Establishing the Agreed-Upon Rules of Conduct

It certainly wasn’t the then, National Party leader Simon Bridges finest moment when a recorded private conversation became very public where he described, a member of his own caucus. West Coast list MP Maureen Pugh, as f… useless.

For Bridges, the leak, the lack of discretion, the judgment, the opinion certainly was a wakeup call for him.

However, it is somewhat ironic that, six years later, the same MP, Maureen Pugh, who now serves as the Assistant Speaker of New Zealand’s Parliament, has inadvertently done us a favour by giving New Zealand a wake-up call.

She has faced criticism from some quarters because she failed to ‘read the room’ instead she had adhered to the rules of the house recently by closing down a speech given by a member from the public gallery.

The man from the iwi of Whakatōhea. Proceeded to speak ahead of a waiata which would have been a fitting and approved celebration following the third reading of the treaty settlement between the crown and the iwi.

I’m not going to discuss the rights and wrongs as it has been thrashed out in parliament the press and iwi.

In the course of shutting down, the alleged speech, someone from the gallery called out to Pugh to “read the room”, indeed had she done so, to allow it to continue would have been a breach of the rules of behaviour set out in parliaments standing orders.

Read the room is an expression which has been around for an exceedingly long time and both politicians and comedians have been adept at, some, better than others.

But what does read the room mean, like really what does read the room actually mean.

To answer that I sought an explanation from the most reliable source available, in this case it was google it means is to pick up on the subtle, nonverbal cues of a group of people.

In parliament that evening, those in the Gallery were in a celebratory frame of mind, but as King Solomon put it, there is a time and place, this may have been the time, but it was not the place.

As a society we have rules, guidelines and laws in place to not only as protection, but to set boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not.

When you are a guest in someone’s house, it is the done thing to accept the rules of the house.

A quick example is in a church setting, there is a certain reverence and decorum expected from attendees, likewise, on a marae setting, or in this case parliament.

The abandonment of rules whether they are small or large are fraught with all sorts of dangers.

Now there are some.no, everyone flaunts rules every day, it’s just in our nature, but on the whole, society accepts rules laws and occasionally we like to break through the boundaries as every teenager tries to.

The issue has become, not about bumping boundaries but breaking through to the other side.

If you allow the mood of the room to dictate in society, where they abandon centuries of decorum and allow all out freedom, the result is anarchy/revolution or another simplistic explanation – mob rules and haven’t we seen just how well that has gone.

A good example or the results reading the room can be found in all periods of time but the most well-known was when the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, Pontius Pilate went against his conscience knowing Jesus to be innocent allowed the room, in this instance the crowd whose fervour had been whipped up by Jesus’s opponents to decide on his fate.

Today is no different, instead of Jesus opponents we see opinion being whipped up primarily by agitators who believe their rights supersede everyone else’s, and instead of the Pharisees and Sadducees, today’s agitators are those who control today’s media.

We know and expect boundaries, every society has their own, break it down, right down, to your own self.

We all know when we cross the line to the dark side, we feel a little uncomfortable, one of two things happen, you either feel convicted and make amends, or you start to feel comfortable, its not so bad, but the next time the boundary crossed is a bigger one and that little fall, that mis step becomes a slippery slope and who knows where it leads,

Do you know there was a time in history that there was only a moral code society lived by, but then one-person moral code became different to those around them.

It came to the stage in time where people cried out for rules, laws they could live by.

Everyone is aware of the Ten commandments, heard of them, don’t feel as though you have to phone friend to give you an answer to what they are.

What is not widely known was the receiver under inspiration of the giver, in this case Moses the receiver, and God the giver wrote what today is called the Mosaic Law in essence setting out the rule, the rights and wrongs, the boundaries of society. And the people asked for judges to administer this law.

New Zealand’s governance, based on the Westminster system and Mosaic Law, stands as a testament to the importance of rules.

If the government of the day were to listen to the room, it merely underscores the danger of abandoning these principles, suggesting that allowing the loudest voices to dictate societal norms could lead to chaos.

Imagine for a moment a country governed by those currently who shout the loudest about colonisation, sovereignty, past wrong, racial inequality, climate change, individual rights, gender issues and whatever toys they no longer find acceptable in the toy box.

But what happens to this type of governance when other voices grow louder?

Let’s go back to our reference in Google to read the room is to pick up on the subtle, nonverbal cues of a group of people.

These people are called “the silent majority” and there in lies an issue, we all know the squeaky wheel gets oiled, but when good men say and do nothing, that is what the result we will see.

What The silent majority does in its action to remain silent is exactly that silence.

Christian writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer summed I up in the days when the fascist was gaining power in Germany, he said ‘silence in the face of evil is evil itself’.

In his ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail,’ King said in his silence complicity argument “we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? Proverbs 24;12

So, reading the subtle nature of the country, just what is the mood of the room of all new Zealanders.

The majority I am sure is for this country to agree to disagree and move towards unity which will bring about prosperity.

Maureen Pugh in her role as the speaker of parliament to my mind, in administering the rules of standing orders relating to decency and decorum should be applauded when faced with opposing voices and opinions.

We today are still fortunate where our rules, our society, even our country, our foundation was set up on the word of GOD and for that one reason we should be thankful.

I am disheartened by the many New Zealanders who understand that but choose to remain ignorant or just defiantly refuse to acknowledge the source of moral values and ethics.

By doing so, they do not see, they still are blinded by what is happening.

Unlike Maureen Pugh, who indeed read, not what was in front of her, but had read the rules of her environment, todays culture does not understand, the weight of the actual time period in which we live.

From a cultural perspective, our inability to recognize, comprehend, and accept the divinely ordained principles for behaviour results in our nation’s failure to accurately gauge the societal climate.