Franks Stephen: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
Franks Stephen: Privilege — Consideration of Reports of Privileges Committee New Zealand Post Limited Disclosure of Select Committee Proceedings 
[Volume:608;Page:5725] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I did not expect to be spurred into addressing this report. However I have heard two things that do so spur me as a relatively junior member with 4½ years in the House. As I look at the seniority of the members of the Privileges Committee I do this with a little bit of trepidation. I believe that this committee has completely dropped the ball. I do not know whether “noting a report” means that anything is done about it. I suspect that it is probably at the low end of the actions that may be taken in relation to a report. But this report is almost incapable of any action. 
I was on the Law and Order Committee when the first complaint was laid. I helped draft the request to the Speaker. We all had a very clear idea of where the leak had come from. I believe that if we had been asked we would have been happy to say. Mr Robson chairman of the committee said that no George Washington had emerged. I think that George was actually asked. I think that in the story he was asked whether he had cut down the cherry tree. In this case as far as I am aware no member of that committee was asked who they thought might have done it. 
By pure chance I was at a meeting of the Privileges Committee when this matter was being considered as to how to deal with it. I have to say that I saw senior members in a very desultory manner searching for a way of doing nothing. They were fumbling around and trying to find some outsiders to bully—someone to write a fierce threatening letter to and make it look as though breaches of privilege were taken seriously. They were trying to think of those threats. There was no consciousness in the committee that the only rules that matter are the rules that people believe are enforced; that the only rules that matter are those that say what they mean and are made to mean what they say; and that they mean the same thing to everyone irrespective of status. 
A law even in this House should be no respecter of persons. I saw at the Privileges Committee members fumbling around after 3 years of inaction trying to find a way of burying this without embarrassment. It seemed to me that if the Privileges Committee is going to work like that it is not a good idea to allow newer members to come along. They might get too cynical because once upon a time the Privileges Committee was described as the most fearsome court in the land. It was seen as the committee that gave Parliament the underpinning to its culture and as a committee that embodied the respect that Parliament should have for process and its own rules. 
I believe that this report is an absolute embarrassment. I recognise that the senior members are very busy and that the Privileges Committee is the only committee—maybe the Standing Orders Committee too—that has so many very busy and very experienced members on it and they probably leave much of the mechanical stuff to the chairman and the staff. The chairman should be very embarrassed to come forward with a purported report without any indication that they had even asked anyone or even asked among members who might have leaked information. 
Hon John Tamihere 
: Your leader was on it. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Yes my leader was on it. They are all busy and in fact a number of the leaders were not there the day I turned up. I think they usually delegate. The position is that Parliament in my opinion is being let down by the Privileges Committee not actually acting. 
I turn now to the recommendations: “We endorse the views of the Privileges Committee in the 46th Parliament. We believe members should be able to discuss outside select committee meetings a committee’s consideration and advice and to participate in public debates on those matters without breaching Standing Order 237.” Why did the committee not offer any sort of guidance as to the conditions of that? We all know that as soon as the processes are completely transparent the select committees would be transformed into the charade that is often the process in this House—that is members searching for the sound bite and posturing for the media instead of genuinely exchanging the views that the current select committee process enables them to exchange without fear of a sentence or a phrase being dragged out of context and used purely for political embarrassment. 
The current confidentiality basis has a good sound reason. It does not need a great deal of change. It probably needed only some elaboration to suggest that members can at least talk to the media about their own position without disclosing the position of other members. In other words the confidentiality that should not be breached is the confidentiality that attaches to the committee itself not to a member’s own views. Instead we get the Privileges Committee just uttering cant—this little statement here that makes them look as though they are all in favour of absolute transparency and accountability without taking any account of the actual reason that confidentiality has been so important. 
I am also concerned that no credit has been given to the  
Independent 
 which has been the most diligent searcher-out of some of these stories. The Privileges Committee should have been saying that no fault ought to be levelled. If parliamentarians do not get their house in order and do not obey the rules the first target for Parliament should be the parliamentarians not news media like the  
Independent 
 who at least take these proceedings seriously enough to want to report them and who want to inform New Zealanders of the detail the often boring detail that lies behind what is going on. I think that in this case we have a feeble report. The motion is that the report be noted. If that is the lowest category of recognition that a report should get then it is appropriate that we do that but it is an embarrassment to this House. 
Motion agreed to.