Tolley Anne: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTolley Anne: Parliamentary Privilege Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19741. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Police):I do not want to take too long at this stage of the passage of the Parliamentary Privilege Bill but I did think it appropriate that someone make mention of the fact that if you pick up the bill as tabled here in the House there have been a considerable number of changes made to the original bill. I felt that it was appropriate that someone actually comments on that. That goes hand in hand really with recognition of the outstanding work of the staff concerned with this.The original bill was put together and came in front of the Privileges Committee. The Clerk of the House made I think the most substantial submission on the layout and the presentation of the bill which resulted in an almost complete rewrite not of the content but of the actual presentation of the bill. In her submission Mary Harris said that “The bill when enacted will form part of our constitutional framework sitting under the Constitution Act 1986 which provides for the Head of State and the three branches of Government.” She said: “The Parliamentary Privilege Bill will become part of the overarching legislative framework for the legislative branch of government.” That is a really important point when we recognise the importance of this bill today. She made the point that the threads running throughout the bill as it was originally designed were disparate and she did not feel that we had accurately drawn all those threads together.In fact she again made the point that the bill was an opportunity to establish a very clear framework that explains and sets out the scope and the extent of parliamentary privilege by having a purpose clause that also explains why we need parliamentary privilege and the importance of it. Her suggestion to us was that we have an Act that had five parts. In fact if you look at the new bill that we are debating here today that is the advice that we took. So we have a purpose clause an explanation and an interpretation in Part 1. The second part talks about the purpose of parliamentary privilege and the privileges of the House of Representatives and then defines “proceedings in Parliament”. Part 3 then deals with how we communicate the proceedings in Parliament and goes into the details of publishing. We took the opportunity as we have all said in this House to update some of the language where that was possible and take account of new technology because it is not just about producing written copies of Hansard any more; it is immediately up on websites and people communicate through the internet.Then there are a whole lot of miscellaneous provisions. We really owe a debt of gratitude to the Clerk of the House Mary Harris and Debra Angus the Deputy Clerk of the House who was an adviser to the committee for the way that they were able to reshape this bill so that any parliamentarian could pick it up and have a read through. There is still a lot of legal terminology as there needs to be in a bill like this but any parliamentarian could follow the reasons the need and the protections that parliamentary privilege gives us all. I think that is a really good achievement. I would like to pay tribute as I say to the Clerk of the House and the Deputy Clerk of the House.I also pay tribute to the Ministry of Justice staff who put the rewrite together and listened patiently to the sometimes lengthy discussions of the committee: Fiona Illingsworth Sarah Carlin Jessica Brown and of course our specialist adviser John Pike QC who has had enormous experience in the courts with these types of legislative procedures and was able to give some very sage advice as we reshaped this bill and put it through its paces. That is the only point I wanted to make and I thank all those staff for the contribution that they made.