From Rulebook to Ruin: Why New Zealand’s Parliament Can’t Escape Its Own Madness

New Zealand’s Parliament reflects the nation’s inner turmoil. A critique of chaos, meaning loss, and the path back to civic sanity

There are moments when the outward performance of power becomes a mirror of a deeper inner collapse. To those who watched the scenes of disorder in New Zealand’s Parliament—the shouting, the staged protests, the procedural interruptions—these were not merely political gestures or lapses in decorum. They were symptoms. Not of an unruly caucus alone, but of a wider psychic malaise that has begun to engulf a nation no longer at ease with itself. The punishment recently handed down to Te Pāti Māori members, for breaching standing orders in what was described as a parliamentary protest, was symbolic in itself—a gesture of control against a disorder that is far more deep-rooted, far less containable by rules, procedure, or protocol. New Zealand’s Parliament is no longer simply the arena where ideas are debated, but the stage on which the collective psychic disintegration of its people is projected.

In psychology, it is well established that the environment in which a person lives reflects their inner life. From Carl Jung to contemporary cognitive behavioural theorists, there is a near-universal recognition that disorder in one’s surroundings often corresponds to unresolved internal conflict. Jung would say the shadow has crept into the living room. Freud, ever the interpreter of displaced energies, might suggest that the chaotic environment is a symbolic battlefield where internal anxiety meets its external match. Karen Horney observed that neurosis often manifests not in clinical pathology but in persistent, everyday coping strategies—withdrawal, aggression, or compulsive compliance. In the case of a disordered home, or a disordered parliament, one might see a similar triangulation at play: withdrawal from consensus, aggression as speech, and compliance with spectacle rather than substance. The Parliament, like a cluttered home, is speaking of things it cannot say aloud.

Dr. Darby Saxbe’s empirical study, which found higher cortisol levels in women who described their homes as cluttered, lends biological weight to this metaphor. Cortisol, the stress hormone, does not lie. A space that is chaotic does not only reflect stress; it perpetuates it. It creates a feedback loop in which psychological distress and environmental disorder feed one another until the occupant—whether a householder or a lawmaker—loses the capacity to discern cause from effect. There is no question that New Zealanders are stressed. Housing is unattainable. Bills are rising. Trust in institutions is plummeting. Political consensus has fractured not only along ideological lines but along epistemological ones—each side no longer merely disagrees with the other, but inhabits a different moral universe. The parliament, under such conditions, can no more maintain composure than an overburdened psyche can maintain tidiness. And yet, into this maelstrom marches the legislative equivalent of a broom: Standing Orders, procedural punishments, enforced apologies. These are necessary. But they are not enough.

Winston Peters’ recent post on social media, mocking the Parliament as a place “where they make the rules, then break them,” captures a deeper irony. His tone is sardonic, but his diagnosis is unwittingly psychological. The very act of legislating rules in an environment that increasingly disregards them is a form of self-delusion. Like a hoarder making fresh promises to organise next week, the Parliament lurches forward under the illusion that better rules will fix what is, in essence, an existential breakdown. The disillusionment with representative democracy, the rise of identity-based political theatre, the redefinition of offence and harm, and the recasting of freedom as either weapon or shield—all of this is not a consequence of bad political actors, but of a polity in crisis. And like any patient who is beginning to disassociate from reality, the more it is told to behave, the more it will act out.

It is tempting to look upon this scene and demand order—an iron-fisted return to discipline. But what if discipline itself is no longer trusted? Ayn Rand, that uncompromising advocate for the sovereign individual, would look at this Parliament not as a house of collective reason but as a madhouse of sacrificed reason. When speech is no longer anchored in logic, when the individual is subordinated to the feelings of the group, and when representation becomes a competition of victimhoods, Rand would say that we are witnessing the collapse not of politics, but of values. The celebration of irrational rebellion—of performative protests within the very chamber that demands coherence—is to her the final symptom of a culture that has lost its anchor. Freedom, in Rand’s view, is not the freedom to disrupt, to emote, or to offend for theatre’s sake. It is the freedom to think, to produce, to act rationally. New Zealand’s Parliament, in its current state, offers little defence of this definition. It reflects instead a society that has confused licence with liberty.

And yet there is a danger in going too far the other way. One can easily imagine the argument forming: that if disorder is a symptom, then it must be suppressed for the sake of health. This is the bureaucratic dream—the dream of order imposed from above. But as Dr. Randy Frost’s work on hoarding demonstrates, external control often fails when internal coherence is missing. The hoarder whose clutter is cleared without consent will recreate it. The child punished for messiness, without being taught how to manage their world, will rebel again. Likewise, the MPs suspended or censured for disruptive conduct may return chastened for a time, but the underlying conditions—mistrust, alienation, ideological division—will soon erupt again. You cannot police your way out of psychological disintegration.

It is this realisation that invites a darker conclusion. Perhaps there is nothing to be done. Perhaps this Parliament, this mess, is exactly what we deserve—not because we are inherently wicked, but because we are psychically unwell. Our collective inner life has been frayed by decades of meaninglessness disguised as progress. The community has been sacrificed to consumerism. The family to the state. The school to ideology. And now, the Parliament to chaos. Just as the mess in one’s home can reach a tipping point where even the owner no longer sees it, so too has this political disorder become invisible to those inside it. It is the new normal. And in time, it will only get worse.

Some have argued for a written constitution, for a renewed commitment to civility, for the recalibration of Māori and Pākehā rights within the Treaty framework. But these are structural interventions in what is ultimately a psychological wound. Until the New Zealander begins to feel at home in his own country again—safe, sovereign, and whole—he will lash out in any room he finds himself in, including the highest chamber in the land. This is not a call to abandon rules or standards. It is a call to understand that no matter how many procedural constraints we design, no matter how often we punish disruption, we will fail unless we reckon with the deeper fractures.

Freud might tell us that the disorder is repressed trauma emerging through parliamentary slips. Jung would suggest that we are witnessing the return of the repressed shadow: the aspects of ourselves we have denied, now returned with fury. Rand would say we have forfeited reason for spectacle, self-interest for self-pity. Dr. Wilhelm might point to compulsive disruptions as echoes of unresolved OCD—repetitions meant to stave off a fear we cannot name. Dr. Saxbe would warn that we are building an architecture of stress, not law. In this light, Parliament is not merely malfunctioning. It is symptomatic. And symptoms do not disappear by decree.

What, then, is left? Some will cling to process, as the obsessive clings to schedules. Others will embrace anarchy in the name of voice. But both are missing the point. The nation is not in need of better politicians, but of better self-understanding. Until New Zealanders begin to heal from the psychic wounds of dependency, disconnection, and a loss of shared narrative, their Parliament will continue to be a place of eruptions, not resolutions. This is not an argument against parliamentary order—it is a recognition that order cannot be imposed where disorder is the only form of self-expression still available.

In the end, perhaps the most haunting aspect of Peters’ quip is that it rings true. The rules are made, and then broken. And we laugh, or scoff, or scroll on. But beneath that irony is a truth that should terrify us: that the rule-making, like the rule-breaking, is no longer tethered to meaning. It is performance. It is the sick psyche staging a semblance of health. Like a hoarder who lays out neat piles amidst the chaos, we congratulate ourselves on restored decorum after a suspension, while ignoring the rot beneath. In such a system, what hope is there?

The house is not just messy. It is on fire. And no one is sure where the exits are.