Points of order

The politicians are about to get a break. Kind of. A rare two-week recess starts next week, meaning it’s back to the electorate, meeting voters, thinking about the future, and about the past. Before that break let’s take a look back at the week that was.

■ A bouquet to whoever in National decided not to make an issue of the Speaker’s plan for a new Parliament building. It would be easy for an Opposition to make some hay out of tens of millions being spent on a new building to house the privileged, but Parliament truly does need a new building – for years we’ve been renting an office block for millions from a foreign landlord and now that building is out of use, MPs are crammed into the library, ministers down the corridor from reporters, and staff are working offsite. The taxpayer will save money in the long run, and National will be back in Government in the long run, too.

■ Speaking of the new buildings, reporters decided to use some of our precious time with MPs on Tuesday to ask them for a ‘‘wishlist’’ for the new digs. This may seem silly, but you learn a lot about MPs from such exercises. Chris Bishop was bold enough to say he wanted better coffee, always a risk when the people who make his coffee at Copperfields may hear about these comments. Matt Doocey said he wanted a group hug room for when things got bad – obviously the National caucus room doesn’t quite cut it. Simon Bridges wanted the Billiards Room back – not because he ever really used it, but more because he liked the idea of it. On the Labour side, Chris Hipkins earned a collective groan when he said he had enough fun just doing his job in the Beehive, while Grant Robertson suggested jacuzzis for every press gallery office. That would be a fairly big upgrade, given several of them don’t even have windows right now.

■ Finally we will give the ‘‘not quite, Dad’’ award to National’s Todd McClay for praising the last National government in a press release for enabling the ‘‘Lord of the Rings sequels’’ to be filmed here. The dreadful Hobbit series he is presumably referring to was, in fact, a prequel.