Personal Explanations — Question No. 9 to Minister

This afternoon on a point of order I told the House that the Local Government and Environment Committee had issued a press release stating simply that we had met in private with Judge Bollard, the Principal Environment Court Judge, in relation to the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. The select committee decided to issue such a release on Friday at its meeting in Auckland last week. Because it was a straight statement of fact, I did not expect that it would be run past me before release, and I expected that it would have been issued yesterday. I was wrong. The clerk’s intention was always to put it in the weekly omnibus release that goes out on a Friday. Our resolution was not in time to make the 11 o’clock deadline last Friday, so it was to be issued next Friday. I apologise if I have misled the House about that. The release has not been issued. The committee decided that it would be issued, but it has not yet been published.