It was a chaotic start to the week in the House on Tuesday afternoon with ACT's David Seymour coming under fire from Speaker Trevor Mallard and two National Party MPs getting the boot.
The House's sitting began at 2pm with COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins delivering a ministerial statement on the recent changes in alert levels.
In line with a recommendation in the 2020 review of Standing Orders - essentially Parliament's rules - MPs from other political parties can now not only respond to a ministerial statement, but also quiz the minister in a short question and answer session. The minister can then reply.
Seymour asked Hipkins several questions on Government's COVID-19 response before the Speaker indicated that his time had come to an end and that the minister could answer the last of his questions as part of his reply.
The ACT leader challenged this and questioned how time limits were allocated, to which Mallard responded by saying that if Seymour had gone to the Standing Orders committee, he would have heard the procedures being discussed.
Seymour said he was "always" there and took issue with Mallard's comments.
A back-and-forth ensued between the pair, with Seymour at one point calling the Speaker's remarks "superfluous" and "unnecessary", and Mallard saying he wasn't responsible for Seymour's "ignorance".
With Seymour continuing to raise Points of Order, Mallard issued him a warning: "To continue to raise Points of Order - it is a matter which has been dealt with very carefully in the House by me in the last week of the sitting - to continue to raise Points of Order in a way that is inappropriate is disorderly and there is only one result of that."
Seymour continued to pursue his point before high-ranking National Party MP Simon Bridges stood up.
"The issue is, it seems to me Mr Speaker, not so much what Mr Seymour is raising, but rather that what you did was criticise him for not being somewhere and then in the next speech that you gave..." Bridges said before being cut off by Mallard.
Bridges was then told to leave the House by the Speaker.
He wasn't the only one, however, with National's Nick Smith earlier asked to leave after interjecting at the end of one of Hipkin's responses.
Relations between the National Party and Mallard have been tense in recent months after the party called for a vote of no confidence in the Speaker for mistakenly implying a parliamentary staff member had committed rape. That motion was unsuccessful.
Bridges and National's education spokesperson Paul Goldsmith stormed out of the House in February after a spat with Mallard.
