This year’s instalment of the State of the Nation Address truly raised the bar and not in a good way.
As a former WWE fan, I felt like I was watching Wrestlemania or the Royal Rumble, all that was missing was a ring, referee, spandex suits and cool fireworks with theme songs before the big showdown.
I mean, we all knew there would be some drama and a few spicy remarks from angry MPs and a lot of calls for order… that has become pretty much standard in our Parliament and it is scary how it has become normal to us.
How do other countries view us? And before you say, ‘well, other countries have it worse, chairs fly across the Parliament when it gets heated’ we cannot use that as an excuse to justify some of the things that happen in our own Parliament. The scenes by the red carpet are totally different from the scenes inside the Parliament, everyone is all smiles and posing for the cameras and inside it’s a whole new different story.
So unreal, the drama will have you popping corn and calling all your friends to ask if they are watching.
As much as we find some of these things amusing when we see memes online and newspaper cartoons we should be concerned as to where our country is heading. Is this how all Parliament sittings will be? Is violence going to become a common thing?
Heavy military presence? I certainly hope not. Surely, this is not what we expect of our Parliament as a country.
The State of the Nation Address trended for all the wrong reasons and people know more about the scuffles and insults than the actual state of the nation. It is totally unacceptable that we have to sit through hours of insults from MPs to one another but to having full blown violence erupt is something else. Slippery slope, folks, slippery slope.
