Parliament has just six weeks left before it breaks for the election. There is still a lot yet to do, and to slow that down, one or two matters of privilege.
Parliament has just six weeks left before it breaks for the election. There is still a lot yet to do, and to slow that down, one or two matters of privilege.
One matter of privilege on its way out the door and another one (regarding Michael Wood's reporting of hi financial interests ) arriving before the last one has even departed. "It never rains..."
Here on The House we will explore the concept of Parliamentary Privilege a little more on Wednesday, but first we asked the Leader of the House Grant Robertson for a quick rundown on what a Privileges Committee entails, and also about the week's huge workload of legislative debate. A workload significant enough that Parliament will spend at least two two days under urgency.
The debate that began (post-Question-Time) business on Tuesday was an open-ended debate on the report back from the Privileges Committee on a matter referred to it by the Speaker a few weeks ago. The House asked Grant Robertson to outline the committee and the issue.
"The Privileges Committee is called (by some people), 'Parliament's court' in the sense that it's where people can be referred if they breach the rules of Parliament. And the Speaker has to determine whether or not they think that the breach is of sufficient seriousness for the Privileges Committee to assess it."
The breach in question was by the Minister of Education who had failed to correct an incorrect answer in a timely manner. 'Misleading the House' is a serious no-no, so ministers who get their facts wrong need to correct the record ASAP.
Jan Tinetti failed to do this fast enough and the Speaker subsequently referred the failure to the Committee. (The Speaker is not a member of the committee, he just provides the cases it must rule on.)
"The Privileges Committee then meets now the committee is made up of representatives of all parties in Parliament, and the Committee meets and decides whether it agrees that there is a 'question of privilege' (has somebody breached the privileges the rules of Parliament)? In this case, the committee agreed that there was a case to be answered around some answers that the Minister of Education gave in parliament and whether they were accurate."
That's part one. The second question for the committee is how serious was the breach? According to the Committee's report Tinetti thought she needn't correct an answer as the mistake was inadvertent. The Committee was not impressed, but not so much as to take any further serious action…