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

[luckycanuck]

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.  The previous Labor oriented speaker of the house was re-elected unanimously (and he is very good at his job) but it wasn't apparent that his own party wanted to retain him in that position, having been quite willing to offer it to someone else to avoid losing a vote on the floor.  The deputy is generally also from the Government as they are expected to have the numbers and the second deputy speaker is generally from the opposition.  But the Government nominated an Opposition MP hoping they could convince them to decline to vote on legislation and thus give them a bit of breathing space.  The Opposition nominated another Opposition MP.  A ballot was held between the two, the winner being deputy and the loser being second deputy, but with only two on the ballot both positions went to Opposition members.  Moreover, neither of them will be giving up their voting rights as part of a formal or informal arrangement so the Government screwed themselves out of a position with no benefit.  Labor chose not to nominate the previous deputy speaker, one of their own, and she didn't look too pleased at having been shafted in this way.

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.

Comments

[bakerypenguin.livejournal.com]

Ah, the correct but unwritten answer - I made the same mistake in my Year 12 SAT.

[luckycanuck.livejournal.com]

We were debating answers and came up with the right one (the other key trivia guy and I both agreed) but neither of us wrote it down. In the end we won by two so it was a moot point, but I always like to win by more if possible.