Robertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12037. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):The Parliamentary Service plays a critical role in establishing the environment in which we work and in which members of the public and members of the media work in with the parliamentary process. We have today heard of a most serious incident—that is the release of information about a journalist’s activities in Parliament and in particular the question of phone logs. The role of the media in relationship to Parliament and Parliamentary Service is an important part of our democracy. No matter what we all might think from time to time from how the media portray parliamentarians there is no doubt that their role in Parliament and in these precincts is vital to New Zealanders’ understanding of what happens in our democracy.Today we learnt that phone records—3 months’ worth of phone records—of a journalist had been handed over to the David Henry inquiry. That is one of the most serious and disgraceful actions that could take place in this Parliament. The media acting as they do on behalf of the citizens of New Zealand need to know that their communications are sacrosanct and that has been breached. That is an incredibly serious matter for this side of the Chamber. We condemn the release of that material. We condemn the fact that it has come out because we believe that the media’s role is essential.The question has to be asked of how that material came to be released. It appears that David Henry the person leading the inquiry did not want it. He did not want the information and he sent it back so who requested the Parliamentary Service that that material be released? If we look through the history of this matter of the Henry report there are two people who are at the centre of this: John Key as Prime Minister who called for the inquiry and his chief of staff WayneEagleson. They are the two people who have been at the centre of this inquiry. At the outset of the inquiry John Key did not want to know about it. He said that it was the inquiry of AndrewKibblewhite the Chief Executive of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Ian Fletcher the Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau. It was their inquiry. John Key did not want to know about it. He went as far as saying he was as in the dark as anybody else about this inquiry. Well that is clearly not true.What appears to be the case from written questions and from oral questions in the Chamber is that the Prime Minister through his chief of staff has put pressure on Parliamentary Service to release material about the activities of parliamentarians and about the activities of the media. That is what it appears. WayneEagleson was as far back as the beginning of May in contact with Parliamentary Service about email metadata release. We have contradictory answers about this within the written questions that have been given out but what we can clearly establish is that Parliamentary Service spoke with WayneEagleson during the afternoon of 9 May about whether or not there was cooperation from parliamentarians including Peter Dunne about releasing phone records.The question is this: was that simply a conversation about agreeing or was that a conversation in which the Prime Minister’s chief of staff asked for that material? If we look at the answer to written question 8179 this is what the Prime Minister said: “My office directly asked Parliamentary Services to provide the material”. That is what the Prime Minister said in reply to a written question. That means that the Prime Minister and his office are up to their necks in the release of this information which would have been considered private certainly by the journalist and possibly also by Mr Dunne who I now read says that the information that has come out today about what Parliamentary Service did is in contradiction to what he was told at the end of May.We have a situation here where Parliamentary Service the organisation that the Speaker leads on behalf of all of us which is separate from the executive—which is deliberately separated out from the executive to ensure that we are fairly treated as parliamentarians right across Parliament—appears to have come under pressure from the executive branch. That is completely unacceptable. In this democracy we should know that Parliamentary Service acting as it does on behalf of all parliamentarians can act on our behalf not on the executive’s behalf. John Key is donkey deep in this.