Ryan Bridge: MPs need to stop doing stuff for social media likes

There's a perception out there that some of the younger MPs either don't know what they're doing in Parliament or are just doing stuff to get likes on social media.

I'm going to be so real right now with you – some of it's actually true.

Karl du Fresne: The vacuum at the heart of the democratic process

Ever heard of Naisi Chen?

No, me neither. Then how about Mark Cameron, Karen Chhour, Emily Henderson, Marja Lubeck, Liz Craig, Camilla Belich, Ibraham Omer, Teanau Tuiono, Damien Smith, Lemauga Lydia Sosene, Simon Court and Helen White?

They are all current, serving Members of Parliament. Chen, Craig, Lubeck, White, Belich, Sosene and Omer are Labour list MPs. Cameron, Court, Chhour and Smith got into Parliament on the ACT list. Tuiono represents the Greens and Henderson is the Labour MP for Whangarei.

My point in running these names past you is merely to illustrate that there are people sitting in the House of Representatives whom most of us have never heard of. I follow politics reasonably closely and most of those 13 names are unfamiliar to me.