Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
[Volume:608;Page:5714] 
Privilege 
Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee 
New Zealand Post Limited 
Debate resumed. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It may assist proceedings if we can perhaps get some direction from you. This report is essentially about the dishonesty of New Zealand Post when it came in front of a select committee. It will be difficult for the House to discuss that without reference to the larger context in which those events happened and I am keen to know just what can be said. This will be a very difficult debate if it is ruled out when I refer to a culture of dishonesty and if references to any general context of for instance half-truths and evasions are also ruled out as inappropriate. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Let me say quite specifically that in commenting about New Zealand Post a member can say whatsoever he or she likes provided that it is within the Standing Orders in terms of taste etc. but as far as members of Parliament are concerned there is a higher standard. This debate is about whether the House should receive the Privilege’s Committee’s report and in fact the actual motion is that the House take note of the report of the Privileges Committee. I would suggest we stick to the report itself and to what is in it. The member has to be a lot more careful about comments that reflect on matters outside the report and comments involving members of Parliament. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I believe it is the obligation of the Privileges Committee to call things what they are. The chair of the committee has laid out the facts of the matter in quite a satisfactory manner. The fact is that New Zealand Post was not brief in its reply. It did not make some kind of technically correct statement that was actually wrong. New Zealand Post said to a select committee that it did not have a document that it had. New Zealand Post actually had the document and said it did not have it. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: And it knew it. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: And it knew it. Does that matter? Yes because that deprived Parliament of a document that at the time was of enormous political significance. It is very difficult to come to the conclusion that that action was not taken deliberately. 
We need to send a very clear signal to our public institutions—and New Zealand Post needs to hear this today too—that they should not take part in the Government’s efforts to cover its own mistakes. Any bureaucrat—and I have been one—has a duty to assist the Government but there is no obligation to compromise one’s integrity or one’s honesty in order to help one’s political masters. All those who have tried to help our Prime Minister have paid a price and this report shows that. Elmar Toime is not in the country; his position became untenable. The disgraced chairman of New Zealand Post has long gone because in any number of the opportunities that he had he did compromise his integrity in order to assist his political masters. I say to other civil servants that they should stop and think very carefully when they get requests from Ministers’ officers—the Prime Minister’s department the Minister of Finance the Minister of Education or any of those ministers who are part of a culture of deception when they get into any political trouble. 
The bit in this report that got me particularly irritated was the apology because we now have a new paradigm for regret. It is a “Helenism” and it goes like this. No one is to acknowledge that he or she did something wrong. Instead that person apologises for people thinking he or she did something wrong. Members should listen to this apology: “I had no intention of misleading the House and apologise if that was the effect of my answers.” No one owns up to the fact of doing something wrong. The fact that the House was misled and almost certainly deliberately misled has no bearing on this— 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In referring in that quotation to an answer given by the Prime Minister the member cannot accuse another member of deliberately misleading the House. There are other mechanisms for doing that. He should be required to withdraw and apologise. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I was not clear as to whether the member was referring to New Zealand Post’s answer or to a person in this House. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I was referring to an apology read by the Prime Minister in the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will now withdraw and apologise for that comment. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Which one? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Any suggestion that she deliberately misled the House. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I withdraw and apologise. There is a similarity in the report to that apology given in the House. This is the Hon Jim Bolger: “ … I apologise on behalf of New Zealand Post to the Committee if there was a perception that the Finance and Expenditure Committee and in turn Parliament and the New Zealand Public have been misled.” That is not an apology. That is not the standard that this House should accept from a public body that has lied to a select committee. 
New Zealand Post had the report but said that it did not and Parliament was deprived of the accountability that would have gone with the possession of that report. Even worse New Zealand Post is a publicly owned body. I believe that even if Parliament accepts this report the Privileges Committee is charged by Parliament to set a higher standard in the views it takes of people who mislead select committees and Parliament. Otherwise we are left with that standard. Mr Toime has apologised for any perception that he misled the committee. He apologised for the brevity of his reply. Does that not have echoes of “They weren’t conscious when they made the decision. I don’t recollect. I wasn’t there. It’s not my responsibility. The reply was brief”? The reply was a lie. Let us not call it anything else. 
We are spared that language in the House because we are not allowed to use it about MPs—and you Mr Speaker can feel the pressure that is building up in the House because we are not allowed to use that language about activities that very closely approximate it from people who are at the top of the Government and are setting the tone for the running of public life in New Zealand. Will the Government get up and argue that the actions of the Prime Minister and the way that she deals with questions of accountability and responsibility have no linkage to the events around New Zealand Post which involved her best friend who finally got caught out as the chair? Of course they do. Of course the tone set by those at the top of the Government influences the civil service and public bodies. On behalf of this Parliament if the Government is not willing to say this—and it is not—I say to the civil service and to public bodies that they should be honest. They should not take part in the spin and should have the integrity—as they have the experience—to know the difference between assisting the Government as they are obliged to do and compromising their honesty and integrity. To do the latter is a blot on any civil servant and any organisation that civil servants work for. 
At the time I guess the Kroll report did not seem very significant but in the light of the recent conduct of the Prime Minister and of the documents that regularly appear in this Parliament contradicting statements that have been made it is timely that we debate this report—and debate it thoroughly not just as a matter of form. I say to you Mr Speaker that members of Parliament do have the right of access to the Privileges Committee. We do not want to see that right compromised by the slowness of the process and the officers of this Parliament have the capacity to make that process fast or slow. I say that if it takes another 15 or 18 months to deal with this kind of complaint then the officers of this Parliament are letting down the members of Parliament and therefore the public. We want a better performance than that. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 What a load of rubbish that was. Let us start off with a very few simple facts. This report is a unanimous report of the Privileges Committee. When the member suggested that somehow or other the committee was engaged in covering up the facts about this case he was accusing his own party’s senior whip— 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. At no stage did I say that the committee was involved in covering up the facts. In fact I said that the chairman of the committee had laid out the facts in a way that we regarded as even-handed. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: That is a debating point. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What the member did say was that the committee should have concluded presumably that Mr Toime had lied. But the committee did not conclude that. If the member had bothered to read the report he would have found that it unanimously concluded that that was not the case. Mr Toime was almost hounded out of this country by the Opposition and Mr Bolger the former leader of the National Party condemned the National Party for that action. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: No he didn’t. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh yes he did and he did so in my hearing. Mr English cannot even read a simple report that states very clearly not that Mr Toime had lied but that the answers were less than full and frank. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Ha ha! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The giggling from the member of the Opposition—I wonder who has been tickling her this time—shows a misunderstanding of how loosely the National Party uses the word “lie”. On that basis I can only assume that it must be the most frequently used word in its caucus. I suppose therefore that losing one’s pretzels in the election is a form of a lie if that is the way that one uses the word. So it is assumed that Mr Carter and Dr Mapp were part of an attempt to mislead this House because this report is unanimous and it does not state that Mr Toime had lied. That is not what this report states. 
Who else did Mr English then choose to attack? He chose to attack his former leader Jim Bolger and implied that Mr Bolger had not made an adequate apology to the Privileges Committee. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: That’s right. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: That is right says Mr McCully. Well Mr McCully has a lot more to apologise to Mr Bolger for than Mr Bolger has to apologise to Mr McCully for. There is no knife sticking in Mr McCully’s back with Mr Bolger’s fingerprints on it but there sure was one in Jim Bolger’s back with Mr McCully’s fingerprints on it—just as there was in Jenny Shipley’s back and as he keeps lining up Mr English for. As we read weekly in the  
Listener 
 Mr McCully is involved in that. 
Then of course the other criminal is a former divisional chairman of the National Party Mr Ross Armstrong who did not put his integrity at question in the service of Ministers—he put the Ministers’ integrity at question in his own service. That is why Mr Armstrong had to leave—not because he was protecting our integrity but because he was impugning our integrity by his own actions. He had to go as a consequence of that. 
What has this enormous storm in a teacup been all about? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: It’s a cover-up. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well why did Dr Mapp at the Privileges Committee not say that this was a cover-up? Why did Dr Mapp who is as brave as a lion in the House not raise with Mr Bolger at the select committee the question of why his predecessor and New Zealand Post’s former chief executive had covered up the facts? Dr Mapp did not raise that question in the select committee and nor did John Carter. They were satisfied with Mr Bolger’s apology and they were disappointed that Mr McCully and Mr Hide did not take up the invitation to meet with Mr Bolger to receive a personal apology from New Zealand Post delivered by Mr Bolger. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Absolute fiction. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh yes that is true as well. Recollections seem to fade amongst many people at times with regard to political issues. Or perhaps the member was not conscious at the time that he did those particular things. So we find out that the National Party is not perfect either. 
So what in fact is this issue all about? When asked whether he had a report Mr Toime said no. Did he have the Kroll report? No he did not. The Kroll report was never delivered to New Zealand Post. 
Hon Bill English 
: Ha ha! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well that is true. The select committee accepted that that was true. Dr Mapp John Carter and Mr Prebble accepted that that was true—all on the Privileges Committee at the time. 
Hon Bill English 
: What did it have? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: New Zealand Post had a preliminary draft of that report. So in giving that answer the Privileges Committee concluded that New Zealand Post was less than full and frank and that the Finance and Expenditure Committee could have drawn a forced conclusion from that answer—a perfectly reasonable conclusion for the select committee to draw and therefore misleading of the select committee in that respect. But that is not a lie. It is not a lie to have failed to give that information. If Mr McCully from the vast and lofty height of full-and-frankness that he has occupied throughout his political career tells us that that is a lie I suggest that that will be less than a full and frank statement to this House when he gets up and makes it as he no doubt will with the synthetic anger that the National Party is trained in day after day. 
Mr English has come here to the House to try to rescue his leadership through getting angry about whether a preliminary draft report is a report. That is the basis now on which the once-proud National Party lives and in order to try to survive and to do that it has to pour nasty stuff all over its former leader who I thought gave a very frank apology to the Privileges Committee. It was above and beyond what Mr Bolger had to do since he had no role to play in the original event at all. Mr Bolger was completely clean of any involvement in that respect. But even Mr Bolger had to be dragged in and attacked by Mr English in order to try to save himself. It is no wonder that so many former senior members of the National Party have given up hope on the National Party at this particular time. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 The debate before us is whether this House should receive this report the question of privileges— 
John Carter 
: It just notes it. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: OK it is whether we note it. I was most impressed with the speech by the Leader of the Opposition the Hon Bill English. He raised some issues that ran in the general debate here today—the whole notion of veracity and truth and the very critical aspect of our democracy that unless we have truth openness and transparency democracy is in peril. We have just heard a comment from the Leader of the House the Deputy Prime Minister that “less than full and frank” is not telling lies. As we know our whole justice system is based on telling the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In other words one cannot be economical with the truth by not telling the whole truth and one cannot be expansive with the truth by telling other things that are beyond the truth. We know that we have problems with the Prime Minister but we now have a new definition of truth from the Deputy Prime Minister. If one is “less than full and frank” that is all right that is kosher that is acceptable. I am saying to this House that that is not acceptable in a democracy that I want to be part of. We need an executive that is accountable honest and transparent at all levels. 
I can understand Jim Bolger’s position. He was seeking closure and I think he was trying to use his political skills to bring closure. The issue was not of his making: Ross Armstrong was the chairman during this unhappy incident. I would like to commend my colleague Rodney Hide who together with Murray McCully through sheer doggedness and determination through thick and thin stuck with this issue. I remember that when they first raised it we had Government members saying that they were denigrating a fine upstanding State-owned enterprise and that New Zealand Post was the model of State-owned enterprises. The Minister for State Owned enterprises did all he could to protect it from accountability and scrutiny but my colleague Rodney Hide ably supported by Murray McCully—I think they support each other actually—hung in there doggedly and took the matter to the Privileges Committee. 
 We say that our Privileges Committee is the highest court in the land but others say it is really just a soap-opera forum that can slap people at best across the wrists with a wet bus ticket. Is this Parliament satisfied that the sanctions calling for an apology from this State-owned enterprise are adequate when it is clear that those people lied? They lied to the Privileges Committee of Parliament and they did that very deliberately. I say that is not good enough. 
But it raises a bigger issue with our executive wing of Government and that is the halfway house that we have with our State-owned enterprises generally. It really brings home to us all the dangers of maintaining State-owned enterprises. They were only intended to be halfway houses but by having State-owned enterprises with an ongoing life we politicise the process. We invite this sort of situation where they do the political bidding of the executive. That is a real worry to me. We have a danger with State-owned enterprises dominating the energy sector and I think privatisation is clearly the step forward. I merely flag that issue in the context of this debate because the whole State-owned enterprise model is under question because of the behaviour of New Zealand Post over this issue. 
I come back to the point that truth is vital from our officials our Government departments and our State agencies. The role of the Minister should be to set the standard. The Minister should not be sending the message out there that it is OK to be “less than full and frank”. I condemn Michael Cullen for what he just told us in this Chamber.He said it is OK to be less than full and frank. I say that is not acceptable. We want a high standard that is based on the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth—not some economy of the truth or expansion of the truth. That is not good enough. This Parliament should take heed of this debate and reflect on whether we should receive this report because it is a classic example and could well become the slippery path. A slip becomes a slide when the executive starts setting unacceptable standards based on deceit and untruth. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 It is very easy in a significant debate like this to get too embroiled in political tit for tat. There is a very large element of it in this case and there is a danger that that will obscure some of the critical points that are at issue and do need to be considered. I am a member of the Privileges Committee and at the time was also a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. During some of the hearings in question I was the acting chair so I have a range of views as to what was going on. 
I want to say at the outset that I do not regard the behaviour of New Zealand Post Ltd at that time as being in any way acceptable. During the period the chairman was away—and I was standing in for him when we were in the process of examining Dr Armstrong and his senior colleagues—I received a number of telephone calls from Dr Armstrong saying: “Look why do you want us back next week? We’ve got things to do; we’re busy. Can you give us an assurance that it won’t be for more than an hour or so? What sort of questions are we going to be asked anyway?” The point I am making is that at that time New Zealand Post clearly saw the select committee examination—regardless of whether it was the Kroll report or Transend or Spain or anything—as an interference with its normal commercial practice. We as a committee were thought of as a nuisance even taking time to ask them questions. As a consequence—I think as a sense of frustration over its part in this process—the plan of deception which has subsequently led New Zealand Post before the committee— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Why didn’t you say that at the Privileges Committee? 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: I did actually. Maybe the member was as usual asleep. This is a serious debate and it is not helped by trivial comments of that type. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: You never told us about it. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: The member who interjects often proves his ineptitude and I am sorry that this is one of those occasions. 
What I am saying is that New Zealand Post did deceive the committee. Certainly the record shows that very clearly but I think the issue is actually a much wider one—[ 
Interruption 
] I beg your pardon? Is this more “insight” from the North Shore? No wonder they laugh at the member. What the record shows is that the issue we are debating is about how effective the State-owned enterprise model is and whether there are inherent flaws within it. Over the years that that model has been in place—long before that member was even a blot on the political landscape—we had issues in the early 1990s regarding the Airways Corporation issues regarding Television New Zealand and now issues regarding New Zealand Post. As the member who preceded me pointed out I suspect that very shortly we are going to have issues regarding the various energy generation companies as well. They all stem from what might well be an inherent flaw in the State-owned enterprise model. On the one hand we set these bodies up to be commercially independent; on the other every time they are challenged they claim commercial sensitivity when asked to respond to parliamentary select committees. When select committees start to probe and push we have things being fobbed off as non-events. 
The whole debate regarding the Kroll report was fascinating. It was actually a draft report but because it had not been formally adopted by the board of New Zealand Post the board seemed to think that it had no official status and could not be acknowledged—even though there was independent evidence before the Finance and Expenditure Committee that such a report was in existence. The attitude that appearing before select committees is merely a performance to be gone through is symptomatic of what has become a trend over the years with State-owned enterprises and similar bodies—and in that category I include the Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit and some of the old monitoring agencies that were in place for the health sector. Some years ago when Mr Ryall was chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I well recall one gentleman taking his seat and saying: “I hope this is not going to take very long. I’ve got a plane to catch in three-quarters of an hour.” It is that sort of contempt that has ended up with this case before the Privileges Committee. 
The reason I was in favour of that case going to the Privileges Committee had less to do with the particulars of the New Zealand Post case and much more to do with the broader issues of how select committees can reasonably hold State-owned enterprises to account—without the excuse being made every time a difficult question is asked that that is “commercially sensitive and you are not entitled to that information”. We have had that experience on many occasions. Whether or not the committee was deceived and deliberately misled by a concerted plan within New Zealand Post or a fiction within the mind of the then chairman is of less relevance than what we do from here on. As has been indicated we already have a situation emerging where it would appear that a number of players in the energy sector have not been giving the full story about shortcomings from the middle of last year onwards and we are going to face that situation again in the future. We used to have a special select committee with accountability for State-owned enterprises. From memory it was abolished in the mid-1990s but maybe we ought to return to that because at the moment it is a little too easy for State-owned enterprises dealing with a specialist committee to flick it off and push it aside. 
One of the issues that arose during the New Zealand Post case was as much as anything about how much time we were dedicating to that organisation—about the fact that we called its officials back. I cannot recall how many times we did that—Mr McCully will know—but I think it was at least on three or four occasions. That became an issue in itself because the performance appraisal we were undertaking was traditionally seen to be perfunctory—“give them an hour or so ask them a few hard questions send them on their way.” That was certainly the culture within which this organisation was used to operating. 
Apart from the political machinations about who did what to whom and when the issue that arises from this report is much more about what are we going to do as a Parliament to ensure greater accountability from our State-owned enterprises in the future. Will we continue with a model that sees these things as owned by the Crown but essentially operating independently of the Crown and how do we draw the line between the two? Do we simply do what some have suggested—that is privatise the lot—or go the other way and bring them back under the Crown’s umbrella as Crown-owned companies? We need to face those issues and we also need to address the more vexed question of how we exact accountability. This is a small country and there is not a huge pool of people available to serve as senior executives or directors of those companies. The familiarity with which certain names keep cropping up indicates how tight that little circle might be and that is another issue that needs to be examined in the light of this case. 
I do not have a particular worry about accepting this report. This particular issue has gone as far as it can go but the broader issue of the relationship of this Parliament and its select committees to State-owned enterprises how that accountability is to be exercised and how those enterprises are to be held to account in these areas is one we all need to devote a great deal more time to. If we do not then the long litany we have had over the last 10 years that I referred to earlier will simply be added to and the New Zealand Post saga will become one more stopping-off point along the way. The real lesson of this report is to make sure we do not get a repetition in the future and that will require action by the Government and this Parliament to ensure that all State-owned enterprises get the message about the correct wayto operate. 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 I suppose as the member who laid the original complaint with you and saw this matter go to the Privileges Committee I should start by thanking yourself and the Privileges Committee for the thoroughness with which this matter seems to have been addressed given that it has taken over 15 months. I am sure Mr Speaker you will have spent 17 sleepless nights giving consideration to whether this matter should be referred to the Privileges Committee in the first place. As I said the Privileges Committee has spent 15 months attempting to get this report back to the Parliament. 
Mr Dunne made a fair point that we should try to look at some of the important issues raised in the report in terms of the future rather than simply adopting a political take on this occasion. I am a member who over the years has not been seen as a show pony on the front bench but as one of those grafters in the select committee process. As I reflect on this report I have to say that I feel badly let down. I feel that this Parliament has been let down by this report. The select committee process has been let down by this report. Today I hope to persuade members who are listening to this debate that we can and should do better with the privileges process in the future. I will not try to criticise individuals involved in the process. This is a unanimous report as other members have said. Mr Robson inherited the chair of the committee very late in the process. Dr Armstrong and Mr Toime have long gone. There is a futility about trying to look at the specifics in a sense but it is terribly important for the future that we should ensure that the Parliament is able to hold these organisations to account. That means that the Privileges Committee must do a better job on our behalf than it has done on this occasion. 
I want to make a few references to the particular parts of the report that concern me. First there is a saying that justice delayed is justice denied. I am not sure whether that is the analogy that should be used on this occasion but I do say that a report that comes back to this Parliament more than 15 months after the complaint was originally laid by a member is a report that is delivering no justice and will serve Parliament badly. Any hope of sending to State-owned enterprises Crown entities and Government departments the message that should have been sent to them was diminished when this matter was left to wait for so long by the previous chair of the committee Margaret Wilson. I say at the outset that the content of this report was always going to be inadequate because it comes too late to do any good. 
I move to the report itself and like the Leader of the Opposition I look at the finding which was that technically the company did not give false answers to any questions asked by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I have listened to the comments made by members in this debate. I have listened to the Deputy Prime Minister on this matter. I guess the best I can say with regard to that finding is that it is a most generous finding on the part of the Privileges Committee in respect of New Zealand Post’s behaviour. I profoundly disagree with it. I believe that the finding in that matter is wrong. 
I want to tell the House why. As Mr Dunne has told the House this afternoon New Zealand Post was under sustained questioning over many meetings. It had gone through a process that it felt aggrieved about and uncomfortable with. There was substantial media interest in the matters that were before the select committee and that were bedevilling New Zealand Post. It had been asked to give a series of explanations. New Zealand Post knew that Mr Hide and I were in receipt of material from persons within that organisation who believed that we were entitled to facts that were not being given to the committee or to the public. It was in that light—and I suppose New Zealand Post did feel somewhat under siege—that these matters arose. 
In the previous year New Zealand Post had had to deal with aspects of the South African contract that had caused some ructions in the board room and PricewaterhouseCoopers the auditors for New Zealand Post had been called in to give a report. These were all matters of context that signalled the nervousness and sensitivity of New Zealand Post on this matter. 
In the first discussion in the select committee when New Zealand Post was asked for the Kroll report it orally answered that it did not have that report. The reason it was asked for the Kroll report by myself and Mr Hide was that people inside New Zealand Post had identified this report to us as a damning report that we should know about so we asked for it. Knowing that our informants were giving us information that was contrary to that being retailed to the committee we formally asked the committee to request of New Zealand Post that it give us this document. The chairman of the committee correctly read to the House today the nature of the request. It was a broad request and New Zealand Post came back with the answer that he again has faithfully retailed to the House. Had it not been for the fact that Mr Hide received anonymously in the mail a few days later a copy of that report then New Zealand Post would have profited from what I believe to be deceit on its part. 
The important question that was before the Privileges Committee and that is before the House today is whether New Zealand Post in the circumstances I have outlined to the House intended to deceive. Having been asked formally by the select committee and in the 3 or 4 days that New Zealand Post had to deliberate on the written responses it would deliver which Dr Ross Armstrong finally signed off did it make a decision to deceive the committee knowing that it had a document which could be called the Kroll report or did it simply not think carefully enough about it? 
I am absolutely in no doubt in my mind of the intention of New Zealand Post to deceive the Finance and Expenditure Committee; of Ross Armstrong as the person who signed that document to deceive the committee; and of Mr Elmar Toime to deceive the committee as well. I have not the slightest doubt in my mind as someone who was intimately familiar with the proceedings and with the paperwork that it was the absolute intention of those persons and of New Zealand Post accordingly to deceive the select committee. I say these things having reflected very carefully on the history of those events. 
One of the reasons I am persuaded to that conclusion is that if we look at the internal paperwork of New Zealand Post around that time and I do not know whether the Privileges Committee did this but if it had it would have seen that New Zealand Post’s internal documentation its internal communications referred to this document as the “Kroll report” not the “draft Kroll report” or any other name. The document we asked for was the Kroll report because we were told by people in New Zealand Post that it was called the Kroll report. It was referred to in New Zealand Post’s documentation internally as the Kroll report and New Zealand Post knew that that was the document we were asking for but it told us that it did not have it. 
I believe that that is more than a technicality. That was an act of deceit on the part of New Zealand Post and the Privileges Committee should have held accordingly. 
I will talk about two other points just briefly. Firstly I take exception to the references in the Privileges Committee report to the tension between some select committee members and New Zealand Post and the rather lofty reference on page 5 where the Privileges Committee emphasises that members should take their scrutiny role seriously and follow appropriate lines of questioning. 
 I do not know what caused the committee to put that comment in the report but I can say that against the background of this 80-page report of the Controller and Auditor-General which found absolutely in favour of the allegations made by Mr Hide and myself and which was utterly damning of New Zealand Post I find these words in the report of the Privileges Committee to be gratuitous and insulting. I say to the chairman of the committee that he should think much more carefully about allowing those words to be imported into this sort of document in the future. 
Finally the apology that Jim Bolger gave to the Privileges Committee—and it has been rightly observed that he was not a person who had any personal culpability in this process—was a Clayton’s apology. It was an utterly meaningless apology for the reasons that the Leader of the Opposition has spelt out this afternoon. I say to my colleagues and particularly to those who were on the Privileges Committee that if they are prepared to accept that sort of apology as being full and sufficient in these circumstances then I believe they are inviting every State-owned enterprise and Crown entity to lie to select committees in the future. Yesterday in the media I called this a licence to lie. I repeat that statement today because I sincerely believe that. I hope that in future the Privileges Committee will serve the interests of this Parliament and its select committees better than it has done on this occasion. 
Motion agreed to. 
Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
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. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: 
 I just wish to endorse the point that has been made by the chairman of the Privileges Committee and in particular these statements on page 5 of the report: “We prompt the Standing Orders Committee to meet soon to progress its review of Standing Orders.” The reason we have specifically said this and put a degree of urgency on it is that it is perfectly foreseeable that this kind of breach of privilege will occur in the future. 
I think that everyone in this Parliament knows that members of select committees talk to the press. They like to have a dialogue about what is occurring in the committees they are members of and often the line between what is confidential and still under consideration by the committee and what is public knowledge is difficult to draw. 
I pick up on the reference in the  
Independent 
to “Duynhoven’s law”. It was not some sort of exposé article; it was simply a report to the readers of the  
Independent 
 of the kinds of issues that the select committee was considering. As I said it was not an exposé article that some might think could raise a question of privilege. One has to ask oneself why it would not be reasonable for the public to have some sense of what a committee is considering. Those are matters of legitimate public interest. Particularly in that situation it would not lead to the curtailment of the dialogue between the executive and members of Parliament. It would be part of the process of developing public policy. 
I want to stress to the House and to the Standing Orders Committee in particular that unless they deal with this issue with a reasonable degree of expedition we can expect further issues of privilege to arise. Of course the Speaker really has no choice but to apply the existing Standing Orders. If someone is clearly in breach even if well intentioned then clearly the matter has to be referred to the Privileges Committee. But the kind of report that will come out of the Privileges Committee is precisely the sort we are presenting today which is to say yes a breach has occurred but in fact our Standing Orders are wrong and we urge the Standing Orders to be changed to enable the progress of our democracy. 
It does perturb me that we have endorsed the views of the Privileges Committee from the 46th Parliament. I would like to think we are not going to have to issue another report like this urging further progress. So I make this submission to you Mr Speaker in your role as Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee and ask you to deal with the issue with expedition because in doing so you will be enhancing the quality of our democracy. 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I did not expect to be spurred into addressing this report. However I have heard two things that do so spur me as a relatively junior member with 4½ years in the House. As I look at the seniority of the members of the Privileges Committee I do this with a little bit of trepidation. I believe that this committee has completely dropped the ball. I do not know whether “noting a report” means that anything is done about it. I suspect that it is probably at the low end of the actions that may be taken in relation to a report. But this report is almost incapable of any action. 
I was on the Law and Order Committee when the first complaint was laid. I helped draft the request to the Speaker. We all had a very clear idea of where the leak had come from. I believe that if we had been asked we would have been happy to say. Mr Robson chairman of the committee said that no George Washington had emerged. I think that George was actually asked. I think that in the story he was asked whether he had cut down the cherry tree. In this case as far as I am aware no member of that committee was asked who they thought might have done it. 
By pure chance I was at a meeting of the Privileges Committee when this matter was being considered as to how to deal with it. I have to say that I saw senior members in a very desultory manner searching for a way of doing nothing. They were fumbling around and trying to find some outsiders to bully—someone to write a fierce threatening letter to and make it look as though breaches of privilege were taken seriously. They were trying to think of those threats. There was no consciousness in the committee that the only rules that matter are the rules that people believe are enforced; that the only rules that matter are those that say what they mean and are made to mean what they say; and that they mean the same thing to everyone irrespective of status. 
A law even in this House should be no respecter of persons. I saw at the Privileges Committee members fumbling around after 3 years of inaction trying to find a way of burying this without embarrassment. It seemed to me that if the Privileges Committee is going to work like that it is not a good idea to allow newer members to come along. They might get too cynical because once upon a time the Privileges Committee was described as the most fearsome court in the land. It was seen as the committee that gave Parliament the underpinning to its culture and as a committee that embodied the respect that Parliament should have for process and its own rules. 
I believe that this report is an absolute embarrassment. I recognise that the senior members are very busy and that the Privileges Committee is the only committee—maybe the Standing Orders Committee too—that has so many very busy and very experienced members on it and they probably leave much of the mechanical stuff to the chairman and the staff. The chairman should be very embarrassed to come forward with a purported report without any indication that they had even asked anyone or even asked among members who might have leaked information. 
Hon John Tamihere 
: Your leader was on it. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Yes my leader was on it. They are all busy and in fact a number of the leaders were not there the day I turned up. I think they usually delegate. The position is that Parliament in my opinion is being let down by the Privileges Committee not actually acting. 
I turn now to the recommendations: “We endorse the views of the Privileges Committee in the 46th Parliament. We believe 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.” Why did the committee not offer any sort of guidance as to the conditions of that? We all know that as soon as the processes are completely transparent the select committees would be transformed into the charade that is often the process in this House—that is members searching for the sound bite and posturing for the media instead of genuinely exchanging the views that the current select committee process enables them to exchange without fear of a sentence or a phrase being dragged out of context and used purely for political embarrassment. 
The current confidentiality basis has a good sound reason. It does not need a great deal of change. It probably needed only some elaboration to suggest that members can at least talk to the media about their own position without disclosing the position of other members. In other words the confidentiality that should not be breached is the confidentiality that attaches to the committee itself not to a member’s own views. Instead we get the Privileges Committee just uttering cant—this little statement here that makes them look as though they are all in favour of absolute transparency and accountability without taking any account of the actual reason that confidentiality has been so important. 
I am also concerned that no credit has been given to the  
Independent 
 which has been the most diligent searcher-out of some of these stories. The Privileges Committee should have been saying that no fault ought to be levelled. If parliamentarians do not get their house in order and do not obey the rules the first target for Parliament should be the parliamentarians not news media like the  
Independent 
 who at least take these proceedings seriously enough to want to report them and who want to inform New Zealanders of the detail the often boring detail that lies behind what is going on. I think that in this case we have a feeble report. The motion is that the report be noted. If that is the lowest category of recognition that a report should get then it is appropriate that we do that but it is an embarrassment to this House. 
Motion agreed to.