Business Statement

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have just been reflecting on the information given to the House today by Dr Michael Cullen, who is the Leader of the House and the Deputy Prime Minister, in which he indicated that he understood that the Privileges Committee would table a report in Parliament on Wednesday and would be debated on Thursday. The Privileges Committee has been meeting over a particular matter. Today the most recent meeting was closed to the public, and the determinations of that committee are not public. Given that I as a member of the committee cannot tell members when that report will be tabled, how, at this stage, can he so confidently prepare the House for a debate on the report? He is not a member of the committee and should not have the information.

Obviously, reports are given to all members of this House. I was very careful to say “I understand” that the report may be available for debate next Thursday. Those sorts of decisions are discussed in the Business Committee and elsewhere. It is a matter of good order in this House to indicate we have already committed ourselves to an item of business next Thursday, and that therefore we should consider how we manage that business in that particular circumstance.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Noting that the Privileges Committee is an important organ of this Parliament, I wonder whether the Deputy Prime Minister can assure us that the Labour and Government-supporting members of that committee have not been in some sort of collusion to predetermine an outcome from that committee?

I am sure that is so. I am not sitting on that committee on that particular case for the very obvious reason that I am one of the shareholding Ministers of the organisation that is being charged with a privileges offence. But if the member is trying to tell me that his colleagues never report to his caucus about what goes on in select committees, then I would strongly recommend that they adopt that practice in the future.