Robertson Grant:Inquiries Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant:Inquiries Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12719. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):I am sure my colleagues will soon be able to take a call on this important Part 1 of the Inquiries Bill. Mr Mallard in an interesting exposition on Part 1 covered the material around exactly what this part does. It establishes the purpose of the Inquiries Bill and in particular it runs through a set of the changes to the Inquiries Act that are set out for how an inquiry can be established.I think it is quite clear that across the House there is an enthusiasm for a range of different inquiries. As Mr Mallard said at the moment we have the royal commission the bigkahuna of inquiries at one end of the spectrum and we have ministerial inquiries at the other. In the middle there is a grey area that needs to be filled and is filled by the public inquiry function and the ministerial inquiry function that are established under this bill.There has been no better recent example for me of why the purpose clause of this bill is needed than the David Henry inquiry. Today in the Privileges Committee we were treated to an absolute circus. We had David Henry himself the person who allegedly was undertaking the inquiry telling us what he thought his powers and parameters were.Hon Trevor Mallard: Well he was more than allegedly undertaking—GRANT ROBERTSON: Well he was undertaking—Hon Trevor Mallard: —he was actually undertaking.GRANT ROBERTSON: He was undertaking it under terms of reference set by the Prime Minister which Mr Henry was quite clear enabled him to for example get Andrea Vance’s swipe card records. But then moments later we had AndrewKibblewhite the chief executive of the Prime Minister’s department and WayneEagleson the chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s office come in and say that this inquiry’s terms of reference did not give Mr Henry that power. Or in the case of MrEagleson he said that he had not contemplated that it might give that power. There was complete confusion. It appeared that nobody knew what the parameters of this inquiry were.Of course the inquiry itself was fundamentally undermined by the fact that it did not have the powers that are given through the purpose clause here which is the power to call witnesses and to call them under oath. Had Mr Henry had that power we might actually know for sure today who leaked theKitteridge report. As at today we have an accusation that Peter Dunne leaked theKitteridge report but we have no actual proof of that—Hon Trevor Mallard: He denies it.GRANT ROBERTSON: —because Mr Dunne denies it quite categorically denies it.Iain Lees-Galloway: Who else might it have been?GRANT ROBERTSON: Well that is right. My colleague Mr Lees-Galloway asks who else it might have been. If an inquiry was established—Hon Trevor Mallard: Hey hey Grant some of the others have history.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes we will come back to that. If an inquiry was established under the purpose clause here in Part 1 which we are debating it would have a range of powers and duties and privileges as outlined in clause 3(2)(b) and that includes the ability to call witnesses on oath. That ability was not there.Today in the Privileges Committee David Henry was asked—in fact it was Kennedy Graham who asked him actually—“Why didn’t you go back and get some more powers? You were charged with finding out who did this who leaked theKitteridgereport so why didn’t you go back?”. I do not think he answered the question. I certainly do not recall a definitive answer from him. That raises a number of questions about when Ministers call for inquiries. Sometimes they do not really want to know the result and it may be that John Key did not really want to know who leaked theKitteridge report.Today what we have is an inquiry that was unable to fulfil its function. Its function was to get to the bottom of who leaked theKitteridge report. Under this piece of legislation that inquiry would have significantly wider powers or the ability to have significantly wider powers including calling people on oath and for that reason alone this bill is worthy of support.I want to raise a couple of other points. I am not going to speak for much longer because I know that my colleagues are very keen to. But I want to raise another point within this part and that is in the interpretation clause clause 4. It is the question of who the appointing Minister is and who the appropriate Minister is. In the Henry inquiry—let us just be absolutely clear—John Key was what would be under this clause the appointing Minister. I believe that the appointing Minister of an inquiry has some responsibilities to actually ensure that the inquiry takes place in the way that it is meant to. I think that that is what is meant by the wording here. Unfortunately John Key fell well short of that. I hope that if he is part of any future inquiries established under this legislation he will actually take a more active approach and ensure that those inquiries are dealt with properly. But Part 1 is a reasonably good part.