Privileges Committee Debate

It gives me no joy to be standing here and speaking to this report. It gives me no joy, as it is not something that I particularly wanted to get involved in, and it is not something that anyone who has looked at the issue will be comfortable with. But as a member of Parliament who was on the Privileges Committee, I had no choice but to consider the evidence that was in front of us, and we had a duty to work our way through it.

I would like to thank Simon Power. I think that the process the chair of the select committee ran was fair, and he gave everyone a fair go. They had a fair go to put their point of view, and I think that it was a fair process. I think that is essential to it. I think, also, that from my point of view, the key to it was to approach the whole question with an open mind. I did not have a view as to the guilt or innocence of any of the people involved when I entered the process, but my approach was that I had to look at the evidence and try to come to a conclusion. That is what we were required to do on that committee. So when we looked at the evidence we discovered there was a case to answer, and as we went through the evidence we discovered even more and more of a case to answer.

In terms of the tests we were to apply, there were a couple of different tests. One was a test on the balance of probability. We had to decide, on the balance of probabilities, whether Mr Peters had knowledge. That was one of the key questions that all of us had to address. At the beginning I did not have a view as to whether Mr Peters had knowledge. I actually did not know. But as time went past, there was more and more evidence around it. So there was the balance of probabilities test. I do not think that this was a 51:49 test, because clearly this was an extremely serious issue, and one could not simply say that the probability was 51 percent, so he therefore had some knowledge. It had to be higher than that. It is hard to put a number on it but it had to be higher than 51:49.

The second test, of course, is the “honest attempt” test. The “honest attempt” test has been brought up here and it has been claimed as a retrospective test. I guess, in some senses, perhaps, that that is true. But I ask members to cast their minds as to what was actually said, and I quote from the report: “It is appropriate to expect members to make an honest attempt to return all of the pecuniary interests that they hold. In order to make such an honest attempt, members are obliged to turn their minds to the interests that they have. The onus is on members to recognise and declare relevant interests.” It seems to me that this is the test that applied from the beginning. Who would argue that members should not have followed this kind of test when filling out pecuniary interests? It seems to me that an “honest attempt” is exactly what is required. Surely that is what anyone requires of parliamentarians—that they make an honest attempt. So to say that somehow, 3 years ago or however long ago it was, parliamentarians were not required to make an honest attempt, which seems to be the argument around retrospectivity, is to my mind puzzling. Are people really saying that a few years ago no one had to make an honest attempt? I just cannot buy that. I think the “honest attempt” test is a fine test to have.

There were two principles around this, to my mind. One was the public’s right to know. The whole idea of pecuniary interest and what goes around it—and it is kind of paralleled with electoral law—is the public’s right to know who is giving money to politicians, and who is giving money to political parties. On the other side we had the basic right of Mr Peters to have a fair go. He had to have a fair go to present his side of the story to the committee. So basically we had to try to meet both of those principles—that the public had a right to know that the pecuniary interest register was being applied properly, and that we also had to give Mr Peters a fair go—and I believe we actually went through that.

In terms of the evidence, I can tell members that in my mind it was difficult to try to put the witnesses’ words one against the other. We heard numerous stories. It was very difficult to know which was the right story when one was sitting there listening to them all. So I think one of the key issues for me was the events around 14 December. That was one of the key bits of evidence, because regardless of who rang whom before 14 December, something very important happened on that day. There were two phone calls and an email. The first phone call was from the billionaire to the politician—if we want to take people’s names out of it—and they talked about something. We do not know what they talked about; there are different stories. The politician rang the politician’s lawyer immediately after, and they talked about something. Then the lawyer sent an email back to the billionaire and said: “Further to your conversation with the politician, here are my bank account details.” This series of phone calls and the email were compelling evidence—they were strong evidence. The thing about them is that nobody denied this evidence. Nobody said “Actually, this didn’t happen.” Those three pieces of evidence and the way they are connected together are a central part of why, I think, the majority of the committee came to the conclusion it did. There is a lot else around this, but we know that those three pieces of evidence were extremely strong, and nobody denied those three pieces of evidence.

The question we got to at the end was around what to do about it. Once we came to the point of view that there was some knowledge of the donation—and I believe that there was some knowledge, and that it was a gift—the question was what we do about it. There were those who were calling for Mr Peters to be suspended from Parliament, for all manner of things. I thought that that went too far. I thought that the report itself is sufficient penalty. It says, basically, that Mr Peters gave a false return. It says he is in contempt, he is censured, and he is required to give an accurate return. I think these are quite severe penalties, and I think that it is a step too far, and too much, to suggest there should be some kind of suspension of privilege, or anything beyond that. So the report, to my mind, was an appropriate response, and an appropriate penalty for what we found out.

Finally, I think this shows once again why transparency around money and political parties is so important. The people out there want to know that the $50 billion - odd of taxpayers’ money that we are responsible for spending is not being spent in a way that is influenced by our campaign donations. That is what they want to know; that is what the whole transparency rules are about. We are responsible for $50 billion - plus of other people’s money. How do they know that the way we spend it is not being influenced by donations coming either to us personally or to our political parties? There needs to be transparency around this kind of stuff to reassure people, so that there is both the appearance and the reality that that responsibility is not influenced by those kinds of donations. We actually went through a tremendously important process in investigating what happened in this situation, but it is part of a much broader issue, and I think we need to make more progress, more broadly, on cleaning up the rules around it. Thank you