"Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod" is the most awesome job title in all of history

Parliament met today, all the members were sworn in.

Some things I noticed.

Nearly all Coalition MPs made an oath (which includes references to God rather than an affirmation which does not.)  The PM and Deputy and many Labor MPs made affirmations.  I don't believe that being religious necessarily makes one conservative by any stretch of the imagination, but does being conservative tend to make one religious?  Is there another explanation for the apparent correlation?

Two MPs, Michael Danby (Labour, Melbourne Ports, VIC) and Josh Frydenberg (Liberal, Kooyong, VIC) wore kippah while taking their oaths.

Baby of the House (the informal title of the youngest MP) Wyatt Roy (who is 20 but looks to be under 16 and who probably has a hard time buying alcohol) had the biggest and goofiest grin on his face during his swearing in.  It was kind of endearing actually.

Later there was some intrigue over the position of deputy speaker.  ( I accept that this may be incomprehensible to non-politicos, but it's too late at night to change it. )

Ok, enough dull political tactics.

TW: Improvised.  I didn't have much time between work and trivia and so I tried a variety of things that happened to be available at any given moment, but I did try to work at high intensity for the time I was there.  I did managed 25 pullups consecutively.

At trivia we won comfortably, despite getting the right anwser on "a team sport played over a distance of 7.2 metres" but not writing it down.  We would have won the jackpot prize of $260 if I had changed my teammate's answers on the nationality of the first Secretary General of the UN and the name of a cape in West Australia.