiration was that women exercise choice in their lives. "I back women all the time, so I am backing the woman who was quoted." Take that Tony Ryall.