🤬 What is unparliamentary language?

Parliamentary debates can be heated — but there are rules about what members can and can’t say.

That’s according to New Zealand’s Office of the Clerk, which has kept a list of banned expressions used in parliament since 1933.

The rules cover the usual culprits — accusations of lying, insults, and general bad manners — but the list itself reads more like a comedy.

Alongside the tame “Silly” and “Racist”, you’ll find gems like the 1959 entry: “Member not fit to lick the shoes of the Prime Minister.”

And as the years rolled on, the insults only got more absurd. By the 1980s, one MP had resorted to the timeless phrase “Quigley Wiggly.”