Points of Order — Personal Explanations—Repetition of Allegations

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice in anticipation of some answers to questions that I may raise later today. It concerns the repetition of an allegation that has been refuted or clarified by a personal statement. On 20 April, Mr Speaker, in relation to questions concerning a conflict of interest, you ruled that as the Minister in question had made a personal statement clarifying the issue, that clarification could not be further disputed. You reiterated that point, saying that as the Minister had made a personal explanation in the House, that matter could no longer be disputed in the House. I am in a similar position to that, so I seek your advice on this matter, Mr Speaker. In response to questions on mining, Minister Brownlee, the Prime Minister, and others have alleged that I have supported mining operations, deliberately misquoting a press release of mine.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Let me just check this with the member. It sounds as though the member is seeking to make a personal explanation, and she needs the leave of the House to do that. I am not clear on the issue of order. Could she quickly establish it, because if she wishes to make an explanation about anything to do with her own statements she needs the leave of the House in order to do that.

I understand that, Mr Speaker; I have made a personal explanation. I am describing the situation to you so that you can compare it with your previous ruling, to see whether that ruling now applies to my situation. Unless I explain it, you will not be able to compare the two sets of circumstances. It will take only a minute. It is not a personal explanation. I have made a personal explanation to clarify the deliberate misquoting of me by Ministers in the House. According to your ruling of last week, Mr Speaker, it appears to me that Ministers and members in this House may no longer make that allegation against me, because of that personal explanation. I just seek your advice on that. If that is the case, I seek your protection in the House, Mr Speaker.

I thank the member. I understand what the member is saying. Indeed, where a member has made a personal explanation on a matter, that is the end of the matter and the House must respect that. So if a situation occurs where that is not happening, the member is welcome to draw that to my attention.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Certainly matters of personal explanation are dealt with with respect by the House, and are considered in that way. If there is a quote of something that someone has said, does the giving of a personal explanation mean that that quote can never be used in the House again? Surely the member is concerned about the issue of interpretation. The words in the quote had some meaning at some point.

I do not think that we should take more time on this matter right now. The dilemma we have with regard to quotations, of course, is that sometimes they can be wrong, because they are reported quotations—that is, unless they are in Hansard, of course. If a member is quoting Hansard, then that cannot be disputed. But if the quotation is from a media outlet, members often say they have been misquoted. But once a member has given his or her word, that word cannot be contested further; it has to be accepted by the House. That does not mean, of course, that the subject matter cannot be talked about. But where the member has made a personal explanation, we have to accept what the member has said, even if there is an apparent quotation that appears on the face of it to be contrary to that. Presumably the member, in the personal explanation, has told this House that the quotation is incorrect, and that is what we have to accept. If the member has not said that in the personal explanation, then that is another matter again. I do not know the particular personal explanation that was put to the House, so without checking back on the record I cannot really assist the member further. But we do have to accept the word of members where they make a personal explanation to the House. If they are proved to have misled the House, that is a very serious matter.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think it is pretty important that we get this right. I state now that I know which quote the member is concerned about, and I give an undertaking that it will not be used in the House today. We have plenty of other stuff to discuss, as it happens. But we have to be careful about this matter, because a personal explanation should not be used, effectively, to withdraw something that has been said. That is not how it works.

Previous Speakers have dealt with this matter. Interestingly, we saw an ongoing battle a few years back between the Rt Hon Winston Peters and Keith Locke MP over a disputed interpretation of something that one of those two gentlemen had said. I think, Mr Speaker, that if we undo it to the point where giving a personal explanation can effectively mean that something that someone has said, or a position that he or she took, is withdrawn from parliamentary debate, then that is quite a constraint upon the House. Where an allegation comes out of an interpretation of what someone has said and a misrepresentation of a motive, it is fine for the House to deal with that by way of a personal statement. But it is not fine to have, outright, the statement withdrawn from debate.

We do not need to take much more time on the issue now—I have given an undertaking that that particular comment will not be part of today’s transcript—but I think it would be worth looking back at the previous case that I have cited. It is a pretty important sort of position for the House to continue to uphold—that a personal explanation is about an activity or a circumstance, and does not necessarily provide an opportunity for a member to withdraw a statement that has been made.

💬 Metiria Turei: Speaking to the point of order—

I do not want to take more time of the House on this right now, because members are talking about something and I do not even know what the personal explanation is. We do not want to take the time of the House on that today. I draw members’ attention to Speakers’ rulings. There have been numerous Speakers’ rulings about this issue; it is not a new issue. A particularly relevant ruling is Speaker’s ruling 132/2: “A member’s denial of the accuracy of a statement attributed to the member by a newspaper must be accepted without question … but the House is not precluded from discussing in a later debate what the member actually said.” The member’s denial that he or she has been quoted correctly must be accepted, but that does not mean to say that the issue is no longer able to be talked about in the House at all. I think that that is where we need to leave the matter for today, because we have no further concrete information for me on which to base any ruling.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is difficult now to know how to proceed. I am not clear about the position now, on whether my use of a personal explanation to dispute an allegation—which is what it was—is now considered to be a protected statement, if you like, in some form by you, Mr Speaker. The allegation can no longer be used in this House—is that currently the state of your ruling?

If a member makes a statement outside the House about a particular issue, and then someone comes into the House and uses that quote in debate, it becomes part of the debate, and the interpretation of what was meant is a debatable matter. The fact that a member has taken a position cannot be withdrawn by way of a personal statement. If, however, a member alleges that someone did something, as was the case recently where the Green Party made allegations against a member, that member has every right to put right, or to correct, the interpretation being put on the matter, because the material facts will not support it. But where a member makes a statement outside the House, for the member to use the personal explanation process to effectively withdraw that statement from debate is quite wrong.

We are not going to spend any more time on this. I suggest that members look at the Speakers’ rulings on page 132. That will give members guidance on how this matter is handled in this House. If a member has been misquoted, the member by way of a personal explanation can correct that, and the House must accept that correction. I suggest that members look at the Speakers’ rulings on the matter. They are well-established. We do not need to take further time on the matter today.