Culture

This Twitter Account Is Posting All The Brilliantly Weird And Stupid Things Politicians Say In Parliament

Fun fact: Peter Dutton was called "potato head" in the House of Reps the other day.

by Hannah Hawkins  11 February 2016

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When Australian politics isn’t being deeply frustrating and profoundly depressing, it is an accidental live comedy show. Thanks to the extremely limited prerequisites to becoming a politician (read: how to breathe and have a pulse), the Australian Parliament is a big mixing pot of bizarre old men and people who got the wrong address but stayed anyway because they felt too awkward leaving.

Recording all of these characters saying things during parliamentary proceedings, is the Hansard of Australia’s Parliament — an official log of transcripts of debates in the Senate, House of Representatives, Federation Chamber and parliamentary committees. And now, tweeting out some of the more colourful excerpts, is the incredibly entertaining and somehow not satirical Found in the Hansard Twitter account.

There’s some pretty great things in there, including Christopher Pyne’s very weird and long-winded metaphor about leaves, Stephen Conroy’s enthusiastic declaration that he likes fibre and a self-conscious Ian Macdonald holding a committee up to complain about some unflattering photos he just saw of himself in The Age. It’s best not to ask questions; just take this for what it is — ridiculous things coming out of the mouths of elected government officials during recorded, taxpayer-funded meetings.

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And have a bonus excerpt from reporter Mark Di Stefano, who picked up Bill Heffernan’s “fuck that’s risky shit”:

You’re welcome.

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