Gail Alexan­der

Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have a du­ty to change the way they do busi­ness in the Par­lia­ment since they need to set a bet­ter ex­am­ple for youths, and sea­soned politi­cians on both sides must help set the ex­am­ple, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray has ap­pealed.

"When we leave this house, we must leave as par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, not like a J'Ou­vert band, with mud plas­tered all over us," Paray said in his maid­en ad­dress in yes­ter­day's 2016 bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

Paray said a fierce bat­tle has been rag­ing on so­cial me­dia over the MPs' con­duct. He told Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie there would be no me­dia but so­cial me­dia in fu­ture and the sit­u­a­tion was a game chang­er.

"It's a bat­tle­field–be cau­tious."

He said some­one had said in ban­ter that the first-time MPs are "chil­dren." "Well, chil­dren learn what they live. Treat us, the young MPs as your chil­dren in this house, lead by ex­am­ple and to­geth­er as one na­tion we'll be un­stop­pable."

He said he had three chil­dren who had pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er giv­en the Par­lia­ment chan­nel a glance, but now viewed it be­cause he was in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, he said his 13-year-old had told him: "You all wast­ing time in Par­lia­ment."

Paray said he was al­ways greet­ed with ut­most re­spect by par­lia­ment po­lice and treat­ed very pro­fes­sion­al­ly by par­lia­ment staff.

He said that was be­cause non-MPs viewed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans as the "au­thors of their fu­ture...and they ask on­ly for us to come here and chart a way for­ward for T&T to grow."

He said, sad­ly, he had yet to ex­pe­ri­ence that pride in the Par­lia­ment since mem­bers' be­hav­iour "is leav­ing a bit­ter taste in the mouths of our cit­i­zens across the board on both sides. I don't think we're earn­ing the re­spect of the peo­ple in this build­ing...much less the peo­ple of T&T. I want to earn that re­spect, not de­mand it from them, nei­ther have it of­fered to me free of charge.

"Last Sat­ur­day we were so busy pound­ing away at each oth­er that we for­got or per­haps we didn't care there were chil­dren in the au­di­ence. I'm afraid to ven­ture a thought what was go­ing through their minds dur­ing that pre­sen­ta­tion."

Paray said the large num­ber of new MPs in the Par­lia­ment had caused par­lia­ment view­er­ship to in­crease. "We must nev­er dis­ap­point our au­di­ence with dis­plays un­be­com­ing of the no­ble cit­i­zens we are. I plead with sea­soned politi­cians on both sides to set the right tone and at­mos­phere as we con­duct T&T's busi­ness."

Com­ment­ing on the gov­ern­ment's "We-in-charge-now" stance, he added, "My ques­tion is, 'In charge of what'?

Paray said the Op­po­si­tion was in charge of en­sur­ing the Gov­ern­ment was ac­count­able to the peo­ple, ex­am­in­ing gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture/re­port­ing and bring­ing con­stituents' le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions to Par­lia­ment and "re­mind­ing gov­ern­ment MPs every ac­tion will be mon­i­tored and scru­ti­nised over the term."

Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had spo­ken to gov­ern­ment MPs about their con­duct in the House.