Hipkins Chris: Privilege — Consideration of Interim Report of Privileges Committee Question of Privilege Regarding Use of Intrusive Powers Within the Parliamentary PrecinctsText is subject to correctionHipkins Chris: Privilege — Consideration of Interim Report of Privileges Committee Question of Privilege Regarding Use of Intrusive Powers Within the Parliamentary Precincts[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15262. Text is subject to correction.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I want to add one additional concern to the many concerns arising from these hearings that Anne Tolley raised. It is to do with the understanding of many of the people who deal with the Official Information Act as to how this Act works and how it should work.I think that it is very important that we draw a clear distinction between information that is official information with grounds to withhold it and information that is not official information. In the case of ministerial emails there will often be informationthat is official information but with grounds to withhold it and then there will be information that is exchanged using those email accounts that is not official information. For example a Minister arranging with a member of their family over email to have dinner is not official information. It is not covered by the Official Information Act and therefore it is simply not part of the consideration. But there will be emails that Ministers exchange between each other or between themselves and officials or between themselves and others that are official information but where there are grounds under the Act to withhold it. What really struck me was that many of the people who were dealing with these issues did not understand that distinction.The other distinction that they did not necessarily understand was that the vehicle of communication does not alter the status of the information. A Minister exchanging official information using a Hotmail account does not make it not official information; it is still official information. I think this point was really important because we ended up in quite an extensive discussion in that meeting including with Mr Dunne. There seemed to be this distinction that suggests that because one type of account was used over another then that changed the nature of the information. It does not. Official information is official information—simple as that. It does not matter how it is communicated it is still official information.That is very important I think in terms of the Privileges Committee’s future deliberations because one of the challenges for ministerial email accounts is that you have to have a mechanism for determining what is official information within them covered by the Official Information Act and what is not. I do not think that we have an adequate mechanism for doing that at the moment and that is part of the issue. Also what became very apparent during our consideration of the Henry inquiry is that the inquiry could have obtained—possibly legally—much of the information that it sought simply by lodging an Official Information Act request. The inquiry never did it. It never actually used the channel available to it to obtain the information that it was looking for. That suggests a real lack of understanding by those who were conducting the inquiry about how things should unfold and happen.Before I talk about some other issues I want to talk about what this report does not do because actually I think everybody who saw this issue go off to the Privileges Committee and who was eagerly awaiting this report still has one question—one fundamental question—that has not been answered: who actually did it? The Privileges Committee was specifically prevented by the terms of reference given to us from actually looking into who did it. The evidence overwhelmingly points in one direction but the committee was unable to look into that.One of the things that I think Mr Dunne certainly displayed in his evidence was a total lack of remorse for any of his actions in this entire saga. I think people who have had their emails hacked or accessed completely unfairly have grounds to feel aggrieved. Someone who has been accused of leaking confidential Government information who has failed to dispel that who is still the prime suspect and who is refusing to cooperate with an investigation to determine whether or not he did it does not have any grounds to get on his high horse and complain about the way he was treated. All of the evidence still points to the fact that on the balance of probabilities Peter Dunne probably did it. Yet he is now on his high horse and claiming that he has been unfairly treated. That is not right; it is simply wrong. Peter Dunne probably did it. All of the evidence seems to suggest that.What is really interesting is that Peter Dunne—and this is one of the reasons that this has become a lot more political since the report came out—came out and claimed that the report vindicated him. It did not. This report does not vindicate Peter Dunne at all. In fact the people writing the report the Privileges Committee were specificallyexcluded from being able to look into whether he did it or not. Actually I think all of the evidence we heard still points in Peter Dunne’s direction.The reason all of this is important of course is that we have now got the Prime Minister leaving the door open to Peter Dunne coming back as a Minister. The question for John Key is a very very simple one: if he is willing to have Peter Dunne back in the executive back as a Minister is he comfortable that Peter Dunne did not leak the report? Because if he is not comfortable that Peter Dunne did not leak the report he has no grounds in saying that he should be a Minister. If a Minister cannot be trusted to not leak confidential Government information particularly security-related information they have no place being a Minister. Why is John Key leaving the door open to Peter Dunne? It is basically because he is that desperate to cling on to power. He is quite happy to have Peter Dunne a knownleaker in his ministry; quite happy to be propped up by that convicted criminal John Banks. That shows very clearly how desperate to cling to power this Government is.One of the things that was very concerning in the inquiry that the Privileges Committee undertook was when we got into the time line. When we got into who did what to whom and who said what when it became very very clear that there was high-level pressure on Parliamentary Service from the Prime Minister’s office.Ultimately why did this information get released? Well there are two reasons. One was incompetence on the part of the inquiry. It went directly to junior staff and it asked directly for the information. It should not have done that. It should have followed the appropriate channels for obtaining the information. So the inquiry bears some responsibility.But the second reason that a lot of this information was released wrongly was that pressure was applied by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and by the head of Ministerial Services for that information to be released. They share responsibility for the problems. John Key said “When someone speaks to my chief of staff they speak to me.” and his chief of staff was one of the key people implicated in the release of this information. He made it very very clear to Parliamentary Service that he expected the information to be released. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff and therefore—by John Key’s own definition—the Prime Minister himself was involved in applying pressure for this information to be released.I think that that is something we need to take very very seriously. Parliamentary Service holds a lot of information that the Prime Minister has no responsibility for. Parliamentary Service holds all of the information to do with the Opposition. Are we comfortable with the idea that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff could exert pressure on Parliamentary Service to dictate what it does with our information—the Opposition’s information? That is not democracy; in fact that is an affront to democracy. Would we be comfortable with the idea of the Prime Minister or his chief of staff exerting pressure and influence to do with the release of information held by Parliamentary Service about journalists or other users of the building? Fundamentally no. It is wrong and in fact it is dangerous to democracy.What is dangerous to democracy is that it has been allowed to happen but what is more dangerous to democracy is the fact that the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff did not think they were doing anything wrong. All the way through this Privileges Committee hearing not once did the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister’s chief of staff admit that they had exerted undue influence on Parliamentary Service to release information that it should not have. I think the Prime Minister needs to front up and accept his share of responsibility for this. He set the terms of reference for the inquiry. He did not set the terms of reference properly and well and the inquiry was doomed to fail from the beginning. The interference of his chief of staff in theprocess then led to the inquiry receiving information wrongly which it should not have received and John Key needs to accept his share of responsibility for that as well.Peter Dunne is not vindicated by this report. Peter Dunne should not be reinstated as a Minister because all of the evidence still points in his direction. The odds are that Peter Dunne almost certainly leaked the report. I tell you what: there is a condition with parole right? When someone comes up before the Parole Board one of the things it looks for is whether that person admits they have done something wrong and shows regret. Peter Dunne shows no remorse for the fact that he leaked this information so he should not be reinstated as a Minister.