Prebble Richard: Privilege — Consideration of Report of Privileges Committee— Draft Report of Maori Affairs Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prebble Richard: Privilege — Consideration of Report of Privileges Committee— Draft Report of Maori Affairs Committee 
[Sitting date: 15 October 2003. Volume:612;Page:9205. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 We are debating a report of the Privileges Committee. It is a report of a question that Mr Speaker referred to the Privileges Committee in respect of an article published in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 that purported to summarise the contents of a draft report of the Maori Affairs Committee on its inquiry into the Crown Forestry Rental Trust. The reason that a question of privilege arises is because under Standing Order 397(m) it is a contempt to divulge the proceedings of a report of a select committee contrary to the Standing Orders and it is contempt to divulge it prior to its being reported to this House. The Privileges Committee has raised before as to whether it is a ruling we should sustain but in this particular case it is a very bad breach. 
The reason is that—and this is a reform that has occurred since I first arrived in Parliament—it has now been recognised that if a select committee is going to make an adverse report about an individual and say something about that person that is damaging to his or her reputation then the concept of natural justice or basic fairness means that those points should be put to that person so that he or she can respond or maybe point out that it is an error but at least respond back to the committee before it makes an adverse report. 
In this case the committee had made some adverse findings as the right honourable gentleman who preceded me stated that Sir Graham Latimer’s fees for just over 200 days work were “grossly excessive”. That had been sent to Sir Graham. That is what was reported by the  
Sunday Star-Times 
. It actually reported matters that the committee had not reached a final conclusion on. From Sir Graham’s point of view he was deprived of the fairness procedures that this House wants and he was deprived by a newspaper breaking our Standing Orders. 
 The next question we had in the committee was that the newspaper’s attitude to the Standing Orders Committee I think left a great deal to be desired. We had Mr Milne in front of us and to say that he was not frank would be a reasonable way of describing his attitude. The fact that he had deprived Sir Graham Latimer of his fair trial did not concern him at all. 
I however reached a number of interesting conclusions and somewhat different from Mr Peters. I asked Mr Milne whether he had a copy of the report. If one looks at the comments it is only a small part of the report that was published. It is pretty obvious what actually happened. It is pretty clear what Mr Milne who is a young reporter of some enterprise—some cynicism but some enterprise—did. He knew this was under way. The fact that Sir Graham Latimer’s fees were being looked at—how can I put it—had become common knowledge so that did not make it very difficult to ring up the Crown Forestry Rental Trust and imply and there is some debate about whether he did say he had the report that he had the report. Mr Milne certainly left the impression with the trust and Sir Graham that the  
Sunday Star-Times  
had the report and it was going to print it unless he responded and then he would not have his side of the story. That led Sir Graham to then send what information he had to the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 which of course then enabled it to print that part. Now that is of course a breach of the rules by Sir Graham. 
Well the committee decided that Sir Graham had actually punished himself far more than we could ever do. Because his expenditure I have to say does seem somewhat excessive. That is a very polite way of putting it but I am not trying to put him on trial. His expenditure was all over the front page of the  
Sunday Star-Times  
and that was a degree of publicity that he brought on himself. I do not think there is any requirement by the Privileges Committee or this House to put any further penalty on Sir Graham. I think he will be very very careful about giving out a confidential parliamentary document again. 
The next question is: what about Mr Milne? Well it is an interesting question. Is it actually a breach of privilege to say that one has a draft committee document when one has not? I doubt it. It might be but I doubt it. It is more of a problem that he has. The committee has not reached a conclusion about that but I reached the conclusion that he never had the document. Then it is a question of journalistic ethics: whether it is a good idea to ring up people and say one has documents when one has not. Well that is a question of what goes around comes around. The question of credibility is not just on MPs it is also on newspapers and the like. 
I do say this to Mr Milne. He has the potential I think to be a very good reporter. But he ought to think about those sorts of things. He should also think about the cynicism that he displayed towards the parliamentary process. I think he is one of those young reporters who think that good reporters are just cynical. Well in my opinion that is not so. Those are second-rate reporters. Really good reporters become enthusiastic. They look at the subject and of course they are sceptical about information they are given. But they do not go around just prior to the release of a report being negative. They try to report the full story. 
Mr Milne’s reporting would be a great deal better if he were to take a more rounded approach. But should we take a tougher stand towards someone who is now occupying quite a senior position—but still quite a young man? No I do not think we should. Would we again be as lenient to Mr Milne? No we would not. There are people who think that the Privileges Committee will not do anything. I have had a few of them in front of me over the years. That is a mistake as well. There are a lot of things we could do. 
But I do say this again. For a newspaper to take away a person’s right to be able to correct a record to actually violate fairness—even if we think all the things that Mr Peters thinks about Mr Latimer and even if Mr Peters is right in what he thinks about Mr Latimer which I suspect he might be—even the Graham Latimers of this world are entitled to a fair hearing. In that sense that did not reflect well on the  
Sunday Star-Times  
but I do not believe we should take any further action. The report itself as they say speaks for itself. 
Debate interrupted.