Swatting A Pesky Little Gnat Whilst Swallowing a Full-Blown Dromedary: A Guilty Man Seeks In Vain to Deflect Attention From His Own 'High Crimes and Misdemeanours' & Get Some Semblance of Relief From His Own Guilty Conscience: Such Was the Opportunistic Decision of Trevor Mallard, the Speaker of New Zealand's Parliament, the Other Day to Have His Long-time Political Opposite and Nemesis From Hutt South Referred to the All-Powerful Privileges Committee...For the Utter Sacrilege of Using Semi-Doctored Footage, Evidently, Of a Newbie Labour M.P. Spouting Forth a Whole Bunch of Inanities...While Mallard Himself - Though to Give Him SOME Credit Provided An Opportunity To His Opponent Therein - Successfully Batted Off, C/o His Party's Absolute Parliamentary Majority and the Fact That It No Longer Is Much More Than A Bunch of Yes-Men, Correction: Yes-Women - An Attempt to Have Him Removed, Through a Motion of No Confidence, Taken 'Without Leave', As Ever Is Parliamentarians' Wont, As Speaker...For Needlessly Defaming And Thus Besmirching the Reputation of A Parliamentary Staffer Many Months Ago...Effectively Wrecking His Career Prospects And Arguably Even His Very Life....And All Because Speaker Mallard Didn't Have the Nous, Correction: Sense of Decency and Humanity, To Apologize Lickety-Split Upon Learning That His Allegation of Rape Was Wholly Unfounded, Place This Upon the Public Record, and Accordingly Prevent a Long, Drawn-Out Investigation Which Resulted in the Taxpayer Having to Front Up With Millions...

But personally I could care less about the taxpayer doss, it's the the principle involved of essentially using 'parliamentary privilege' to destroy an innocent man's reputation and future - where that individual effectively has no real comeback short of suing the Speaker for the shirt off his back - that so greatly irks myself and so many...

...so all credit to Hutt South M.P. Chris Bishop...

...and I do hereby declare my intention - all things being equal and circumstances allowing - to forthwith personally launch a petition to see *Mallard himself hauled before said committee: not only for thus effectively trivializing its function, but by being the proverbial kettle calling the pot black...

...and by his deplorable, reprehensible conduct bringing the reputation of Parliament and elected politicians still lower in the public's estimation...

...and once you're gravitating around the level of used-car and insurance salesmen not to mention media/journalists, well, you've pretty well hit rock-bottom, haven't you...

*Who, otherwise, unlike so many commentators and Opposition politicians, I actually consider to be a reasonably good if highly unorthodox and idiosyncratic Speaker.

Postscript: Having not duly undertaken said petition, some explanation is obviously called for...and this is it: inertia as per usual getting the better of me - so many other distractions and time demands incessantly requiring my urgent attention, the week moved on to Friday the 19th or thereabouts, at which time - whilst still suffering from a nagging cough/flu (or whatnot) and endless familial demands upon my every moment - two things transpired (in the interim): apparently (as per the daily 'introduction' to parliamentary TV) someone else perhaps had beaten me to the post, if, as I believed I'd heard, someone else had a petition before Parliament that very day demanding something similar, or at least the due exoneration of Chris Bishop, M.P....and the simultaneous actual effective exoneration of selfsame M.P. by the Privileges Committee itself over Speaker Mallard's referral of Bishop thereto...

So when all was said and done, 'natural justice' appeared to have been done for Chris Bishop, and that by the Committee's Labour majority to boot, effectively giving Mallard the two fingered salute (so to speak)...

Still, every 'sitting day' Chris Bishop keeps on seeking parliamentary leave, evidently, to remove Speaker Mallard, so here's trying...

Or, as a (temporarily forgotten) singer-songwriter upon a record of mine puts it, 'God loves a man who tries'...or rather: 'There goes a man who tried'... 

Post-Postscript:

On a related matter, as per the Sexual Violence legislation currently hastening through Parliament, all credit to Simon Bridges in particular. Whilst rightly 'fulsomely' acknowledging and hailing the thrust and overall content of said bill, he properly questioned the validity of effectively finding someone (essentially male) guilty till proven innocent, the very opposite of our long-established and respected code of Westminster-based justice...