Turei Metiria: Inquiries Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Inquiries Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12646. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):I want to take just a short call to support the contribution that was made by my colleague Holly Walker highlighting the fact that with this Inquiries Bill that we are dealing with today the circumstances have changed since it was last debated in the House. We cannot address the issues in it and make this law I do not think unless we also address the issues that have been raised in the intervening time. I would like to thank David Parker for his assessment as the chair I think of the Government Administration Committee at the time and for describing how the Evidence Act has an influence over this legislation. But we in the Greens are not convinced that there are sufficient exclusions as he laid them out tonight that provide the kinds of protections that we think are still very important and which are even more important as a result of recent issues arising out of the Henry inquiry.Part of the issue with the Henry inquiry of course is the behaviour of Ministers in relation to it. There has been a loss of trust by the public and I think by parliamentarians around the behaviour particularly that of the Prime Minister in relation to the information that he has provided in terms of the Henry inquiry and responsibility he has taken—or indeed actually not taken—for some of the actions of the inquiry. If you remember there was that initial statement from the Prime Minister that Peter Dunne had given consent to his emails for example being taken by or provided to the inquiry. It turns out that in fact there was no consent given. There was the issue around the extent to which the Prime Minister’s office had been involved in seeking the details of Andrea Vance’s information emails and movements around the parliamentary precincts. That was not disclosed by the Prime Minister until much later when it was revealed in fact that his office was involved in that. These kinds of behaviours by Ministers who are responsible for these kinds of inquiries reduce the trust that the community has that these inquiries are not politically driven and will not be interfered with by Ministers. Given the wide-ranging powers that this Inquiries Bill—should it pass—provides for an inquiry I think there are real concerns about genuine checks and balances.We are of the view that the Official Information Act should apply to the Parliamentary Service; that people should be able to get information about what the Parliamentary Service is doing. That does in fact apply to MPs’ offices but one of the areas we are absolutely certain ought to be protected is that of communications between MPs and their constituents because it is crucial for constituents to have free access to their MPs to talk about the issues that are important to them. This bill does nothing to allay our concern about that. In fact as it is currently written it would apply to MPs and to all communications that all MPs make at any time in their role as a member of Parliament. Neither does this bill provide any protection as far as we can see even with the description of the implication of the Evidence Act to protect a journalist’s sources. These are issues that need to be dealt with.The problem is of course that this Government wants to rush this legislation through. I understand that the Government intends to have the third reading this week so therefore there will not be sufficient scrutiny of this bill to make sure that the powers are not too wide. There will not be sufficient consideration of the impacts of the Henry inquiry debacle on inquiries and the powers provided to Ministers and to these inquiries. There will not be the opportunity for the media to make comment as to whether or not they think this bill extends powers too far particularly for them and protecting their sources. Neither is there the opportunity for the public to re-engage in this debate about what kinds of powers a politically driven ministerially driven inquiry should be able to have in obtaining information about them.At the time when we are seeing the Government Communications Security Bureau debacle again occur when people are particularly concerned about keeping private information private and their right to do so this bill raises real issues. If this Government wants to push it through then I think there are very serious concerns about supporting this bill over the next period of time unless these issues can be seriously dealt with. We see no evidence from the Government that it intends to deal with these issues seriously. That is very unfortunate. We are abstaining on this legislation until we feel confident that these issues have been seriously dealt with by the Government. Thank you.