Clendon David: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15492. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take just a brief call to affirm the Greens support for this legislation the Parliamentary Privilege Bill. In common I think with other parties we see that it is a necessary and an important bill to go ahead. On the face of it is actually quite a technical bill. It clarifies some definitions. It seeks to interpret some legal terms to provide statutory guidance. It is a technical bill but equally of course it has some quite profound and significant constitutional implicationsin terms of the clarification and in terms of what it enables. I think it will attract some very high-powered submissions to the select committee. I think it is a good thing. I echo Mr Parker’s comments that the Privileges Committee in terms of the personnel is well suited to hear some of the arguments that no doubt it will generate. There is a fair bit of intellectual horsepower on that committee not least of all if I dare say my own Green colleague Dr Kennedy Graham. There is a lot of experience there and we will observe with interest just how this committee and its deliberations roll out.It is in a sense unusual in that this legislation responds directly to a single Supreme Court decision. It seeks to restore what was understood within Parliament as being the status quo the understanding that was indeed reinforced by none other than our parliamentary bibleParliamentary Practice in New Zealand by David McGee. Of course the Supreme Court judgment in its wisdom took odds with McGee and was not persuaded by his position.But nevertheless the bill seeks to remove any doubt about exactly what are the boundaries of absolute privilege compared with the limited or qualified privilege that was referred to. It is referring to some fairly old legislation. The point has been made that article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 is archaic in its language perhaps but we ought to remember of course that a lot of our current-day democracy a lot of our constitutional arrangements still rest on that. Even the theatre dare I say it of each opening of Parliament when the Speaker is reluctantly dragged to the Chair reflects historically that it was an uncomfortable chair to sit in if a monarch chose to take umbrage at something that the Parliament had done when the boundaries between the monarchy and the Parliament were not quite so clearly defined. I do think it is important that we reflect that. We ought never to take our democracy for granted. I think that this bill is an expression of that—that we do not want to take democracy for granted.It is interesting that the Supreme Court judgment inAttorney-General andGow v Leigh made reference to an instance in the UK where some British members of Parliament sought to use the protection of parliamentary privilege in a way that certainly was found to be unconstitutional and even unethical. The accusation was that these MPs had presented fraudulent expense claims. The court in the UK found quite rightly that parliamentary privilege certainly did not extend to that absurd position where it could be used to protect people from the accusation of illegal activities. I believe that it is still the case in the Russian Parliament—in fact being an MP in Russia does give one an absolute exemption from any sort of legal accusation and from being taken to court—with the result of course that there are all sorts of rogues going in that Parliament simply so that they can conduct their illegal activities with complete protection from the law. Of course that would be a very undesirable situation to be getting into.I mention that because I do think that although parliamentary privilege does give us considerable leeway the lesson from this case and indeed from the Supreme Court decision is that privilege is a power that we as MPs ought to use with the utmost responsibility and with the utmost discretion. We should respect the fact that it is an extraordinary privilege in both meanings of the word to be able to make accusations even to make statements that if made outside this place would be deemed to be defamatory. I think that the obligation on us is to exercise that privilege with the utmost integrity not to use it lightly and not to use that power in any way that could bring the notion of privilege into disrepute because it is something that is embedded in our democracy. We toy with it at our peril. I would hope that no member of this House would use privilege in that way.I do not think that there is much more to be said. I will just reiterate that I do think that it is going to be an interesting committee process. There will be some fairly in-depth and well-informed submissions made to the committee I have no doubt. I do think however that with goodwill that we will find a satisfactory outcome. Mr Parker again made reference to the fact that there is—we know and we respect—the separation of powers and authority between the judiciary and Parliament. There is always a little bit of a grey area there. I think there is often a tension between the relative roles of the judiciary and Parliament and that is not necessarily an unhealthy thing. I do think that to the extent that this legislation is intended to make clear where some of those boundaries lie it is useful it is timely and we look forward to it going further through the House. Kia ora.