Labour MP Georgina Beyer has come under fire for taking part in a ballroom dancing competition for television, Dancing With The Stars on TV One. In his weekly conversation with Prime Minister Helen Clark, Newstalk ZB breakfast host Paul Holmes asked, "Are the duties of an MP so light that one of your MPs, Georgina Beyer, is able to devote large sections of her week to learn ballroom dancing for a TV dancing contest?" The Prime Minister responded that MPs do have some weekends and evenings available, and that similar questions were not forthcoming a few years back when National MP Bill English, then leader of the party, took boxing lessons for the Fight For Life. Beyer told the Dominion Post last week that she was struggling to make the ten hours of rehearsal time required for the show. "The conflict between Parliament and doing rehearsals is very tight – and of course Parliament has to take the priority," she said. "The first couple of weeks I had floods in my electorate, the John Tamihere saga and then the last week before recess we had urgency and that's 18-hour days back-to-back."