26 February, 2018

What not to do when you’re in parliament

It’s becoming clear that working in Parliament House causes some kind of condition in people that causes them to forget certain rules of behaviour in polite and civil society that most of us knew when we left high school.

It’s one thing that there was the need for the bonk ban, but then today in Senate Estimate, there was this:

I’m less worried about Anthrax being tasteless and odourless that I am about it being FATAL.

After I asked this on twitter, Miranda_Maybe asked if we might need add this to the list of obviously stupid things that people still need to be told not to do.


So in the interests of saving further embarrassment, discomfort, resignation and spills, here’s an incomplete list of things you shouldn’t do when you’re in parliament. Or in life in general.

Don’t…
  1. Eat the yellow snow
  2. Taste random white powder
  3. Cross the road against the traffic lights
  4. Bonk your staff
  5. Take lollies from strangers
  6. Move your staff to another department so you can keep bonking them
  7. Drink and drive
  8. Take a helicopter when you could drive
  9. Leave your luggage unattended
  10. Forget to check your citizenship status
  11. Lick frozen light poles
  12. Bite into a whole raw onion* (thanks to Michael Byrnes)
  13. Run with scissors
  14. Summarily bring back knighthoods
  15. Play with your food
  16. Play with guns
Any others?