Peter Dunne: Speaker of the House of Representatives

If being Leader of the Opposition is, as often described, the worst job in politics, then being Speaker of the House of Representatives is, as Gerry Brownlee is now discovering, the loneliest.

The office of Speaker ranks highly in New Zealand, third behind the Governor-General and the Prime Minister in the official Order of Precedence. Appointment as Speaker carries the entitlement to the honorific “Right Honourable” for life, and a near-automatic Knighthood on leaving office.