Points of Order — Speaker’s Ruling—Urgent Debates Declined

Point of order. Just reflecting on the ruling that you made at the beginning, and I wanted to consider it before raising a point of order immediately, you’ve indicated that because the Ombudsman is an Officer of Parliament that therefore that’s a matter of responsibility for the Speaker. But the House has routinely, in the past, on several occasions, debated using the urgent debate procedure reports that have been produced by the Auditor-General, who was also an Officer of Parliament. I just wonder whether you could reflect on that a little more, because I think if you were to rule that because a report has been produced by an Officer of Parliament that it cannot be the subject of an urgent debate, then you’re actually shutting down what has in the past been quite an important source of material that has generated urgent debates in the House.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: If I could be helpful here—it happens to be a circumstance of 8 September 2023 when the Chief Ombudsman ordered Mr Hipkins to apologise. No urgent debate happened as a consequence of that, so let’s just get on with it.

Look, I think if the Leader of the Opposition would like to go back and read the actual document that was sent to me, he’ll note that it requested a debate on the Ombudsman’s decision. So it’s a technical point. You are right that there should be an avenue in Parliament for matters that are raised by the Ombudsman to be debated, but not the report itself, and that is the fine distinction.