Parliamentary Privilege Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParliamentary Privilege Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15486. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Parliamentary Privilege BillFirst ReadingHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) on behalf of theLeader of the House: I moveThat the Parliamentary Privilege Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Privileges Committee to consider the bill. This bill implements the recommendations of the Privileges Committee in its report on the Supreme Court’s decision inAttorney-General andGow v Leigh. The Privileges Committee concluded that this decision in fact narrowed the scope of parliamentary privilege. The bill returns the law to Parliament’s understanding of the privilege of freedom of speech by clarifying critical concepts and definitions. It also modernises existing legislation to make it more accessible. Parliamentary privilege is a frequently misunderstood concept and this was highlighted by the Privileges Committee in its report when it said: “Unfortunately privilege … is frequently confused with the idea of ‘privilege’ as a personal benefit for an individual.” As the committee said it was not concerned with privilege in the sense of a special benefit for a particular person; its task was to consider matters of parliamentary privilege—that is the protections applying to the House itself and to the participants in the parliamentary process.There are two key components of parliamentary privilege. They are Parliament’s freedom of speech and Parliament’s right to control its own affairs—a centuries-old principle known as exclusive cognisance. One aspect of parliamentary privilege is to provide immunity from legal proceedings for actions done and things said during parliamentary proceedings. What is not so well understood is that this immunity is to enable Parliament to do its job properly. Parliamentary privilege protects members of Parliament committees officers of the House others who support Parliament select committee witnesses and those who report on parliamentary proceedings. These protections are designed not to benefit individuals but to enable all of us to do our work as elected representatives. Privilege ensures that parliamentarians can meet legislate debate matters of public importance and scrutinise the Government without fear or favour. These are things that Parliament must do in order to represent the people of New Zealand. In that way parliamentary privilege works in the public interest for the benefit of all New Zealanders.Shortly after the Privileges Committee report was received I received a report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege from the House of Lords and House of Commons. The introduction to that report referred to the 1999 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and made the same point in relation to the UK Parliament. Thatintroduction said: “Parliament makes the law and raises taxes. It is also the place where ministers are called to account by representatives of the whole nation for their decisions and their expenditure of public money. Grievances great and small can be aired regardless of the power or wealth of those criticised. In order to carry out these public duties without fear or favour Parliament and its members and officers need certain rights and immunities. Parliament needs the right to regulate its own affairs free from intervention by the government or the courts. Members need to be able to speak freely uninhibited by possible defamation claims.” So the same thing is said in the UK Parliament as is said in this Parliament.Privilege is a very ancient concept. This bill makes reference to the Bill of Rights 1688 which confirmed the supremacy of Parliament. As government evolved in New Zealand privilege has remained a key element of the agreed relationship between Parliament the executive branch and the courts. Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 in particular provides for freedom of speech in Parliament. This underlines the independence of the three branches of government which is a basic feature of all modern democracies. It is important to emphasise that the bill before us today does not replace alter or detract in any way from article 9. What it does do is clarify and update various aspects of privilege to keep up with changing parliamentary practices and with modern media. It also brings together and modernises the current statutory reference to privilege found in several places: the Legislature Act 1908 the Legislature Amendment Act 1992 and the Defamation Act 1992. Although the bill establishes one piece of legislation to cover privilege it does not codify it. Important aspects will still be understood by reference to for example the Standing Orders and the customs and the practices of the House.Turning to the specific provisions of the bill it clarifies the scope of parliamentary privilege by defining the phrase “proceedings in Parliament”. It also provides guidance on how to interpret the key terms of “impeached or questioned” as used in the Bill of Rights. The bill will also address the specific issue raised in theLeigh case. It clarifies that advice from officials or advisers given to support parliamentary business is part of parliamentary proceedings and therefore protected by absolute privilege. The Bill of Rights states that parliamentary proceedings must not be impeached or questioned. The bill clarifies that this means that parliamentary proceedings may not be used in a court to question the motivations or draw inferences in respect of Parliament or parliamentary participants. These provisions are designed to ensure Parliament will continue to receive the free and the frank advice it needs.The bill addresses other uncertainties by clarifying the protections afforded to broadcasts and reports of parliamentary proceedings. Democracy requires the public to know what is happening in Parliament. That is why live broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings are already protected from defamation proceedings by absolute privilege. However the current statutory definitions did not anticipate new broadcasting technology such as web streaming. Electronic recording such aspodcasts can have a much longer-lasting life than traditional media. The bill therefore confirms that delayed broadcasts or rebroadcasts of Parliament are also protected by absolute privilege as if they were live broadcasts so long as they are made by order of or under the authority of the House.Reports or summaries of parliamentary proceedings are somewhat different to broadcasts. A report may be edited or packaged in a way that is misleading or inaccurate. Therefore it is not covered by absolute privilege. A form of qualified privilege currently applies in respect of defamation proceedings for fair and accurate reports of Parliament. However if it is shown that the reporting was predominantly motivated by ill will or for improper advantage privilege will not apply. Qualifiedprivilege provides a useful way of maintaining the protection of privilege to protect fair reporting on Parliament while allowing someone who has been defamed an opportunity for redress. The bill extends this form of privilege beyond the Defamation Act to all types of civil or criminal liability proceedings.The final important clarification concerns the concept of effective repetition. In the case ofBuchanan v Jenningsthe Privy Council found that a member speaking outside Parliament had endorsed or effectively repeated a statement made in the House. This approach allowed the court to consider the original statement which would otherwise have been protected by absolute privilege to determine the meaning of the statement made outside the House. This led to a concern that the courts could directly judge the quality of parliamentary proceedings which could have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and debates in the House. So the effect of the bill is to make explicit that a statement made during parliamentary proceedings is protected by absolute privilege and may not be used to determine criminal or civil liability in respect of a statement made outside Parliament. The bill will also affirm the House’s power to fine for contempt—it sets a maximum fine of $1000—and there are a number of other clarifications.So although some of matters covered in this bill may seem esoteric they are actually important parts of the foundation of good government in New Zealand. The bill affirms that Parliament’s freedom of speech continues to be protected. This ensures that Parliament can carry out its functions in debating legislation scrutinising the executive and representing electors with access to all information. I encourage members of the public and other interested parties to make their views on the bill known to the select committee.Perhaps in closing I can say this: we have dealt with a number of parliamentary matters if you like in the course of the year and I think that the time is coming at some stage for a consolidation of all legislation concerning Parliament like Canada is doing. I think that that would be very helpful to enable everyone to understand just how this place operates in a variety of ways. Certainly the Constitution Act as it is currently drafted is unsatisfactory. It is poorly drafted and incoherent and perhaps an opportunity could be given to tidy that up as well. I commend the bill to the House.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.Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): I must say I have enjoyed working on the Privileges Committee with the previous speaker David Parker and others. The Parliamentary Privilege Bill is to be read alongside article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 or 1689 in the new calendar and common law privilege. It affirms aspects of the law and conventions regarding parliamentary privilege including those in the Standing Orders of the House and from various legal conventions and precedents. This country is well behind other Commonwealth countries in getting those matters up to scratch and contemporary. But the bill does not codify or replace the various legal conventions and precedents.The Parliamentary Privilege Bill—so that people listening this afternoon understand it—defines “proceedings in Parliament” to include amongst other matters where the officials provide material for Ministers to respond to an oral question which is the reason why this matter is being addressed at this time. It has actually been a Trojan horse for just that. It provides statutory guidance on how to interpret “impeached or questioned”; clarifies the protections afforded to certain broadcasts and reports of proceedings in Parliament; makes explicit that a statement made during parliamentary proceedings may not be used to determine criminal or civil liability in respect of a statement made outside of Parliament; affirms and modernises existing laws including affirming the House’s power to fine for contempt; and resolves a number of minor technical issues. The bill repeals the Legislature Act 1908 and the Legislature Amendment Act 1992 and amends the Defamation Act 1992.It is work that is well overdue for this Parliament in terms of other parliaments around the Commonwealth in particular. As the previous speaker said in 1688 or 1689 in the new calendar the House of Commons passed the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was a statutory reinstatement of some of the most important basic rights and liberties of English citizens and it forms part of our laws. Most would recognise those fundamental and civil political rights. For example taxes can be raised only by Parliament and not by royal prerogative the right to bail and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and justice is done by impartial judges in courts—it is not a personal matter for the Crown. The Bill of Rights also touched on succession laws for the monarchy. Many of the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights 1689 are reproduced and fleshed out in our laws right across all the statutes and in the laws of the other Commonwealth nations that we refer to.The Bill of Rights speaks to us from the past and it is critical to our future to the role of this Parliament and to the rights of every single member of this Parliament because as I have said before every single member of this Parliament is an equal. No one is more important or has more rights than anyone else from every single corner of this House.Some of the provisions concerned Parliament and its privileges. The general law around the rights of this House is known as the law of privilege. It is part of a rich inheritance of the common law that is every New Zealander’s birthright. The Bill of Rights 1689 is the fount of the law of privilege—it is the fount of the law of privilege. It is what we stand for and what we stand against when doing the business of a democratically elected Government and as individually elected members of Parliament who are equal under the law for our actions in this House and the laws that are passed by majority in Parliament.It is said that the election of members of Parliament is to be free from interference from the Crown and it is often not well understood that there is a difference between members of Parliament and Ministers of the Crown members of Parliament and Ministers of a Government and members of Parliament and members of Parliament as part of a Government. The Bill of Rights 1689 as I said is the fount of the law of privilege.More important for today’s purpose it is said that the freedom of speech in debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not be impeached or questioned by any court or place out of this Parliament. That is why we are having this discussion this afternoon. That is why we have this bill. That is why we have got this legislation going through the select committee process around these corridors.The Parliamentary Privilege Bill deals mainly with freedom of speech in debate in Parliament and its impeachment elsewhere. The Privileges Committee must consider whether the law of privilege is clarified to extend to covering an official’s advice to theMinister for the purposes of answering oral questions in this House. Although MPs often complain about the quality of Ministers’ answers in this House that is an important part of holding the executive branch of government to account. These issues arose in a case where the comments of an official to a Minister in the context of preparing the Minister’s answer to a parliamentary question was held to be defamatory by the courts inAttorney-General andGow v Leigh. It is Parliament’s view that this is a process of Parliament and is therefore covered by privilege. It is the view of the courts that it is not. That is why we have this discussion today. That is why we have the first reading of this bill and that is the matter that is going to be addressed at the select committee over the next few months.Ultimately the scope of law of privilege—save any statute—is a matter for the courts to determine. As the law of privilege stands currently today official advice to Ministers in the context of preparing for parliamentary oral questions is not covered. It is covered in most other Commonwealth jurisdictions and it should be in this House.The House must wrestle with two competing interests: first whether such an extension or clarification is necessary for the proper functioning of this Parliament. My view on that is yes. Here we must focus on the effect of free and frank advice to Ministers operating as members of Parliament in this House and their responsibility for their words and for their actions in this Parliament. Second it is also necessary so that citizens be denied a remedy for potentially defamatory statements made by officials in the context of advising Ministers on answers to parliamentary questions.The bill also deals with the rules around restatement and adoption of statements in the law. Classically a member of Parliament cannot themselves repeat a potentially defamatory statement made inside the House but others can do so in good faith. This strikes me as somewhat artificial and unduly complex. In most jurisdictions in the Commonwealth this has been dealt with. The bill also includes a number of other technical fixes around the power to fine for contempt. I await with interest the submissions on these issues which will be considered carefully by the Privileges Committee. It is probably timely to shift more of the law of privilege into a statutory restatement.These are lofty matters but they are important to the functioning of a parliamentary democracy and to the rights and responsibilities of every single member of Parliament to work in this House in the best interests of every single New Zealander outside this Parliament and in the best interests of a truly functioning parliamentary democracy. For those who come into contact with the law of privilege I hope that this will allow them to better locate the relative law and understand it. In other words it is our responsibility as part of this reform to reach out to the public to those whom we serve so that they clearly understand our responsibilities to them in working for them on their behalf in this parliamentary democracy this debating chamber this fount of all legislative change and hopefully change for good.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): It is pretty rare that I get up and say that I agree totally with Chris Finlayson the Attorney-General but in this particular case I think he summarised these issues very well. I thank my colleague David Parker for further outlining them and I say that even the comments of John Banks—other than I think a slight misunderstanding of how Governments were formed in the 17th century—also made a lot of sense and added some value. I think most members of Parliament will understand that I am very familiar with the case that has led to the change that we are now discussing. I agree with my colleague David Parker and the Attorney-General—I think that the Attorney-General and David Parker were on common ground—that the courts have got it wrong. I think David Parker was saying that they should not have been there in the first place and I do agree with that.It is fundamental to having proper ministerial accountability that Ministers can be properly briefed by officials on particular issues. Sometimes you know there are questions about the adequacy of the answers that Ministers give and sometimes there are questions about the adequacy of the briefings that they receive but to suggest that briefings cannot be full and frank because the officials might face a defamation action is something that I think is particularly unfair and it does not help us here.Mr Speaker what you do at the beginning of every Parliament is wander off to Government House and express your wishes for the House to be granted a number of things but the most important of those is the freedom of speech. It is the ability to say what is important. Sometimes members of Parliament will say what is important to them. They will give their views. Sometimes they will be wrong. Sometimes in other circumstances they will commit defamation. But it is my view that that right—the right to criticise without fear—is something that is very valuable very important and I think probably not used often enough in our modern Parliament.I think that the way we have gone—certainly in the time that John Banks has been in Parliament and even in the time that I have been here—is that we tend to have more debates about big party political issues rather than about the things that are important to individual constituencies and to local members. Maybe that is one of the flow-ons from MMP but I do every now and again get cases that I contemplate bringing up in the House of people who I think are ripping off my constituents.The most recent case was that of a man inWainuiōmata who sells washing machines that just break down. He says that they are refurbished but they are not. They are stored outside. For a period of time Work and Income New Zealand was referring people to him with grants that those people had to repay often for long periods after their washing machines had broken down. We have sorted out the problem at the Work and Income end and the man will go out of business relatively soon. His main source of custom has gone because the beneficiaries inWainuiōmata now get good-quality new washing machines which are not much more expensive. They have guarantees that are enforceable as opposed to those from the man inWainuiōmata who basically chased people away when they came to ask for their guarantees to be enforced.The point that I am making is that there are lots of cases that we get as local MPs where we should have the right to freely and openly criticise people without fear of facing a defamation action. Some of those cases will be massive some of them will be relatively minor and some like in theAttorney-General andGow v Leigh case fit somewhere in between that. I have no doubt that in that case there was a high degree of political motivation in Ms Leigh’s action. I think she was attempting to get some sort of settlement from the Crown in a way that I thought was most inappropriate. Notwithstanding everything that was said previously the quality of her work was suspect and questionable. She was replaced. My view is that that was an appropriate thing to do and that to sue the Attorney-General and the person who gave the advice was not appropriate.I think what we are doing now is coming to the right point in getting the law so that members do have free speech. It is your job Mr Speaker to ensure that it is used responsibly but in the end we will face the electorate and will face adverse consequences from the electorate if we get it wrong. Thank you.DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take just a brief call to affirm the Greens support for this legislation the Parliamentary Privilege Bill. In common I think with other parties we see that it is a necessary and an important bill to go ahead. On the face of it is actually quite a technical bill. It clarifies some definitions. It seeks to interpret some legal terms to provide statutory guidance. It is a technical bill but equally of course it has some quite profound and significant constitutional implicationsin terms of the clarification and in terms of what it enables. I think it will attract some very high-powered submissions to the select committee. I think it is a good thing. I echo Mr Parker’s comments that the Privileges Committee in terms of the personnel is well suited to hear some of the arguments that no doubt it will generate. There is a fair bit of intellectual horsepower on that committee not least of all if I dare say my own Green colleague Dr Kennedy Graham. There is a lot of experience there and we will observe with interest just how this committee and its deliberations roll out.It is in a sense unusual in that this legislation responds directly to a single Supreme Court decision. It seeks to restore what was understood within Parliament as being the status quo the understanding that was indeed reinforced by none other than our parliamentary bibleParliamentary Practice in New Zealand by David McGee. Of course the Supreme Court judgment in its wisdom took odds with McGee and was not persuaded by his position.But nevertheless the bill seeks to remove any doubt about exactly what are the boundaries of absolute privilege compared with the limited or qualified privilege that was referred to. It is referring to some fairly old legislation. The point has been made that article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 is archaic in its language perhaps but we ought to remember of course that a lot of our current-day democracy a lot of our constitutional arrangements still rest on that. Even the theatre dare I say it of each opening of Parliament when the Speaker is reluctantly dragged to the Chair reflects historically that it was an uncomfortable chair to sit in if a monarch chose to take umbrage at something that the Parliament had done when the boundaries between the monarchy and the Parliament were not quite so clearly defined. I do think it is important that we reflect that. We ought never to take our democracy for granted. I think that this bill is an expression of that—that we do not want to take democracy for granted.It is interesting that the Supreme Court judgment inAttorney-General andGow v Leigh made reference to an instance in the UK where some British members of Parliament sought to use the protection of parliamentary privilege in a way that certainly was found to be unconstitutional and even unethical. The accusation was that these MPs had presented fraudulent expense claims. The court in the UK found quite rightly that parliamentary privilege certainly did not extend to that absurd position where it could be used to protect people from the accusation of illegal activities. I believe that it is still the case in the Russian Parliament—in fact being an MP in Russia does give one an absolute exemption from any sort of legal accusation and from being taken to court—with the result of course that there are all sorts of rogues going in that Parliament simply so that they can conduct their illegal activities with complete protection from the law. Of course that would be a very undesirable situation to be getting into.I mention that because I do think that although parliamentary privilege does give us considerable leeway the lesson from this case and indeed from the Supreme Court decision is that privilege is a power that we as MPs ought to use with the utmost responsibility and with the utmost discretion. We should respect the fact that it is an extraordinary privilege in both meanings of the word to be able to make accusations even to make statements that if made outside this place would be deemed to be defamatory. I think that the obligation on us is to exercise that privilege with the utmost integrity not to use it lightly and not to use that power in any way that could bring the notion of privilege into disrepute because it is something that is embedded in our democracy. We toy with it at our peril. I would hope that no member of this House would use privilege in that way.I do not think that there is much more to be said. I will just reiterate that I do think that it is going to be an interesting committee process. There will be some fairly in-depth and well-informed submissions made to the committee I have no doubt. I do think however that with goodwill that we will find a satisfactory outcome. Mr Parker again made reference to the fact that there is—we know and we respect—the separation of powers and authority between the judiciary and Parliament. There is always a little bit of a grey area there. I think there is often a tension between the relative roles of the judiciary and Parliament and that is not necessarily an unhealthy thing. I do think that to the extent that this legislation is intended to make clear where some of those boundaries lie it is useful it is timely and we look forward to it going further through the House. Kia ora.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First welcomes and endorses the Parliamentary Privilege Bill without reservation. As we know the bill seeks to implement the recommendations of the Privileges Committee concerning the defamation action inAttorney-General andGow v Leigh. The committee—correctly we think—concluded that the court’s decision in that defamation action represents a significant shift in the interpretation of the scope of privilege which moves New Zealand away from the position in comparable Commonwealth jurisdictions. The committee’s recommendation in this legislation to restore privilege’s scope to Parliament’s previous understanding is the correct approach to take.This is a very important issue so that Parliament can carry out its duties without fear of defamation and the value of that accrues not just to MPs and Ministers but to the people of New Zealand as a whole. Freedom of speech in Parliament is the essence of a robust parliamentary democracy and of course there is a correlative responsibility for MPs and Ministers to ensure that what they say in Parliament is accurate and reasonable. But it is not for the courts to test that. This is a matter for Parliament and for Parliament alone. Without such immunity which must extend to advisers and to broadcasters it will be our democracy that suffers.The bill clarifies the definition of the term “proceedings in Parliament” to include where an official provides material for a Minister to respond to an oral question. That is of course an extremely important matter because such material is really the Minister’s material and Parliament’s material. So it is very appropriate and necessary that the immunity should extend to that advice as well.Something else the bill does as I have already mentioned is clarify the protections afforded to broadcasts and reports of proceedings in Parliament. The bill ensures appropriate protection from civil or criminal liability for broadcasting reports of parliamentary proceedings and recognises of course that that is a very important medium in today’s society. The bill applies absolute privilege to the live broadcast of the proceedings in Parliament including now select committee hearings and to delayed broadcasts or therebroadcasting of Parliament’s proceedings including select committee hearings that are made under the authority of the House of Representatives. The extension of parliamentary privilege in those ways is clearly necessary to enable such broadcasts to take place without any limitations.The third thing that the bill does is ensure that no person will incur criminal or civil liability for making an oral or written statement that affirms adopts or endorses words spoken in proceedings in Parliament where that statement would but for the proceedings of Parliament give rise to criminal or civil liability. This is known as we know as the effective repetition rule. The bill clarifies the effect of a person adopting or endorsing a statement made in the House in later comments made outside the House and it clarifies the extent to which something said by a person during proceedings in Parliament may be used to ascertain any content effect or meaning of the statement made outside the House. In other words the rule allows affirmation but not repetitionof a comment outside Parliament and that seems to me to be a fair and appropriate balance.Overall New Zealand First is very happy with the bill as it is and welcomes and endorses it as I have said. Without it the proceedings in Parliament would be severely constrained. It is clearly needed. The conclusion of the court in theLeigh case was obviously wrong and must be reversed so New Zealand First will support the bill and vote for it.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police): I am going to take a very quick call on the Parliamentary Privilege Bill. Other speakers have gone through what the bill does and the importance of that. I have to say that it must be Christmas-time because goodwill has broken out across the House. For Trevor Mallard to be agreeing with the Attorney-General and even with National’s welfare reforms as they relate to whiteware it is Christmas. It is Christmas. In fact I thought all our Christmases were coming at once.I have to say that I agreed with Mr Mallard’s comments about the decision from the Supreme Court. In fact I think the advice that came to the Privileges Committee was that that decision would have a chilling effect on the advice that Ministers could get in preparation for answering questions in the House. The very heart of our parliamentary system revolves round the ability of the House to hold Ministers to account and in order for that to happen in a sensible and orderly manner Ministers need to be able to count on the fact that they can get full and frank and free advice from their officials. So the important thing with this bill is that it is actually restoring what was in place prior to the Supreme Court’s decision.I have to say it was an extraordinary privilege to serve on that committee and listen to some of the very learned discussions between the people who make a habit of studying parliamentary law. It was done in a cross-party parliamentary forum. I think the bill presented here today is supported entirely and I wish it on its way. Merry Christmas Mr Deputy Speaker.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Privileges Committee.