An unmitigated catastrophe is unfolding at Parliament tonight as election results have produced an enormous overhang for both sides of the political aisle, with the resulting additional seats overflowing the debating chamber and causing significant structural damage to the building.
While Parliament is designed to accommodate an overhang, the debating chamber is physically quite small, and was unprepared for the number of seats that were added tonight.
More and more seats came crashing down in Parliament’s debating chamber as National and Te Pāti Māori racked up more and more electorate wins, and it wasn’t long before there wasn’t any room left.
But MMP doesn’t account for the physical size of Parliament, only the theoretical size, and so the seats kept on coming, toppling onto the Speaker’s chair, smashing through walls, and one even becoming stuck in the gallery above the chamber.
“The damage is horrendous,” said one firefighter who was amongst the first to arrive on scene. “Some of these walls are clearly load-bearing, and as it stands, much of the building is unsafe to enter. There’s exposed wiring everywhere, burst pipes, some pink fluffy stuff that frankly didn’t taste anything like what it looked like.”
As he was speaking, a seat smashed through a window and onto the ground behind him.
“Alright, can we, I think we need to move back from here,” he said, physically gesturing for assembled media to move further away from the building.
It’s unknown how long it might take to repair the building, and with results still being counted, there could be much more damage yet to come.
The death toll currently stands at 1.