Points of Order — Civil Aviation Authority—Surveillance

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It relates to Speaker’s ruling 149/4. The then Associate Minister of Transport, Harry Duynhoven, in December 2003, and the Civil Aviation Authority director, John Jones, have vehemently and repeatedly said to Parliament that their agents were not tapping into telephones and taping calls. They denied that. I knew those answers to be false. I said they were false in December last year, in a parliamentary question to the Minister, and I said they were false in February this year, at the select committee.

Last Thursday the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, Rodger Fisher, came to see me. He had prepared a report, which is dated 16 June and is from the authority’s legal services group. In it the group accepts that the authority, in the year 2002, used taxpayer-supplied scanning equipment to tap private citizens’ phones and to tape conversations.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: So far we have not had a point of order. I want to know what the point of order is. There is some interesting material that I am listening to with considerable interest, but it is not a point of order. What is the point?

I am almost there. This report, dated 16 June, accepted that, as part of a covert surveillance, private phone calls were scanned, listened into, and recorded. Of course, that is an offence. New Zealanders would be horrified to know that civil servants are listening into their phone calls. But what is horrifying—and, Mr Speaker, this is where I am asking you to provide some guidance to this House—is that the Minister and his chief executive have consistently denied it, and, indeed, have provided answers to this House and to the select committee that are clearly wrong. They have known that, because they have had a report, prepared by their own chairman, since 16 June. I would have thought they would come down to this House to provide a correction.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: If the Minister considers he has given wrong information, he must correct it, but it is up to the Minister, not me, to judge that.