Hipkins Chris: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19745. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I want to lift up this debate on the Parliamentary Privilege Bill a little bit and start from a fairly basic kind of premise and that is: what are we talking about when we talk about parliamentary privilege? I think that a lot of people listening in at home or watching this on TV when they think about parliamentary privilege will think about accommodation airfares—what might otherwise be described as perks. Actually parliamentary privilege in the sense that we are talking about it now has nothing to do with any of those things. So I want to reassure the public that we are not pulling a swiftie right before an election and making any changes to those things.Parliamentary privilege in that sense is really about the ability of members of Parliament when they are here in this debating chamber and when they are in select committees to undertake the functions that the public of New Zealand elects them to undertake. One of the most important rights that we have through that is freedom of speech. We cannot actually do the job that New Zealanders elect us to do if our right to free speech is not protected. This bill certainly lends itself to protecting that right and that right is a very important one. Freedom of speech means that parliamentarians can come to this debating chamber and speak on any number of issues. They can champion any number of causes with a degree of certainty that they are not suddenly going to find themselves up before the courts for example.I want to deal particularly with a challenge that has been laid down recently in the media to members of Parliament around name suppression and I do not intend to do what Rodney Hide wants members of Parliament to do but I do want to talk about the principle of the issue at stake here. It is that if a member of Parliament comes to the House and breaches a name suppression order issued by the court they would not find themselves up in front of a court for breaching name suppression but they would find themselves up in front of Parliament’s Privileges Committee. Although parliamentary privilege would afford us some protection in terms of the court’s rules privilege itself comes with a whole lot of rules and protections around it as well.So this bill is not about saying that members of Parliament are above the law or that we should be able to get away with anything. In fact what it says is that Parliament itself should administer the rules around parliamentary privilege and that all members of Parliament at the end of the day are accountable to their colleagues in the House—the other elected members of the House—for the way they conduct themselves as members of Parliament and that is the way it should be. We establish the laws here in the Parliament of New Zealand and it should not be that we in the process of doing so find ourselves in front of the courts basically having to justify what we have done or what we have said. Parliament is supreme in New Zealand and should be and the members of the New Zealand public elect us to do a job. We need to have the certainty to be able to go ahead and do that without the risk that we are going to find ourselves before the courts.One of the issues that I particularly want to talk about because I have been on that side of the fence is the protection that this bill provides to officials advising Ministers. Here in Parliament one of our jobs as members of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. From time to time that can be challenging. It can be very challenging for the Government and we will sometimes stretch the boundaries a little bit as the Opposition and that is actually the role of the Opposition but Ministers need to be well-prepared to be able to cope with that and to be able to answer whatever question gets flung at them. That means they need to be able to rely on free and frank advice from their officials and if their officials will not provide them with that advice on the basis that doing so could result in that official themselves ending up in court then the very free exchange that we have here which we rely on as part of our democratic process becomes compromised. If an official is sitting there briefing a Minister and they know some information that may be defamatory or that may be questionable and they are thinking: “If I say this to the Minister then I potentially could end up in court.” they will not say it. Actually the Minister needs to know that because in order for that exchange to take place both sides need to be able to have access to the information and need to be able to rely on that free and frank exchange.So this bill extends a certain range of privilege to those who are providing advice to Ministers. That is vitally important because at the end of the day I do not think that anyone in Parliament no matter whether they are on this side or that side over there wants a Minister to come to the House not sufficiently informed. They want Ministers to be able to answer the questions that other members want to put to them. I think that we all want that to happen so this bill certainly deals with an issue that has come up previously.Just in concluding the final point that I want to highlight from this is around the inability of members of Parliament under I guess current arrangements to do anything outside the House that in any way even acknowledges something that they have said inside the House. We have seen situations where members of Parliament have said something in the House. They have walked out of the House and they have been stopped by a journalist. They just have this blank expression on their face and they have not been able to say anything at all because even simply saying: “I stand by what I said in the House.” or: “I’m not going to add anything to what I said in the House.” suddenly finds them potentially up before the courts. That is not right and it actually undermines the integrity of Parliament. It undermines the public credibility of Parliament.So if they went out in public and repeated exactly what they had said in the House then sure they should find themselves before the court because they would be doing that in an open place where they are not protected by privilege. But simply saying: “Look I’m not adding anything to what I’ve have said in the House.” or: “I stand by whatever I’ve said in the House.” is a perfectly legitimate thing for a member of Parliament to do. If anything it actually draws a very clear line between what they are doing in Parliament and what they are doing outside Parliament. So I think that the clarifications made in this bill are very important.I guess the final point that I would make as I conclude this contribution—Grant Robertson: Finally and in conclusion.CHRIS HIPKINS: Finally and in conclusion I conclude where I began which is that for the public when we talk about privilege we are not talking about the things that members of the public will think about when they think of the privileged role of parliamentarians. It is nothing to do with what the public might describe as perks. This bill is all about us being able to undertake our duty as legislators and as members of Parliament in holding the executive to account without that fear that we will find ourselves in front of the courts.