Labour MP Phil Goff is under fire for a "misogynistic" barb directed at Attorney-General Chris Finlayson.
During a parliamentary debate on new spying laws yesterday, the pair traded insults about election defeats.
Goff mocked Finlayson for being "beaten on three occasions, each time by a woman".
"I've won 11 times and I've lost once, but the member in the chair [Finlayson] has lost three times," he said.
"You would think that would be a humbling experience, but the arrogance of the minister shows no sign at all that he's learnt from being beaten on three occasion, each time by a woman member of Parliament."
Finlayson ran against Annette King in the Rongotai electorate in 2008 and 2011. In 2005, he lost to former Labour MP Winnie Laban in Mana.
It's not the first time of course that Labour members have singled Christopher Finlayson out for abuse. As we have previously blogged, both those wonderfully liberal Labour MP's Trevor Mallard and Clayton Cosgrove are recorded for posterity in Hansard for calling Finlayson "Tinkerbell".
But Goff has even attracted attention from high up the Labour Party tree:
Kate Sutton tweeted that the Mt Roskill MP's remarks were "bad form".
"Its that kind of sexism the Labour Party doenst [sic] need," she said.
Kate Sutton is, of course, a former Women's Vice-president of the Labour Party, and is influential within the party's hierarchy. So we can't help but wonder; when the Labour Party proposed women-only electorate contests ( the Man-Ban), was Phil Goff's Roskill electorate the kind of electorate that they had in mind?
