Privilege — Consideration of Report of Privileges Committee—Time Taken to Correct a Misleading Statement

I move, That the report of the Privileges Committee concerning the time taken by the Minister of Education to correct a misleading statement to the House be noted.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I begin by making a more general reference. I’ve been in this House now for 20 years, and in the period prior to your assuming the Chair, I’ve been Privileges Committee chair for quite a while—and I served on the prior committees for a while. In my opinion, there have been too few references to the Privileges Committee, so I’m pleased that you, as Speaker, are taking your responsibilities seriously to make sure that the Standing Orders are adhered to. That doesn’t mean to say that all references to the Privileges Committee are of the same standing, and I’m not denying the seriousness of this reference, but I do think it’s good that the reputation of this Parliament is maintained. And one of the ways that we maintain the reputation of this Parliament and the confidence of people in this Parliament is by upholding the Standing Orders.

In respect of the reference to the committee on 30 May, the Speaker said that a matter of privilege had been raised by him, alleging that the “Hon Jan Tinetti deliberately misled the House by failing to correct a misleading statement at the earliest opportunity.” The Speaker noted that “In a supplementary question on 22 February 2023, the Minister was asked to categorically state that she had played no part in the delay of release of school attendance information. The Minister replied that she already had, and that it was a decision for the Ministry of Education. The Minister corrected this answer on 2 May, stating ‘I subsequently became aware that my office did have input into the timing of the release of the data through email correspondence with officials at the Ministry of Education.’ ”

Returning to the Speaker’s reference: “The Minister has stated that she was informed by her staff after question time on 22 February of her staff’s correspondence with the Ministry on the release of data. She also stated that she did not know her answer needed to be corrected until she received a letter from [the Speaker] on 1 May, after which she corrected it.” The Speaker has said, “It is an important principle that the House can trust the accuracy of ministerial replies to parliamentary questions. While mistakes are sometimes made which can result in the House receiving an answer containing a misleading statement, it is vitally important that as soon as this is discovered, the Minister returns to the House to correct their answer at the earliest opportunity”, and accordingly, the Speaker said, “I have considered the matter raised and considered its degree of importance”, and then said it was for the Privileges Committee to determine whether delaying correcting the incorrect statement amounted to a contempt and referred it to the select committee.

The select committee then heard evidence from the Minister; that evidence was, in the main, heard in public session. All of the oral evidence from the Hon Jan Tinetti was heard, as all privileges complaints are, in open session, and the media were in attendance. We heard from the Minister for an hour. There were follow-up questions that were put by the committee, at the request of members of the committee, to clarify some of the answers that had been given by the Hon Jan Tinetti. One of those issues that the committee was interested to inquire further into was whether in fact she was rushed after question time—when she had given her incorrect answer and when she first learned, after returning to her office, that her office had been engaged with the Ministry as to the date for the release of the information. What happened on the day was that, at the end of question time, the Minister was on duty, and after her period of duty, she returned to her office and she spoke with two staff briefly. She was informed that her answer was incorrect and that her office had been involved. One of the pieces of advice she had from a staff member was that that meant she had an answer that she needed to correct, and then the other person thought that because she thought the answer was correct when she gave it, she didn’t need to correct the answer, because it wasn’t misleading; because it was correct—as she believed the matters to be when she gave it. There was then a period of delay when the Minister did nothing to update the House as to her learning that her answer had been incorrect. She then travelled overseas for a period.

There was a letter in respect of an earlier complaint by a member to the Speaker where the Speaker wrote to the Minister and said, “Are you sure you don’t need to correct this?” And the Minister replied, “No, I stand by my statement at the time.” And again, the Minister, in her evidence to us, defended that statement on the basis that she said that her understanding was that because she believed her answer to be correct at the time she gave it, it wasn’t misleading because that’s what she believed to be the truth when she gave it. Unfortunately for the Minister, that’s actually not a correct application of the Standing Orders, because it’s not whether we believe the information to be correct, it’s actually whether it was, and as soon as the Minister learned that the information was incorrect, the Minister should have immediately, at the first opportunity, returned to the House and made that correction.

The next decision that we had to take as a committee—having essentially found those facts, as I have summarised them, I hope, fairly—was “How serious is this, and is it serious enough to amount to a contempt?” As you’ll see, the report of the committee was unanimous: we are quite critical of the Minister; we have found her actions to have been negligent. The Minister could have sought advice from the Clerk of the House, from senior colleagues—in a number of ways, she could have sought further information to clarify her position—which, in the view of the committee, as soon as she had that information when she returned to her office, at least gave her pause for thought to actually take an active step to resolve the issue. Instead, the Minister didn’t, and as a consequence of that, the committee unanimously found that the Minister—I think we used the word “should”—should be criticised and be subject to the criticism of the House for that error. Whilst by that time the Minister had corrected her answer in the House, she hadn’t apologised to the House.

Where the committee determined the issue as to whether the behaviour of the member was a contempt—as opposed to something that wasn’t a contempt but still worthy of criticism from my perspective; and other members can speak for themselves—that essentially turns upon whether this was deliberate or not. It was sloppy, it was wrong, but it wasn’t deliberate. Upon that basis, looking at precedents from earlier Privileges Committees, where earlier instances of the House being misled had been considered by Privileges Committees, the committee, in the end, determined that it wasn’t necessary to find the Hon Jan Tinetti in contempt of the House, but it was appropriate that she apologises to the House, which she has since done.

Can I thank the members of the committee for the work that they did. I thought that we handled the issue appropriately. I think it is a salutary lesson to Ministers—and to members generally—that the Standing Orders need to be adhered to if this place is to work properly, and amongst the most important of those functions is the holding of the Government to account; the Government that spends money and has authority on behalf of the people to do very serious things. One of the most important ways in which Governments are held to account is through question time, and therefore, when a question is wrong and misleads the House, it ought to be corrected at the earliest possible opportunity.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as deputy chair of the Privileges Committee to support the motion and to attach myself to the comments of the chair in respect of recent activity by the committee, which is, I think, appropriate. But I do so with a sense of sadness that on this occasion, on a very important matter of privilege—that is, not to mislead and then to quickly correct—we have an example of where standards have fallen well below that which we and the public should expect of its elected officials.

As Mr Parker said, there was no real dissent by the committee in the end, and the committee understood that there would be an appropriately high bar for the finding of contempt. But as is mentioned in the report, on page 13, “Although some of us find parts of her evidence unconvincing”—I would suggest that that perhaps understates the incredulity that members had about Minister Tinetti’s evidence. And certainly I and my colleague Gerry Brownlee, both former Ministers and who know how ministerial offices run, found some of that evidence barely credible for reasons which I’ll elaborate on presently. But in reaching its conclusions, the committee must rely on the honourability of its members if they come before Privileges, and it’s incumbent on us to actually believe the testimony before it.

But that’s not to say that it should be accepted without question. And if various pieces of information that are before it are in conflict with each other, it behoves the committee to drill deeper. It was for that reason that I sought to have the Minister recalled and, indeed, a couple of staff to appear before us to help us understand the evidence. I was disappointed that didn’t occur, albeit that the Minister was asked for further written answers to questions, and it wasn’t agreed to on the basis that that was somehow inappropriate and without precedence, that staff would appear.

Now, that’s not accurate and I’m indebted to former member, the Hon Sir Jim McLay, who wrote an article many years ago about the new processes for the Privileges Committee, and I quote from that article: “Once seized of a matter, the committee meets at the earliest opportunity to formulate the charge, to decide who shall be heard as witnesses and in what order, and to direct the Clerk to advise parties and the witnesses of these matters.” He did go and cite a complaint against former member Duncan MacIntyre, where indeed non-MP witnesses were called. So it’s by no means without precedence.

Now, in order for the committee to reach a finding that Minister Tinetti did not deliberately mislead the House, it had to accept that three things were true. Firstly, that between January 2023 and 21 February 2023, when her staff were in regular contact with the Ministry of Education and in contact with the Office of the Prime Minister, including the Deputy Chief of Staff and a senior adviser, she had no knowledge of that activity going on. That I found rather difficult.

The evidence before the committee was a series of emails between the Minister’s office and the ministry: “Please find attached an information update. We are keen to work with you to agree a release date.” That was from the ministry and that was on 26 January. On 9 February: “FYI. The Minister’s office are looking to potentially release the term 3 attendance data early next week. Something we can chat about at our meeting later today.” And then on 14 February: “Mōrena. Do we have a sense of when the data will be released, i.e., this month, next week, etc.?” The response from the Minister’s office is “The plan is to release it after the announcement.” It goes on to say, “I think it’s safe to say the term 3 data will be released by the end of the month.” All of this activity was going on in the Minister’s office, between the Minister’s office and the ministry, between the Minister’s office and the Prime Minister’s office, and the Minister herself had no knowledge that that was going on. Confident, she was, on the 22nd to answer Erica Stanford’s question: “My staff have no influence over that. My office has no influence.” Clearly, that was not correct. But the committee had to agree that that was her belief.

It also begs the question as to why. If she was so interested in the release of the data in December, when the Deputy Secretary of Education came to the select committee and said, “I’m really keen to get it out this side of Christmas. So I’m expecting that any day.” and the Minister was very interested in the data, why the radio silence between December and 21 February when she made no inquiries that a release of attendance data that was going to be released imminently had not in fact been released? However, we accept that.

The second matter is to accept that when the Minister appeared twice in morning media, on 21 February, to discuss the Government school attendance data announcement, she said the term 3 attendance data would be released that same day, but told the committee that she had in fact made that up under pressure from the media—somewhat ironically, given that that’s exactly when the data was released.

And, thirdly, we had to accept the Minister had an honest belief that she did not need to correct her answer because she believed at the time she gave it that it was correct. Frankly, that’s an extraordinary position to hold. I quote McGee, who says, “It is not a contempt to make a genuine mistake and thus tender incorrect information … But it is incumbent on a member or person who has given misleading information on a parliamentary occasion to correct the error at the first opportunity once it is discovered.” Parliamentary privilege 101. Every member, no matter how inexperienced, should know that, and certainly every Minister should have that drummed into them when they become Ministers, that if they make a mistake they correct it. That is a fundamental corollary to the parliamentary privilege we hold. So it does make me sad, actually, that that’s the standard that we have come to.

But the committee, faced with that choice of either contemptible and deliberate misleading of Parliament or a high degree of negligence and significant errors of judgment, came down on the side of negligence and error. Negligent, according to her testimony, in her failure to have the barest clue of what on earth was going on in her office, between her office and the Prime Minister’s office, between her office and the Ministry of Education—and her office were donkey deep in influencing the timing of the release of the data. Now, we have to accept that she didn’t know that, despite being so keen to have that data released at the start—it was going to be before Christmas. An error of judgment in, by her own words, making answers up under pressure from media that by an amazing coincidence just actually happened to be what was going on in her office. And negligent in her failure to understand her obligation to correct an answer in this House, when it was quickly pointed out to her immediately on her return to the office that her answer was misleading.

Three big errors, three strikes, and a standard of judgment and behaviour that comfortably falls below that which we should accept and expect and comfortably exceeds the thresholds for the sanctions that should be imposed. Some have said “Yep, this is a wet bus ticket.” Well, it’s a pretty big wet bus ticket and nothing the committee could do, I think, would be as bad as the damage to the Minister’s reputation that she herself has imposed by her failure, by her gross negligence, by her serious errors of judgment.

Frankly, that’s part of a pattern; a pattern of Ministers who don’t think the rules apply to them. Well, they absolutely do. The public has a right to expect that we treat our privileges seriously, that we act with honour, that we say what we believe to be the truth and, when it’s found not to be, to quickly correct those misleading statements. That hasn’t happened on this occasion, and that is an indictment on us all, and it’s an expectation that we should all have to do better. We owe it to the people who put us here and Jan Tinetti, the Minister of Education, has seriously let us down on this occasion.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have the honour of being a member of the Privileges Committee and I concur with my colleague, the Hon David Parker, in terms of applauding you, Mr Speaker, on your desire to ensure that, as members of this House, we uphold the Standing Orders in order that not only members of this House but members of the public can have confidence that we operate to the highest standards, and that decisions and discussions and debate that is held in this House conforms to procedures that we all agree to—referring to our Standing Orders and the rulings that Speakers make to ensure to that our practices are robust but also that we continue to maintain the confidence of the people of New Zealand.

It’s in that vein, Mr Speaker, that you asked the Privileges Committee to meet and discuss the matter of privilege that came before us, and the issue that you identified, for us to determine whether the delay in correcting an inaccurate statement amounted to contempt of the House. As a former presiding officer myself, I uphold and applaud our ability to examine and continue to question and debate procedures, and to also, where it is required, look at the actions of members and, particularly, Ministers.

It’s important to all of us, as members of this House and as Ministers, to understand how we need to conduct ourselves and what rules apply to us. And no more so than a Minister, who has a responsibility—unwavering responsibility, really—to ensure that the information presented to this House is accurate. More so that when a statement is found to be inaccurate, that at the earliest possible moment, that Minister is required to correct it.

When we heard the testimony from the Minister, one thing stood out to me and that was the question of intent and had the Minister intended to mislead the House. It’s included in the report—the transcript of our examination of the Minister—and one thing stood out to me, and that was the testimony she gave about the lack of prompt that she had after that particular question time where that statement was made. She felt she hadn’t been prompted by further questions to then cause her to examine the answer and then make a correction. That, for me, was something that we all need to take cognisance of. Because it is important for all of us, as members—but most particularly as Ministers—to understand the roles and the rules, and to act accordingly.

It appeared to me that what the Minister was saying was that it is beholden to other members of the House to prompt her to correct her answer. And that is, in fact, what happened. Because, Mr Speaker, you yourself wrote to the Minister and asked her to do so. However—sorry, no, what I meant to say by that is the Minister’s evidence to us was that she wasn’t prompted. However, we know that from the way she viewed her answer, it was important for her to understand that not knowing that her answer was inaccurate at the time she gave it was not a defence; that as soon as she became aware that the answer was inaccurate, she was required—and is required—by the Standing Orders to correct it.

What I am pleased to understand from that is that now we are all very clear in this House. It has changed the way Ministers understand what their responsibilities are, but it is really important for us to continue to review the Standing Orders and to continue to allow rulings from you, Mr Speaker, to refine and continue to improve the rules and the operations of this House.

I thank the chairman and I thank the members of the committee. I think the process was robust, and I look forward to other opportunities to be able to ensure that the operations of this House restore and encourage and enhance the confidence that the members of New Zealand have in our Parliament.

It’s a little interesting to hear the previous speaker suggest that this case has revealed something new about the privilege of the New Zealand Parliament. It has always been a requirement for anyone claiming that privilege that they behave in an unscrupulously honest fashion when giving information to the House, and that’s what’s at the nub of this particular case.

Before I go in to the substance of what I want to say, can I echo the comments of the chair of the committee—thank you for referring the matter. I think in a future Parliament there may be a need for the Privileges Committee to become a little more activist, particularly when I look at the purpose of it being to judge effectively whether or not the privileges of members are being well respected. That of course goes not only to the members themselves, but also to those who act in supporting roles, and I particularly refer to some access issues, and some staffing issues that I think might border on the edge of impinging on some of that privilege. But that will be for another Parliament.

The chairman set out the circumstances of this case very, very well. The reality of it is that we had a Minister come into the House who gave an answer that was designed to stop a line of questioning that was effective, and therefore uncomfortable for the Minister. I think when the Minister, in part of her evidence, suggested that one of the reasons why she didn’t think she needed to correct her wrong answer was because there were no further questions on the matter. Well, that is exactly the point. If there is to be a situation where a Minister giving an answer in the House is considered to have given a truthful answer, a correct answer, and a factually accurate answer, then why would there be more questions—if it was a positive answer? The reality is that there were no further questions because the Minister was believed. There is the problem, and there is the abuse of privilege in this House.

All members should behave in an honest fashion when they are dealing with matters relating to the laws of this country. All Ministers should particularly ensure that they are acting in a very truthful manner when they are dealing with the administration of the services that taxpayers pay for in this country, the services that New Zealanders expect to be available to them.

So we come to the question of “Well, what happened in this case?” What we know is that the questioning that should have occurred post that particular day when the offending answer was given, did not occur because of the belief in that statement. If you think about it, what that would mean is that a Minister who decided that they were going to influence the way the Opposition scrutinise the Government simply by giving wrong or misleading answers, then we would have a big chink in the democracy that New Zealand prides itself in. We are one of the oldest democracies in the world. Continuous democracy since 1840, and universal democracy since the 1890s. That’s something we should be proud of, and something we should be particularly concerned to ensure is maintained. At the heart of that, that Westminster system, is the ability for people elected by the public to take full charge of the responsibilities—or the expenditure responsibilities in portfolios, and that means they must answer those questions asked of them by those who are scrutinising those portfolios in a totally scrupulous manner.

What we could not understand in all of this is how someone who has a Ministerial responsibility, as any Minister does, not know what’s going on in their office. That’s the bit that still remains perplexing to some of us. So think about how this works. The issue relates to some attendance data from term 4 of 2022. The question was—or term 3, is it? Term 3 of 2022. The question was, “When will that be released?” What we know is that from about October or so of the pre-set of the 2022 year, there was a discussion going on between the Minister’s office staff and the Prime Minister’s office about when would be the optimal time for this information to be released.

Now, the Minister said to us, and the Minister said to the House, that actually it’s not their decision; the decision lies with the Ministry of Education. That’s absolutely true. So she went further to say, “We have no influence over that.” But it doesn’t answer the question “Were there attempts being made to influence?” And that is the evidence that was put in front of us: that there was a long collusion between the Minister’s office and the Prime Minister’s office to get a date that might be the best date—I suppose you’d say the quietest day—to release what essentially was very bad information.

I think it goes further to this question, if the Minister did not know what was going on among her staff—and that’s the bit that’s, you know, perplexing to say the least. The Minister did not know what the staff were up to. The question is raised then: “What is the difference, or the separation between the actions of staff in a Minister’s office and the responsibility of the Minister?” If that were to have stood as being a reasonable excuse or, you know, some sort of “Oh well, never mind, it’s all right, let’s forget about this,” then that would have become the standard way of operating very, very quickly for some Ministers who were not on top of their portfolio. This sort of thing does not tend to happen to Ministers who are on top of their portfolio.

I think we’ve got to ask the question also: on that day where the Minister was told by one staff member, “Actually, we have been involved and you may need to correct your answer,” that’s a nice way for a staff member to say to a Minister, “You’ve got it wrong, get down to the House, correct the answer.” Now, the decision not to do that was based on the Minister’s belief that, because she didn’t know at the time she gave the answer, it was correct. That goes right back to the question I just raised before: that intersection between the actions of staff in a Minister’s office, who only work for the Minister and the Minister’s responsibility. So there was never a case, never a situation where the Privileges Committee could have said, “Oh well, look, never mind, we’re not going to worry about this.”

So what was found in the end is that this wasn’t a deliberate contempt of the House, this was a very serious misjudgment of what the responsibilities of a Minister are, a very serious misjudgment of what the responsibilities a Minister of the Crown has to the Parliament. In that regard, this is far from a wet bus ticket solution, requiring—as the Committee has suggested—that the Minister apologise to the House is no small thing. It will be recorded in the Hansard as an apology, and the details for that apology will be now part of the record of this particular debate.

In reaching the conclusion that we did, there was a question about the scale at which someone might be penalised or castigated for any particular action that was a breach of the Standing Orders. It’s been pointed out by the chair that there’s been very little reference to the Privileges Committee over the past six, or longer, years.

I think his suggestion that there might be a more frequent activity by that committee would be a good thing. I know that it—your decision lines up with your efforts to raise standards in this House, and I think it’s totally consistent with that. I don’t think there can be anyone who sits in this Parliament now who is of any view that a misleading or a misrepresenting answer given to this House can in any way be seen as acceptable.

I just want to thank my colleagues who are on the committee. I think we deliberated appropriately and have come up with a reasonable result.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you to the chair of the Privileges Committee, the Hon David Parker, for giving what I think was a good description of the reason we’re here. I’d like to make a few comments about why a Minister telling the truth to the House is so important and why this particular policy issue that led us to this point is so important, as well as comment on the findings of the report.

To understand why it’s so important that Ministers who come to question time, like we’ve just seen in the last hour, tell the truth to their other parliamentarians is that, ultimately, they’re not telling the truth to us who are standing here asking the questions; they’re telling the truth to all New Zealanders, who elect this Parliament. This question goes right back to the very first time that our Parliament met, at that time in Auckland, in May 1854. At that time, the people who governed New Zealand were sent from London, and they didn’t really answer to the Parliament. In fact, that first Parliament really didn’t have any power at all. The big question was something many people here will never have heard of: “Do we have a responsible Government?” What they meant was: did those Governors from London actually have to answer to the 37 members of that first Parliament, who’d been sent from 24 electorates up and down New Zealand? Some electorates got multiple people, so there were more.

It was a very hotly contested question. In fact, in that first Parliament, there was actually a fistfight over whether or not the Governors sent from London should have to answer questions. So I’m pleased to say that we’re much more civilised these days than Parliament was in the 1850s. However, it goes to the heart of how important this struggle between the people elected from up and down New Zealand and those who hold the chequebook and the keys to Government power really is. And it continues even to much more recent years. It’s only a couple of years ago that Judith Collins, who was sitting there, was the Leader of the Opposition. There were serious questions when the Government was wielding unprecedented power, locking New Zealanders down, stopping them coming in and out of the country. People seriously questioned whether the Parliament should sit and whether she should travel from Auckland to Wellington, as the leader of the largest party, and stand on the same carpet as the Prime Minister and ask her questions. She was asking those questions on behalf of the people of Papakura and also all of those who had voted for the National Party at that time. So it is absolutely critical that the people of New Zealand can send their representative to Wellington, stand on the same carpet as those governors, and ask a Minister and the Prime Minister questions. But that is pointless if they don’t tell us a truthful answer. This is not some academic exercise for Wellington policy wonks; this is actually the basis of a democratic society where everyone has power and a place.

The second issue is that the particular matter was one of enormous importance. It was the question of “Are Kiwi kids attending school regularly?” The question was about when the people will find out information about that critical question for the future of our country. Without going into the topic in any great detail, it’s a real problem. If you go back 10 years—to 2011, ’12, ’13—about 70 percent of kids were attending most of the time. Now it’s about 60 percent of the kids. It varies from term to term. One term last year, it was only 40 percent of the kids who came most of the time. This is a real problem for the future of New Zealand. It’s a real problem for the future of New Zealand as a country, where no matter how rich or poor you’re born, or whether you’re in the town or the country, you actually have a chance—a chance to get knowledge that will extend you to the fullest extent of your powers, as Peter Fraser used to say here, when he was the Labour education Minister and Prime Minister. Yet fewer and fewer kids are getting that chance, because they’re not showing up. And those kids aren’t the biggest problem—amazingly. It’s not the kids who are enrolled in school and don’t attend that often, who are growing in number; it’s the 10,000 or so kids that have been reported—although we don’t really know—that aren’t in enrolled in any school whatsoever. This is a serious matter that the people of New Zealand deserve straight answers on from a Minister who tells them the truth and knows what she’s doing.

Unfortunately, what this Privileges Committee that I have sat on has found is: well, yes, the Minister misled the House. She told us that she wasn’t involved in releasing this information, or delaying the release—because, you see, that’s another problem. We don’t get the information on how many kids went to school until about four months after the term ends. That’s a really big problem as well, because when something really matters, you should be measuring it and people should know what’s happening, so they can do something about it. But we’re managing this problem as a country looking through the rear-view mirror 20 kilometres behind. We don’t know how many kids went to school until it’s four months later. And into this walks a Minister who has basically, in this report, been found not guilty of the major charge. The major charge is that she deliberately misled the House, and she’s been found, in common words, to be not guilty. How is that possible? Because she did mislead the House—even she doesn’t deny that. So how is she not guilty of deliberately misleading the House? Because she didn’t do it on purpose! And the story that we are all expected to believe—and it’s not just us; it’s the people at home—is that she genuinely didn’t think that she had to correct her answer, even when she found out it was wrong, because she thought that, so long as she didn’t know the right answer when she gave the wrong answer, she had no obligation to update people with the truth.

Now, you just have to ask yourself—people in business, people in everyday life—if you’d told something wrong to someone and then you found out that you’d told something wrong and you knew it was kind of important to them, wouldn’t you go back and think, “Oh, well, I told them the wrong thing, and it’s important, and I now know the right information. So wouldn’t I go back and tell them?” Jan Tinetti, apparently, doesn’t think like that. That’s the first thing: that we have to take her at her word that she genuinely just thought, “You can tell something totally wrong and, if you find out that actually it was wrong, you just keep on believing it and don’t tell anyone.” That’s what we’re asked to believe.

The second thing we’re asked to believe is that she did not know, because she had no idea what was going on in her own office. She’s in this office, with all these education people going backwards and forwards, having weekly meetings with a set agenda about everything that’s going on in education, and there’s all these questions in the Parliament, and there’s all these people talking in the news about kids not attending school, and this passionate educator—a former principal—was sitting there as the Minister of Education of New Zealand and she never thought to ask, for months, “Oh, I wonder where’s that data about how many kids went to school. Are we putting that out some time soon?” She wants us to believe—and we take her at her word, because that’s what we do—that she just didn’t know; she didn’t know what was happening in her own office, even though the Prime Minister’s office had been emailing people in her office saying, “Well, are we going to put it out soon? We’d like to time it with a political release so that it sounds good.” But she didn’t know about that!

So what we have here is something that occurs in the context of 170, 180-odd years of New Zealand’s democracy: the tension between the people who are elected to ask the questions and the people with the chequebook and the power over Kiwis’ futures—the Minister—and the obligation of the Minister to come here and tell the truth. None of that seems to be in dispute, but the outcome is that there was no deliberate misleading of the Parliament, there was no deliberate misleading of the people who watch the Parliament—the public; the people who pay the bills—and the reason for that is something much, much, much worse than any argument about constitutional issues. It is because we quite simply have a Minister of Education—who’s responsible for the system that holds in its hands the future of 800,000-odd kids and, with them, the long-term future of our country—and she doesn’t know what’s going on in her own office. Well, that is the real verdict of this case, and it is deeply troubling for every single New Zealander who cares about the future of our country. I support the call for the Minister to be asked to apologise. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise with somewhat more optimism than the previous speaker, my colleague on the Privileges Committee David Seymour. I think we should all be—although saddened by the circumstances that brought us together as a committee on this case—proud that we do live in a democracy where robust debate can happen and that we do have a parliamentary oversight body like the Privileges Committee, that did meet, and that did have the power to question the Minister of Education orally, to request written information, meet for hours and hours, and have those very fulsome debates about what actually constitutes a breach of a Minister’s responsibilities—what the expectations of New Zealanders might be of a member of our executive—and came to a consensus in our decision and in the drafting of the report. Although I must thank the committee clerks, of course, for that incredible piece of work. We did it quickly, though it took hours and hours, but we were very aware that both in terms of the public interest and the human interest, in terms of the Minister in her office, that it was important that the decision be arrived at in a timely manner.

So I think we actually should be proud that when something happens that doesn’t sit right, that when processes in our democracy are not followed, that when question time—which is an absolute cornerstone of democratic transparency and accountability for the Government—may have been the theatre for inaccurate or less than accurate information being imparted by a Minister, we can respond by a referral to a parliamentary accountability mechanism that sits independently and that undertakes that work as seriously as we did.

We received and engaged with jurisprudence from around the world, from other Westminster parliamentary systems. We talked about the Boris Johnson case and cases in Australia. Our thinking in the debate turned on the issue of intent. So we agreed, and others have said, that there was an inaccurate answer given by the Minister, that the House was misled—that that is deeply serious and it is an absolute breech in its effect. We also agreed that the delay was undue and that that continued the misleading of this House, and that that is serious.

But we turned our minds mostly, in our debate, to the issue of whether the Minister did intend—or, as we would say in legal terms, whether there was bad faith. We didn’t find that—although I know others in this debate have expressed their own doubts that seem to remain. It is the case that we did agree—all of us together—that there was in fact no intentional bad faith by the Minister, but that the shortfall was serious. And that is reflected in the strength of the criticism in the report. And it is absolutely, I would say, in the strongest terms that the Privileges Committee could think to criticise this Minister’s shortfall in both ensuring that she had not misled the House and also in ensuring that she had done all she could, pursuant to her duty as Minister, to correct the record once there was any doubt at all that she may have misled the House.

I do want to say that given this process was held, in most part, publicly, and we have a Minister that had to front—that scene was, and would have been to anyone facing it, incredibly stressful. She did go through that process and she now has to live with the record of this damning report—that she has stood here and apologised to the House, that this was by no means sort of an easy route, and we did know that what we were deciding, although short of contempt, was that we had conveyed, and the Minister had experienced, a serious consequence for her failure and negligence, which is, I think, the word most accurately used here to describe what we found.

I do also want to recall that even by the time that the Minister appeared before us, she had taken some steps to rectify the processes within her own office. And I think we can all agree that there wasn’t an adequate process put in place to avoid this type of breach. And we were satisfied—or at least I was—that that has been put in place to some extent. And I want to also note her deep and genuine contrition about what had happened.

So I do want to thank the members of the committee for our shared commitment to arriving at the right outcome—that we decide these standards with the trust of this House and the New Zealand public. And we will, as case by case comes before us, take the same approach, where we will ask ourselves what would let down this House to a degree that contempt will be found. And in this case, because the action was a one off, we didn’t find it to be deliberate or ongoing, we didn’t find that the Minister was definitively told that she’d done something wrong and that she needed to rectify it—that there was no contempt. But we will—parties across the House, both Government and Opposition—come together each time and make that determination again and again. And we thank the Speaker for taking seriously the issue of privilege and referring more cases to us than we have had in probably the past term or this one. The fact that New Zealand has this process, that the process did happen, that it was robust, and that it did result in, I think, some restoration, hopefully, of the trust of the public, the trust of this Parliament, and also changes for the processes in at least one Minister’s office, is to be celebrated. So I think that is in fact a win. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.