Passion, humour and experience were on display during the new Government's first question time yesterday and two members of Parliament caught the eye of Newstalk ZB's political editor.

Christopher Luxon’s first question time as Prime Minister featured much debate about his Government’s approach to the conflict between Israel and Hamas and comments on the Treaty of Waitangi referendum.

But it was the newly appointed speaker of the house, Gerry Brownlee, who got the chocolate fish from ZB's Jason Walls.

The political editor praised Brownlee for letting debate flow freely and respectfully interjecting when it was required.

"I think he did quite well in the speaker's chair," he told the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.

"He played off a couple of things quite well, in fact he forgot a couple of members' names and had to apologise at the end and to be honest - I don't blame him, because I'm still learning the crop of 2020, let alone 2023."

The discussion over New Zealand's approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza drew passion and tears, as Hosking observed, but he noted very little had been accomplished by the end of the debate.

Walls said it came down to a motion to support moves towards a ceasefire, rather than actually calling for a ceasefire, which seemed to upset the Green Party.

"Winston [Peters] who, after Gerry, I thought was the second-best player of the day made quite a good point on question 12," said Walls.

"He essentially said 'listen, we can only work towards a ceasefire if all parties agree to it’ and there's no way on God's green Earth that Hamas will agree to a ceasefire, because there was a ceasefire in place on October 7 when they carried out the atrocities."

Walls went on to credit Peters further over his institutional knowledge, which shone during the debates during his comments about the Government's botched Scott Base project.

"It will need more investigation and looking into," said Walls. He believed Peters saw his role as someone who could help at the beginning because he knows his way around the rules.

"[Peters] was standing up and using the supplementary question in a way that supported the Government - we saw that when he was first with Jacinda Ardern, it was a way for him to say 'listen, I've been around for a while, I know this works - let me help you'."