Standing Orders — Sessional

I move, That the sessional order set out in Part 2 of the report of the Standing Orders Committee on the Review of use of Parliament TV coverage be adopted.

The purpose of this motion is, basically, to update the House’s rules about the use of official television coverage of the House by adopting a sessional order—that’s a temporary Standing Order that will remain in place for the remainder of this term of the 52nd Parliament. It is being put in place on the recommendations of the Standing Orders Committee, which has conducted a review of this area. There is broad agreement across the House that the rules around the use of Parliament TV material are in urgent need of updating and that this should be done before we get into election year next year, where I’m sure there’s going to be some heightened interest in the use of Parliament TV footage, particularly for things like political advertising. In this case, as with all reports of the Standing Orders Committee that I’ve been involved with, it has the support of all members of the committee, and I want to thank members for their careful consideration of these issues.

The committee received 33 submissions on the issue, and there was a general consensus that change was necessary, although not necessarily consensus as to what that change should be. It was generally agreed, however, that the existing blanket prohibition on the use of Parliament TV coverage for political advertising without the express permission of members who are shown in that coverage is somewhat behind the times.

The question that then had to be addressed by the committee was what restrictions should be placed on the political use of coverage that might be considered unfair or inaccurate. Consequently, clause 1 of the sessional order omits the current provision that restricts the use of official coverage from Parliament TV for political advertising, but it adds the condition that excerpts must not be used in a way that is misleading.

That raises the question, of course, of what is misleading and how it’s decided that the coverage has been used in a misleading way and what the consequences of doing so might be. The sessional order places the responsibility for determining whether a particular use of coverage has been misleading with you—with the Speaker. Misleading already has an established meaning in this House. There is, for example, Standing Order 410(r), which gives as an example of a contempt of Parliament, “publishing a false or misleading account of proceedings”. So the Speaker can be guided by previous practice in this respect. Clause 2 of the sessional order gives the Speaker the power to make a direction that the use of coverage determined to be misleading is stopped or altered and to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee as a question of privilege.

It was clear to the committee that this would need to be an expedited process—that if such a matter was to be referred to the Privileges Committee, it would be unacceptable for that to take a matter of months, as is not uncommon if a matter like this was referred to the Privileges Committee. So clause 3 of the sessional order states very clearly that the Privileges Committee consideration of the matter must commence within two working days—that’s two working days, not two sitting days; a significant advance on most of the Standing Orders, which still talk about sitting days—of it being referred to the committee. If that doesn’t occur, then the Speaker’s direction to stop the use of that coverage immediately lapses.

In order to facilitate such rapid consideration, the Privileges Committee is empowered to make special arrangements, and these include the ability to meet remotely via video or audio conference—something that breaks new ground for parliamentary committees and something that I would certainly hope we can learn a lot from and consider how these provisions might be applied more widely in the future.

The current rules that ban the use of Parliament TV coverage for commercial sponsorship and advertising do remain in place. There was no appetite—I think by just about anybody—for those rules to be changed. The lifting by the 2017 review of the Standing Orders of the ban on the use of coverage for satire, ridicule, or denigration is not affected at all by the change of the rules. The rules at the moment, that we’re changing, only apply to the political uses of the coverage by parties for political advertising.

The committee is going to consider the wider rules around the filming of the House as part of its review of the Standing Orders. The agreement of the House to the introduction of this sessional order, I hope, will provide an opportunity to test these revised rules out in advance of the Standing Orders Committee’s final consideration of the matter as part of the review of the Standing Orders next year. It would be useful, I think, if the House was to allow more trials of these kinds of matters to test out new rules before they ultimately get adopted formally in the Standing Orders. I thank the House for considering this issue. I thank the members on the committee for their consideration of it, and I certainly endorse the motion and encourage members to support it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, the Minister and the House leader has clearly covered the clauses through, so I’m not going to repeat those again. But I am going to acknowledge the submitters, who came into the process. The submitters certainly gave, largely, a consistent view, so that actually made it easier to work through. I also acknowledge the speedy way in which this was undertaken to achieve this sessional order in the time that the Standing Orders Committee was able to do that. I would also comment that it is good to have at least the sessional order in place that all parties can live with as we work our way into 2020, that it’s important that we’re able to operate in this way in our democratic system, and that National is happy to support the motion. Thank you.

I’ll just add a brief contribution on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, thanking both the Leader of the House and the chief whip of the Opposition for their contributions. It’s outlined in detail what it is that we’re debating today. This is a common-sense move forward, and I would like to acknowledge the work done by my forebear in the role of musterer—because, in the Greens, we have a non-violent kaupapa and do not abide by the use of the term “whip”—Gareth Hughes for his work in this space on the Standing Orders Committee.

Just to really draw out why this is so important, for members of the public who may be listening, I made the point and put it to some of the submitters when I did sub in on that committee that we have a bizarre anomaly in the Standing Orders at present where members of the media can have a camera up in the press gallery and point that on a member who is speaking, in the same way that, of course, these cameras in the parliamentary Chamber are on members while they’re speaking, too. They can produce, essentially, the same, identical content, but that content which is produced by those media agencies and outlets can be used in any way, shape, or form whilst that which is produced by these cameras in the House on these walls cannot be. So, as far as we’re concerned in the Greens, this just seeks to iron out that anomaly. It’s a common-sense move forward.

We also welcome the unanimity that we managed to reach on that process for where we do encounter what the Speaker of the time discerns is misleading use of that footage and think that there is a really common-sense move forward with regard to that appeal potential to the Privileges Committee. So too I think that it is high time we are moving to increase our adoption of technology in this place, and it is important that members of the public have access to our robust debates in this place. It is crucial for an accessible politics.

Just in summation, as somebody who has recently become familiar with internet memes, I think it is a really important thing that members of the public have greater clarity about how they may use the content of this Chamber. Kia ora.

Motion agreed to.