Robson Matt: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
Robson Matt: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
[Volume:608;Page:5724] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Chairperson of the Privileges Committee) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of the report of the Privileges Committee on three questions of privilege concerning disclosure of select committee proceedings 
. The House has been asked to consider the report of the Privileges Committee on questions of privilege relating to the alleged unauthorised disclosure of proceedings of three select committees. Those select committees were the Law and Order Committee the Primary Production Committee and the Commerce Committee. 
I turn first to the Law and Order Committee. The alleged disclosure was that an article in the  
Independent  
of 6 December 2000 disclosed—and this is from the report—that a vote had been taken by the Law and Order Committee against requiring the Director of the Serious Fraud Office to produce certain documents. The vote was taken in a closed committee meeting and had not at the time of the article been reported to the House. The Privileges Committee found that a breach of privilege had occurred as the matter of the vote had been confidential to the Law and Order Committee. 
The second matter relates to the Primary Production Committee. On 13 November 2002 the  
Independent 
 newspaper disclosed without authorisation from the select committee the draft terms of reference of an inquiry. The committee had not determined at that stage of publication the final terms of reference and the information was confidential to the committee at the time of the article’s publication. The Privileges Committee found that a breach of privilege in that case had occurred. 
The third matter relates to the Commerce Committee. On 13 November 2002 the  
Independent 
 published an article in the same edition as the Primary Production Committee matter that reported accurately on three options that the select committee was considering in confidence with regard to the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill before it. This too was determined to be a breach of privilege. 
I quote from the report: “Under Standing Order 237 all committee proceedings except the hearing of evidence in public are confidential to the committee until the committee reports the item of business to the House. The two exceptions to this rule are: the referral of a report on a confidential basis to a third party for comment and the committee agreeing to the chairperson informing the public about the nature of a committee’s consideration of a matter. Neither of these exceptions to Standing Order 237 applied to the questions of privilege described in this report. 
“Standing Order 397(m) recognises that it is a contempt to divulge the proceedings of a select committee contrary to Standing Orders.” 
The issue for the committee then having found that there had been breaches in all three matters was what if anything could be done about it. The first question that was before us was who disclosed the proceedings. No member of this House acted like George Washington and admitted chopping down the cherry tree. Nobody came and said: “I told a lie.” Further no members of the relevant select committees were identified as having provided the newspaper with the information in the three articles. We maintained in the Privileges Committee on behalf of this House that the breaches of privilege are a serious matter. However we appreciate that members of Parliament wish to debate more openly particularly via the media matters under select committee consideration. We believe that this should be allowed and we believe that the select committee’s decision-making processes would be enhanced if they were able to be more open and transparent about the consideration of a matter. 
The Privileges Committee in the previous Parliament after considering the question of privilege relating to the disclosure of the proceedings of the Law and Order Committee wrote to the Standing Orders Committee urging it to consider easing the restriction on the disclosure of select committee proceedings. This Privileges Committee of this Parliament endorses the views of the Privilege Committee in the 46th Parliament. We held that “members should be able to discuss outside select committee meetings a committee’s consideration and advice and to participate in public debates on those matters without breaching Standing Order 237.” 
The Privileges Committee asked that the Standing Orders Committee meet to progress its review of the Standing Orders. The view of the Privileges Committee is that the rules on disclosing select committee proceedings do require further consideration. For this reason while we accepted that there were unauthorised disclosures of select committee proceedings we recommended that no further action be taken on those three questions of privilege and that the Standing Orders Committee consider amendments to Standing Order 237 to enable members of select committees to engage in more open discussion of select committee proceedings.