12. Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media Minister—Contact with Carol HirschfieldMELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital MediaBroadcasting Communications and Digital Media Minister—Contact with Carol Hirschfield12. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media: Does she stand by all of her answers to oral and written questions?Hon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media): Yes in the context that they were given.Melissa Lee: Does she stand by her answer to written question No. 19129 (2017) in regard to meeting with board members or staff of TVNZ or RNZ since 1 December?Hon CLARE CURRAN: Yes.Melissa Lee: How can she stand by that answer when she failed to mention her breakfast meeting with RNZ head of content Carol Hirschfeld on 2 December?Hon CLARE CURRAN: I have a range of discussions informal or otherwise with many people in a range of portfolio areas.Melissa Lee: If they did have breakfast together as the Minister's office has confirmed and discussed a range of issues about the future of media in New Zealand why did she not include this extremely relevant meeting in her answer to written question No. 19129 (2017)?Hon CLARE CURRAN: Unlike the previous Government this Government consults broadly—[Interruption] SPEAKER: Order! I think there's probably quite a lot of interest in this answer. I'm interested in it. I would like to be able to hear it and there are a number of members especially on the cross benches who are interfering with that. Clare Curran—start again please.Hon CLARE CURRAN: Unlike the previous Government this Government consults broadly with a range of stakeholders on a range of matters to ensure that we are out there engaging on the issues and on the policies that we're proposing—Melissa Lee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: No no—can the member resume her seat. I think I know what the member was going to say but I'd like to give the Minister a chance to actually address the question before she finishes.Hon CLARE CURRAN: Unlike the previous Government this Government's members engage widely with stakeholders on a broad range of issues on policy matters and to ensure that we're getting them right. [Interruption] SPEAKER: No. I don't think the member needs a point of order. I'm going to ask the member to repeat that question.Melissa Lee: Thank you Mr Speaker. If she did have breakfast together as the Minister's office has confirmed and has discussed a range of issues about the future of New Zealand media why did she not include this extremely relevant meeting in her answer to written question No. 19129?SPEAKER: And the Minister will answer that but because of Nathan Guy's interjections a supplementary will be taken from the National Party.Hon CLARE CURRAN: Because I didn't perceive it as an official meeting. [Interruption] SPEAKER: No. That's the end of the supplementaries.Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Mr. Speaker you have an important role when it comes to the efficiency and the—I suppose you'd say—appropriateness of answers for written questions. Is now a requirement of the Opposition to ask only about what the Minister considers to be official meetings or is it still the case that a Minister is always a Minister and therefore in a ministerial capacity turning up in the ministerial limousine etc. etc. can be asked about any meeting that they might attend?Rt Hon Winston Peters: What we are in danger of doing now at the request of the Opposition is to say that every coffee meeting every time you have breakfast is an official meeting. Now some of us do that because we need the food; we work so hard. But we do not make those events official events that we think the staff should be responsible for. And the real point here is her office disclosed the matter but it wasn't official. And Mr Brownlee might regard every time he eats as an official matter but we don't.SPEAKER: Order!Hon Chris Hipkins: Mr Speaker I draw your attention—I'm sure you're aware of it because I think you were involved in it—to a lengthy series of points of order during the last Parliament about the former Prime Minister John Key and the various hats that he wore and what were deemed to be official engagements and what were not deemed to be official engagements. And I think the precedent was very clearly established by the previous Government.Hon Gerry Brownlee: The point Mr. Speaker is that if a Minister—in this case the Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media—has a meeting with someone who is an employee of Radio New Zealand are we expected to believe that there was no discussion at all about matters that fall within portfolio responsibilities? I think that would be a huge stretch. And if the Rt Hon Winston Peters is making the case that Ministers can avoid public scrutiny by simply declaring a meeting to be unofficial then I think we are really limiting the general constraints democracy places on a Government.Hon Nikki Kaye: I just want to highlight the importance of your ruling on this issue because it relates to another question that I've been asking today. We have the situation where the Hon Kelvin Davis has sat in a meeting—SPEAKER: Order! I think I'd rather deal with this one.Hon Nikki Kaye: Well it does cut to the heart of whether he was sitting there as the Associate Minister of Education or in some other capacity.SPEAKER: Well I really don't think this is that complicated for members who have looked at the issue of ministerial responsibility carefully. Clearly members can be involved as a Minister at a breakfast which is not a meeting with a specific person because quite often there is a large group of people at a general breakfast and someone else could be there and there could be discussion. That is not a meeting with an individual as far as I'm concerned.Having said that I do agree with the basic point that the Hon Gerry Brownlee makes and that is that people don't take off their ministerial hats unless it's made clear by some other method or for some other reason or they're there for another clear purpose—sometimes personal sometimes a constituency—that one has a general expectation that people are acting in a ministerial capacity if they're meeting with people where they do have some responsibility.But the point that I would make is that in the end I cannot take responsibility for a Minister's answer. That is something for them. I don't want to either judge or be held responsible for the quality of answers. But other members of the House and—certainly from the correspondence that I get—people in the public do make judgments as to the quality of answers.