Walker Holly: Inquiries Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Inquiries Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12769. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green):I am rather short of breath these days but I will attempt to speak loudly. I am pleased to stand to support the passage of the Inquiries Bill to begin where my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson has finished and to join her in thanking the Minister of Internal Affairs for the robust process that has been followed over the last few days both to address the concerns raised by the Green Party in the Committee stage and the second reading of the bill and also to adopt the amendment from Trevor Mallard. I agree with her that it has resulted in a better bill.It is a bill that is long overdue and indeed we have heard from a number of speakers that it has languished at the bottom of the Order Paper since 2009. It has now passed rather quickly through its final stages over these last 3 days. It is also good that despite that haste those concerns have been taken seriously. Obviously it is politically expedient for the Government to have this in place to inquire into the Fonterra botulism crisis. It is right and good that the new rules will apply for that inquiry. It is better late than never that we are passing this legislation. It is a much-needed modernisation and simplification of the rules governing inquiries and it does update legislation that is over a hundred years old—well past time.The bill establishes two types of inquiries: public inquiries and Government inquiries. Although both types of inquiries will have the same powers and functions and be governed by the same rules under this legislation there is a key difference between them and that has been quite important in the consideration of the bill in its stages over the last few days. Public inquiries which will include royal commissions—which are perhaps the most well-known form of public inquiry—will be established by the Governor-General and they will be functionally independent of the Government of the day in terms of how they are carried out. This is much as how current commissions of inquiry and royal commissions are held today whereas Government inquiries will be established by one or more Ministers and will be driven led and directed largely by those Ministers. So they will be less apolitical than a public inquiry.The key change in this bill is that it extends the same rules powers and functions to both types of inquiries and that is the biggest change from the status quo. Either inquiry can now be established to look into any matter of public significance and will have the same powers functions and abilities to compel evidence. In our view this is appropriate because there is a clear sense that one of the shortcomings of the current framework is that there is not enough scope to set up different types of inquiries with the relevant powers for different situations. For example there is a very big difference between an inquiry into a particular incident or issue that is aiming to get to the bottom of a series of events or perhaps allocate responsibility for something happening and a general inquiry into a matter of public policy—for example the Royal Commission on the Electoral System. So it is appropriate that we have some flexibility about what kind of structure we can apply to those different types of inquiries.Sometimes both types of inquiries will need the same investigative powers and sometimes they will not. That flexibility now exists under this bill. It provides the necessary flexibility to ensure that inquiries function well and have the ability to make concrete findings. It also ensures that they have the ability to discover relevant information and call witnesses when they need to. Crucially it also assumes a high level of public transparency and openness in the conduct of those inquiries and that is very important. That has been enhanced by the amendment in the name of Trevor Mallard which has been adopted by the Government. So we support all of these things.However we did raise some concerns at the second reading that there may have been some fish-hooks so to speak in the new rules. We abstained from the vote at that stage for a number of reasons. We were concerned that by granting those quite extensive powers to compel witnesses to appear and disclose information to inquiries the bill may have inadvertently impacted on the ability of journalists to protect their sources or on the ability of MPs to protect their private communications with their constituents. Both of these are important democratic principles which we strongly believe need to be protected. However thanks to helpful contributions from members in the House a close reading of the bill and the Evidence Act to which it is connected and a helpful response from the Minister’s office we have been reassured that the protections in place in the bill do afford the relevant protection to confidential and privileged information and they are sufficient to allay our concerns about those things. The bill ensures via clause 28 that the same protections apply to inquiries as they would to civil proceedings. That includes specific protection to journalists from disclosing their sources under section 68 of the Evidence Act. Also under section 69 of the Evidence Act it includes protection for confidential information specific relationships and the free flow of information. On our reading that would protect the communications of MPs with their constituents.The third area of concern we had which we raised at the second reading relates to a matter of parliamentary privilege. We asked the hypothetical question of what would have happened if the Henry inquiry into the leak of the Kitteridge report on theGovernment Communications Security Bureau had been held under the new rules proposed by this legislation. Obviously we have been very concerned as have others about the way that that Henry inquiry was conducted and the fact that it was able to access email phone and swipe card records even though it did not have the power to compel the disclosure of that evidence. We felt that this constituted a breach of parliamentary privilege and an intrusion from the executive sphere into the legislative sphere effectively breaching our principle of the separation of powers. We were worried that if powers to compel the disclosure of evidence are extended to Government inquiries under this new legislation a similar situation could arise in future and with the legal backing of this bill.We still have that concern and we think that when the new legislation is in place it will be more important than ever for the critical distinction between the executive and the legislature to be respected in such cases as that kind of inquiry and for parliamentary privilege to be upheld and protected. But what it really comes down to is the question of whether or not this particular information in this case was protected by parliamentary privilege. We believe that it was and that it would therefore also be protected under the new legislation. However we acknowledge that this is a live issue in front of the Privileges Committee at the moment and that ultimately the Privileges Committee will rule on that matter. Indeed we may see legislation in this House clarifying that as a parliamentary privilege which would be helpful because that would set out in no uncertain terms what is protected under privilege and what is not. However it is clear to us in the Green Party that such legislation would be the appropriate vehicle to clarify matters of privilege not the Inquiries Bill. So for now it is sufficient for us to know that parliamentary privilege is protected under this bill in clause 28 along with all other types of privilege.So for these reasons the Green Party will support the bill. It does modernise and update existing law and provides for a more streamlined and simple process for inquiries in the future. We acknowledge that it probably should have been passed a long time ago instead of languishing at the bottom of the Order Paper but it is better late than never. We also hope that these important matters of democratic principle and parliamentary privilege that we have raised during the second reading and Committee stage and indeed today in the third reading will be taken very seriously by colleagues across the House. Indeed that seems to have been the case in the way the debate has been conducted and I thank colleagues for that. We also hope they will be taken very seriously in the conduct of future inquiries under this legislation. Thank you.