Ele Ludemann: Lying about lying

If three’s anything worse than lying, it’s lying about lying:

TĀKUTA FERRIS: —

. . . A knowledge gap is a dangerous thing. It allows lies to be presented as truths. Politicians call this obfuscation—the art of making something unclear, intentionally vague, ambiguous, to conceal or obscure the truth, to confuse others. Lies, in other words. Many in this House are masters of it, and it is a disservice to those who voted you into your positions. Unless, of course—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It is simply not acceptable for someone, inexperienced as he is, to nevertheless accuse other MPs— . . .

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: He made the allegation that members of this Parliament are liars, and he should have been stopped in his tracks right then.

SPEAKER: My apologies, I didn’t quite pick that up. But if that is what the member said, then he should withdraw and apologise. I’d also make it very clear to the member that reading speeches is not part of the tikanga of the House either. So the member may wish to continue, but if he has made that statement—we’ll obviously check Hansard later—then he should withdraw and apologise as quickly as possible.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: I haven’t made that statement.

SPEAKER: Oh, well—

Hon Shane Jones: Point of order—point of order.

SPEAKER: No, hang on—wait on, wait on. We can’t go back and hear what was said inside this House, but we will check it and I do hope the member hasn’t misled the House with that particular claim. . .

Is Lies, in other words. Many in this House are masters of it, accusing MPs of lying?

Audrey Young says it is:

Winston Peters may be the oldest MP in the House, but he is not hard of hearing and his political antennae are always finely tuned when one of the MPs from Te Pāti Māori is speaking. When one of them, Te Tai Tonga MP Tākuta Ferris, strayed from the rules yesterday and suggested MPs tell lies, Peters pounced.

Speaker Gerry Brownlee had been distracted and hadn’t heard what Ferris was saying, so sought the MP’s word on the matter. Ferris denied it, unfortunately. That is not a time to be tricky with words and to claim deniability because you had only said they tell lies, not that they are liars. . .

His claim that MPs are the masters of telling lies is a minor offence compared to the grave offence of denying it. A member’s word is meant to be synonymous with his or her honour. Ferris made the mistake of thinking that just because it is commonly believed that MPs tell lies, you can say it in the House – or that just because he didn’t name an MP, he could get away with it. That is no defence because it then becomes an offence against the whole House.

The MP will have to withdraw and apologise to avoid a referral to the Privileges Committee. He has certainly proved his point with his own blatant porky. But the process may take some time. It is understood Peters has filed a formal complaint to the Speaker and Ferris has 10 days to respond. . . .

This may be of no interest to anyone but political tragics but it does Ferris no credit that what is the most publicity, and possibly the first, since becoming an MP is for accusing his colleagues of lying and then lying about it.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.