In my experience, very few MPs are malevolent figures: they genuinely are in the job to make New Zealand a better place (as they see things) and it is not at all unusual to see friendships made across the aisle.
Parliament is a workplace, albeit a very unusual one, and like most workers MPs just want to get on with their colleagues and get the job done.
The unexpected adjournment was a reminder that while politics is proposition and opposition, those advancing their ideas are real people with genuine human concerns.
Before Parliament came to a shuddering halt the House did get through the first reading of the snappily entitled Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme - Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill, one of those rare pieces of legislation where Labour and National - mostly - see eye to eye.
In 2002 the then Labour government passed the well-intentioned Climate Change Response Act 2002 which - among many initiatives - allowed farmers who swapped their entire property over from tending cows and sheep to tending trees, to register for the emissions trading scheme.
Farmers, like most businesspeople, are practical. Once it eventuated that there was more money in lumber than livestock, pines started proliferating and productive farmland stopped generating food.
New Zealand First Taieri list MP Mark Patterson offered the Bill his full-throated endorsement. Advancing this law change is part of the National-NZ First coalition agreement and is an issue close to Mr Patterson’s heart: he has seen many properties in the vicinity of his Lawrence farm given over to trees.
"This is the most consequential Bill to come before this House in this term of Parliament for our rural communities," he said.
"Whole-of-farm conversions of some of our most productive land, if left unchecked, are in the process of shuttering large swathes of rural New Zealand. Action is both necessary and overdue."
Beef and sheep farms were doing decent business at the moment, but the current price for carbon credits meant trees were far more profitable. What’s more, on current trends trees were about to become competitive with dairy farming - the backbone of New Zealand’s economy.
"I know: I planted some myself; I’ve taken advantage of this scheme," he confessed.
"Why would I not? It would be looking a gift horse in the mouth."
Mr Patterson said he came not to damn forestry - a $6 billion export sector in its own right - but to encourage the right trees being planted in the right place.
"It does create opportunities to integrate forestry in with sheep and beef farming primarily, in a mosaic-type approach, and it can help cash-flow farm succession. It’s not all down side, by any means, for our rural communities."
Dunedin Labour MP Rachel Brooking said while Labour thought it was slightly ambitious to hope this Bill could solve the woes of rural communities, we could all (well, apart from the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, who voted no) agree there was a problem.
"We think that some more fixing will be needed in addition to this Bill," she said.
"We heard the Hon Mark Patterson speak before about a piece of farmland that he owns where he planted some trees because that is what the economics were telling him to do.
"He didn’t have to do it, but it made good financial sense, and people will follow the incentives."
Ms Brooking noted the issue was not trees per se, but how to disincentivise carbon forests on good food-producing farmland.
"These are pine trees that are planted to stay put. They might be harvested once, but then they’re going to stay in the ground.
"It’s different from plantation forestry whereby foresters are out there planting the trees and then planning to cut them down."
While broadly backing the stated intent of the Bill, Ms Brooking took issue - as the opposition has with other pieces of legislation - with the short time the environment select committee will have to consider the legislation.
"The report back is only August 20, which is not much time, but it is better than all stages under urgency, which, of course, this government likes to do."
Not quite peace in our time, but it was a start.
