The end of the year can bring out the weird in everyone, and on Thursday afternoon one WA MP succumbed.

In his end-of-year speech to WA Parliament, Labor minister David Templeman ran through the usual “thank yous” to MPs, staff, families and loved ones, before launching into a rendition of a Monty Python song.

Templeman said “The Galaxy Song” from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life was appropriate because: “ it reminds us all that we are very much—all of us—a tiny speck in this amazing universe.”

Despite Speaker Peter Watson asking if Templeman could “get it over and done with quickly”, the Minister persisted.

Camera Icon This was truly a “very special” adjournment. Credit: WA Parliament.

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving And revolving at 900 miles an hour. It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned, The sun that is the source of all our power. Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, Are moving at a million miles a day, In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, But out by us it’s just three thousand light-years wide.

The SPEAKER: Face the Chair.

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: Continuing — We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, We go ‘round every two hundred million years; And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe. Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, In all of the directions it can whiz —

The SPEAKER: Come on, member!

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: In a minute!

The SPEAKER: The crayfish are waiting!

Mr D.A. TEMPLEMAN: Yes — As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth; And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space, ‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!

While there can be some Monty-Pythonesque moments in State politics, this one takes the cake.