Parker David: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15488. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): Can I thank the Attorney-General for his comments. I endorse every one of them. I have confidence in his knowledge of this area of law having sat with him on the Privileges Committee that considered the effects of the decision in the case ofAttorney-General andGow v Leigh and also through listening to his quick reference to the earlier Privileges Committee inquiry into the effect of theBuchanan v Jennings decision.I am not going to speak for a long time because I think that the Attorney-General has covered the issues well and I have not got anything to add. But I would put on record that there is enormous public interest in members of Parliament being absolutely free to talk about everything and to be unedited in their views about things that affect our country. Parliamentary privilege is meant to be absolute for parliamentary proceedings because the public interest in politicians being free to speak their minds and within the confines of parliamentary proceedings to accuse people who may be corrupt or incompetent of corruption or incompetence is more important than the private interests of the people who may feel that they are being defamed.It is that fundamental principle that underlies parliamentary privilege. There is public interest in transparency and scrutiny. In the end this keeps democracy clean and enables dubious things that might be happening in society to be debated within this place in a way that bad things are more likely to be fixed. If we limit the ability of Parliament to go about its business with the fullest of information and in the most frank way possiblethen we do a disservice to democracy because we make it less likely that transparency and democracy will survive in the longer term.It is for that reason that the Privileges Committee thought that the decision inAttorney-General andGow v Leighwas wrong. The effect of the decision was to write down and narrow what it is that is done within parliamentary proceedings that is absolutely privileged. The court found introducing this doctrine of necessity that all that was needed by the system and by MrGow who was alleged to have defamed Ms Leigh was qualified privilege rather than absolute privilege.The Privileges Committee had some submissions from some pretty notable people with experience in these matters and academic expertise. Professor Joseph and Justice Hammond to name but two thought that the court decision with due respect to the court was wrong and that Parliament should overturn it.I always made the point in the earlier debates around these matters that I did not concede that the court had the jurisdiction to narrow parliamentary privilege. I agree that this bill is the way to resolve it but I never conceded the jurisdictional point and I still do not. The reason I do not is that I think there are some matters of contest between the courts and Parliament where there will always be a grey area in the middle and underneath it all there will be this sort of push by the courts sometimes and a push back from Parliament as we sort out where the line properly lies in these areas of grey in the middle.The only way to avoid those areas of grey is to try to codify and define them. Personally I do not think that that is a good idea because codification and the risk that we would give over to the court’s future interpretation of that code in itself poses dangers that are best avoided. I prefer to carry on as Westminster parliaments have since the Bill of Rights was passed back in 1688—was it 1688?Hon John Banks: 89.Hon DAVID PARKER: It was 1689 thank you. Thank you John Banks. I prefer to leave it for us to manage these issues as they arise. I like the prospect that in some future time when Parliament is less responsible there might be a push back from the courts if Parliament goes too far in the exercise of its jurisdictions. Similarly if the courts go too far I like the greyness of these lines to allow a push back in the other direction. Through those mechanisms we actually get to a pretty sensible outcome in New Zealand. Indeed we have got a very long unbroken democracy as a consequence of the way we run our constitutional arrangements.Nevertheless I agree that having reached this point in respect of parliamentary privilege the practical way rather than to deny the jurisdiction of the court to make its decisions is to actually remedy it by way of statute because no one doubts the supremacy of Parliament’s ability to write a statute in this area and set out the position as we think it ought to be. That is what the Parliamentary Privilege Bill attempts to do. I have got no doubt submissions will be made to the select committee by people interested in these matters and I look forward to hearing those submissions.