Hipkins ChrisSTANDING ORDERSSessionalHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move That the sessional order set out in Part 2 of the report of the Standing Orders Committee on the Review of use of Parliament TV coverage be adopted.The purpose of this motion is basically to update the House's rules about the use of official television coverage of the House by adopting a sessional order—that's a temporary Standing Order that will remain in place for the remainder of this term of the 52nd Parliament. It is being put in place on the recommendations of the Standing Orders Committee which has conducted a review of this area. There is broad agreement across the House that the rules around the use of Parliament TV material are in urgent need of updating and that this should be done before we get into election year next year where I'm sure there's going to be some heightened interest in the use of Parliament TV footage particularly for things like political advertising. In this case as with all reports of the Standing Orders Committee that I've been involved with it has the support of all members of the committee and I want to thank members for their careful consideration of these issues.The committee received 33 submissions on the issue and there was a general consensus that change was necessary although not necessarily consensus as to what that change should be. It was generally agreed however that the existing blanket prohibition on the use of Parliament TV coverage for political advertising without the express permission of members who are shown in that coverage is somewhat behind the times.The question that then had to be addressed by the committee was what restrictions should be placed on the political use of coverage that might be considered unfair or inaccurate. Consequently clause 1 of the sessional order omits the current provision that restricts the use of official coverage from Parliament TV for political advertising but it adds the condition that excerpts must not be used in a way that is misleading.That raises the question of course of what is misleading and how it's decided that the coverage has been used in a misleading way and what the consequences of doing so might be. The sessional order places the responsibility for determining whether a particular use of coverage has been misleading with you—with the Speaker. Misleading already has an established meaning in this House. There is for example Standing Order 410(r) which gives as an example of a contempt of Parliament publishing a false or misleading account of proceedings". So the Speaker can be guided by previous practice in this respect. Clause 2 of the sessional order gives the Speaker the power to make a direction that the use of coverage determined to be misleading is stopped or altered and to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee as a question of privilege.It was clear to the committee that this would need to be an expedited process—that if such a matter was to be referred to the Privileges Committee it would be unacceptable for that to take a matter of months as is not uncommon if a matter like this was referred to the Privileges Committee. So clause 3 of the sessional order states very clearly that the Privileges Committee consideration of the matter must commence within two working days—that's two working days not two sitting days; a significant advance on most of the Standing Orders which still talk about sitting days—of it being referred to the committee. If that doesn't occur then the Speaker's direction to stop the use of that coverage immediately lapses.In order to facilitate such rapid consideration the Privileges Committee is empowered to make special arrangements and these include the ability to meet remotely via video or audio conference—something that breaks new ground for parliamentary committees and something that I would certainly hope we can learn a lot from and consider how these provisions might be applied more widely in the future.The current rules that ban the use of Parliament TV coverage for commercial sponsorship and advertising do remain in place. There was no appetite—I think by just about anybody—for those rules to be changed. The lifting by the 2017 review of the Standing Orders of the ban on the use of coverage for satire ridicule or denigration is not affected at all by the change of the rules. The rules at the moment that we're changing only apply to the political uses of the coverage by parties for political advertising.The committee is going to consider the wider rules around the filming of the House as part of its review of the Standing Orders. The agreement of the House to the introduction of this sessional order I hope will provide an opportunity to test these revised rules out in advance of the Standing Orders Committee's final consideration of the matter as part of the review of the Standing Orders next year. It would be useful I think if the House was to allow more trials of these kinds of matters to test out new rules before they ultimately get adopted formally in the Standing Orders. I thank the House for considering this issue. I thank the members on the committee for their consideration of it and I certainly endorse the motion and encourage members to support it."