New Zealand's parliament speaker is perhaps better practised at quieting MPs than calming babies, but images of the powerful politician doing exactly that went viral this week. Trevor Mallard, the speaker of the country's House of Representatives, was filmed bottle-feeding and calming the one-month-old son of a fellow politician on Wednesday. Mallard later shared the images, tweeting: "Today a VIP took the chair with me."
The photographs and film went viral, with many praising the high-ranking politician. Tutanekai Smith-Coffey is the son of Labour MP Tamati Coffey, who returned to parliament that day after his paternity leave, and who tweeted: "I JUST LOVE HIM!!" Tutanekai is the biological son of his partner, Tim Smith, and was born by surrogate.
Other MPs obviously enjoyed the newborn's visit to parliament too. Green party politician Golriz Ghahraman tweeted: "Who needs to see this today? Every single last one of us, that's who." "Lovely to have a baby in the House, and what a beautiful one," said Gareth Hughes, another Green MP.