Cullen Michael: Standing Orders—Sessional 
Cullen Michael: Standing Orders—Sessional 
[Volume:640;Page:10351] 
This motion gives effect to unanimous recommendations of the Standing Orders Committee that flow from the 2003 decision to provide for an in-house facility for televising Parliament. It creates a sessional order and it is important for Parliament to understand what that means. In other words it sets up a set of rules that will last for the life of this Parliament only. It can be revisited during the life of this Parliament in the light of experience and will need to be re-moved either in this form or in some different form during the subsequent Parliament to cover the rules of televising Parliament. Essentially as I said it has been triggered by the fact that we now have a new process of permanent televising of Parliament being brought into place. 
Before turning to the substance of the rules I would like to comment briefly on the process of developing these rules. The Standing Orders Committee is one of the few committees on which all parties are represented in this case except for the Progressives. Unlike some committees the Standing Orders Committee always seeks to reach a consensus before making recommendations to the House. I cannot remember a recommendation being carried through simply on the basis of a majority vote in the Standing Orders Committee. That is particularly important because the rules of the House need to have broad agreement from all members represented in the House. 
I thank the other members of the committee for the constructive way that we all approached the process of developing what were always going to be to some extent controversial rules—more controversial outside this place than inside it I think it is fair to say. I particularly acknowledge the role of the shadow Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee in attempting to reach some enduring rules because we do not want to make these processes ones of partisan dispute. I should note that in the committee the proceedings that have been proposed here received unanimous support in terms of the recommendations and all parties were present during the deliberations on this particular matter. 
I turn now to the substance of the proposed rules. It must be acknowledged that these represent a substantial liberalisation of the current rules. The current rules are very restrictive and do not allow the presentation of anything like a full experience of Parliament for viewers. The proposed rules are significantly liberalised in terms of allowing reaction shots involving questions and objections and permitting more general background shots so as to illustrate the mood of the House and introduce some greater variety into the coverage of the House. The current rules do not permit reaction shots or coverage of interjectors or indeed wide-angle shots of the House. 
This liberalisation of the rules around what can be televised coupled with the provision of a free broadcast-quality live feed of all proceedings of Parliament will allow the media much greater ability to cover the proceedings of Parliament than at present. It will also ensure that New Zealanders have greater opportunities to observe the performance of their elected representatives in the House. 
 The major controversy that has arisen from commentary by the press gallery is in relation to the rules that have been adapted from Australian experiences in relation to satire ridicule denigration and other matters. The point the media has missed in this regard is that the most restrictive of those rules actually is one on members themselves and their political parties and that is that coverage of proceedings may not be used in any medium for political advertising or election campaigning except with the permission of all members shown. That of course is an actual restraint on the ability of Parliament to use what may be misrepresentative pictures to misrepresent the experience of other members in the House. I am reminded of those United States advertising campaigns where a congressman is first of all criticised for not being in his constituency but instead being in Washington and then is subsequently criticised for being in the constituency instead of being in Washington to vote on various important measures in front of Congress. It is very easy to misrepresent what happens within this Parliament through partial editing or through misrepresentation of those proceedings and I believe that Parliament does deserve some degree of protection from that behaviour. 
The matters around satire ridicule and denigration I think will need to be watched carefully and interpreted carefully and not interpreted in a foolish or unnecessarily restrictive fashion. But I think one can sum up the seriousness of much of the objections by what happened on Wednesday morning in the  
Dominion Post 
. The media got me up against a wall—not an unusual experience—essentially parading their defence of Western democracy liberties the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act the Magna Carta and goodness knows what else in terms of the need to be able to show satirical representations of Parliament. At a time when journalists from major news organisations are held captive by Palestinian terrorists and some journalists are losing their lives in the pursuit of the truth and news around the world I am not convinced that one should take entirely seriously some of these protestations. 
When we saw the evidence that what people really wanted to show was simply pictures of members of Parliament yawning it seemed to me that we are actually dealing with trivial matters not serious matters at all. The fact that members of Parliament occasionally yawn in a House that sits until 10 p.m. at night does not seem to me worthy of a great deal of media coverage at all. I have heard rumours that even members of the press gallery have been known to yawn in a variety of forms. I think that all that the public will discover from the fact that we yawn is that we are vaguely human which probably will help us rather than hinder us in terms of their perception of members of this place. I might say that when I first came here loud yawning was one of the more frequent forms of interjection one that has now fallen into disuse by and large thank goodness within the House. I do not encourage its resumption as a major form of interjection within the House particularly if it is in order to gather some kind of attention in the next morning’s  
Dominion Post 
. If pictures of members yawning is all we are really talking about then I really think we are talking about matters that are trivial and that demean not Parliament but the journalists who think such matters are important matters to be covered within Parliament. 
Nevertheless I do believe that these rules will need to be carefully interpreted and carefully monitored. They introduce a provision where some matters could be considered a contempt. That is to say they may be considered a contempt; they are not of themselves necessarily a contempt. I am quite sure that if charges were ever brought the Privileges Committee would want to consider such matters very carefully before arriving at the conclusion that a contempt had been committed. 
But I think that when we see pictures that for example show members reacting to something that in fact was not what they were reacting to—in other words when editing has occurred—or when members are shown laughing at something they did not laugh about but were laughing at something completely different in the House when members are captured in what one might call a human moment which anybody experiences when they are working long hours in a place such as this then the public gets a false impression of what is happening. That is not a true impression of Parliament; it is a false impression of Parliament. I was asked whether it would be possible for people to cover members being satirical about each other. I can assure members of the press gallery that they are perfectly able to cover any satirical speech within the House. That will not be a problem. 
Let us see how these rules work. Let us take a deep breath. Let us interpret the rules liberally and let us then proceed on from there. I have extraordinary confidence that democracy will continue to flourish in New Zealand that there will continue to be robust debate within this Parliament and that no member of the media outside will feel constrained in the kinds of comments he or she can make. 
On that point I just remind the House of one thing that most of the people here have probably forgotten. There was an occasion in this House—as I recollect it was at the end of the 1983 session—when the incumbent Prime Minister was so drunk that when he stood to move the adjournment motion he stood for slightly over 2 minutes unable to utter any words other than “Mr Speaker”. Not a single member of the press gallery reported what happened in that case. I rest my case in that regard.