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:

Labor asking about the time a DPS staffer licked his finger and tasted a white powder found in the public area in parliament house that was suspected to be anthrax. @kimbakit asking why he did it given anthrax has no smell or taste... #estimates

— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) February 26, 2018

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.

It seems we need to add "Don't taste random white powder" to the old adage of "Don't eat the yellow snow". #estimates

— Ms Miranda Meow Meow (@miranda_maybe) February 26, 2018

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?