Let’s start by bringing people together — by finding common ground.  The one thing that ties together the politically-minded of all stripes is vicious satire.  Leftists and right-wingers; commies, centrists, and corporatists; greens and globalists; lovers of Liberty and lovers of Leviathan: we all share that most noble of human traits: we mock, slander, send up, take the piss, and otherwise caricature the politicians we despise in every way and by every means imaginable.  A multipartisan government easily mocked would truly unite its country.

Unless, of course, that country is New Zealand:

• MPs outlaw satire in New Zealand (Press Gazette)

To wit:

New Zealand’s Parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and ridicule of MPs in Parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism.

The new standing orders, voted in last month, concern the use of images of Parliamentary debates, and make it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for “satire, ridicule or denigration”.

The rules apply any to broadcasts or rebroadcasts in any medium.

They also ban the use of such footage for “political advertising or election campaigning”, except with the permission of all members shown.

(Aside: what’s up with these single-sentence paragraphs?  Does “PA Mediapoint” fear that s/h/its readers will be frightened by long blocks of text?  Sigh.)

This essentially amounts to poor sportsmanship upon the part of the MPs.  Satire is not a matter of national security, nor is it damaging to the nation as a whole.  These MPs simply don’t want those mean, wicked citizens to hurt their poor widdle feewings.

Of course, that’s not how it’s being spun:

Leader of the House and deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen said the rules were designed to prevent the misrepresentation of what happened in the House through partial editing or other trickery. He insisted that they would be interpreted liberally and would not constrain legitimate debate and comment on politics.

So, Parliament just voted itself sweeping powers of censorship to address a particular well-defined issue (misrepresentation of events in the House), but promises not to abuse them?  Bullshit.  If Parliament wanted to address misrepresentation and nothing else, the standing orders would have addressed misrepresentation and nothing else.  This is a power grab: “let’s see how much we can get away with”.