English Bill: Privilege — Consideration of Report of Privileges Committee Electoral Act—Hon Harry Duynhoven 
English Bill: Privilege — Consideration of Report of Privileges Committee Electoral Act—Hon Harry Duynhoven 
[Volume:610;Page:7837] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 That chairman of the Privileges Committee will find himself quoted for decades to come as overseeing a charade. The Privileges Committee has gone to great efforts to give a cloak of credibility to the most obscene obstruction of the privileges of this House that I have come across since I have been in Parliament and I believe that it is without precedent. 
Mr Speaker you will be listening very carefully to this debate because it is the one you wanted to have before you executed your statutory duty. This is the debate we were meant to have before the Speaker made the decision about whether there was a vacancy. Of course he knows that this debate is a total waste of time. He knows that the time he took to make the decision about the vacancy allowed the Government to pass legislation that made the Speaker look irrelevant and made this Speaker whose job is to defend the privileges of this House look like he has less credibility than any Speaker before him. 
Everybody knew that the Government was proposing legislation so I have gone back and looked at the legislation. The Privileges Committee report stated: “it is still appropriate for the Speaker to refer a question to the Privileges Committee and for the House to consider the committee’s report”. So far so good—apparently but I will come back to that point. If there is real doubt as to whether a vacancy has occurred Mr Speaker you owe this Parliament an explanation as to the source of your doubt about the vacancy. That is the explanation members want to hear from you today because the facts of the matter are plain. On 11 June Harry Duynhoven disqualified himself from this Parliament—on 11 June. On 12 June you knew. Within days you knew the Government would bring in legislation if it had time to do it before a vacancy was declared. 
So I went back and looked at what the law states. Well section 129(1) does not state what the Privileges Committee implies—that the matter has to go to the Privileges Committee—it just states this: “If the Speaker is satisfied that the seat of a member elected to represent an electoral district has become vacant the Speaker must without delay publish a notice of the vacancy”. What do members think Parliament meant by this piece of legislation? Did it mean that the Speaker should take a month? Did it mean that the Privileges Committee has to sit? No it meant that if the Speaker is satisfied that the seat is vacant he must without delay publish a notice of the vacancy. 
Well Mr Speaker what advice did you have from anyone apart from the lawyer acting for Harry Duynhoven that there was any doubt at all about the vacancy? You had no such advice. You owe this Parliament an explanation as to why you did not declare a vacancy because there is one privilege that the members of this House do have that no other New Zealand citizen has and it is not the privilege to be absolved from the consequences of breaking the law; the one privilege members have is to sit in this House. It is a privilege because it matters to the course of the law and the Government of New Zealand. It is the job of the Speaker to defend that privilege before any other. 
 Our constitution depends on voluntary self-restraint. There is nothing to prevent Helen Clark from doing what she has done. The person who can command a parliamentary majority in this Parliament can do whatever he or she likes and in that respect we are almost unique in world democracy. She can do whatever she likes including what we have just done last week—pass a piece of legislation to elect a person to Parliament. That is what we did. We passed a piece of legislation to elect someone to this Parliament. That is why voluntary self-restraint is so important. It is why the conventions and integrity of this House are so important. 
I have no doubt at all that Helen Clark got on the phone to Geoffrey Palmer and they jacked up some half-cooked half-baked ideas to try to get a delay to try to get this matter to the Privileges Committee which of course would take some time to consider it. That would mean that the Speaker was not in a position where he absolutely had to declare a vacancy even though he should have declared a vacancy. I have no doubt that is what happened because Helen Clark feared a by-election in New Plymouth. It was not because she thought she would lose Harry Duynhoven—who knows—but because New Plymouth is a town on the beach built on an industry that takes energy out of the seabed. Who would want to go up there and spend 3 weeks defending the Government position on who owns the beaches and the foreshore? Not Helen Clark because she will not even do it in here. She certainly does not want to do it in the public eye under media scrutiny with the whole country listening to the trail of dishonesty and confusion she has tried to sow around that issue. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have had almost consistent uninterrupted interjection throughout my speech and I now ask to be heard in silence. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member has asked to be heard in silence. He can do that. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Mr Speaker we want an explanation. I suppose we will go through the charade of your declaring there is no vacancy I suppose that is what will happen but I believe that you owe Parliament more than that because decisions were made where timing was absolutely crucial. Decisions have been made that determine whether someone is qualified to sit in this House a privilege that I as the Leader of the Opposition and as a parliamentarian regard with deep respect. I have seen that privilege subordinated to partisan interests. That is what I have seen. 
I would like to hope that the office of the Speaker was no part of it. That is why I want to hear the explanation. So here are the questions. Why did you not without delay declare the vacancy? Share with the House what advice you had from the Clerk and the Solicitor-General that gave you any reason to believe that Harry Duynhoven might not be disqualified. If that was not the case then this matter should not have gone to the Privileges Committee. It was quite clear that Harry Duynhoven was disqualified. We want to know about that. Parliament wants to know whether there were any conversations phone calls notes or meetings with senior members of the Government with regard to the timing of the decisions. There is absolutely nothing in the law or this report that dispels my understanding that the Speaker could have rolled out of bed the day after he knew about this situation and declared a vacancy. He could have done that. In the interests of the honour of this institution and the constitutional self-restraint that is so important to New Zealand in my view that is what he should have done. 
The report of the Privileges Committee is nothing more than an attempt to give a cloak of credibility to disgraceful episodes such as Margaret Wilson the Attorney-General taking a completely opposite view to that of her main legal adviser the Solicitor-General. What does that say about the trust and confidence between New Zealand’s two senior legal officers? I will tell the House the truth: she knew he was right but she had been told by the Prime Minister that the Privileges Committee had better deliver a confused report if not a majority against any action that would lead to a by-election. That is what she did—the Attorney-General the senior legal officer of New Zealand who is there to defend the law and to make sure that no New Zealand citizen is put above it. But this Parliament put Harry Duynhoven above it and the Speaker has to answer the questions.