Two weeks ago The Post's Tom Hunt published a story about the select committee inquiry into FENZ, which apparently found that the FENZ board is dysfunctional and should be replaced. There is a related followup today, about its disastrous firetruck purchase, which was (weirdly) done without an open tender. Both stories relied upon material leaked from the Governance and Administration Committee's inquiry into FENZ (which released its report today).
Parliament's Standing Orders claim that select committee reports are confidential until publication, and that breaching this confidentiality is a breach of privilege. The committee's deputy chair, Tim Costley, complained to the Speaker about this, and Gerry Brownlee has obligingly referred it to Parliament's kangaroo court:
Speaker Gerry Brownlee has referred a report in The Post to the Privileges Committee.The latter is important. In similar cases in the past, the journalists responsible have been members of the press gallery, and so the Privileges Committee has referred them to the gallery, which has suspended or demoted them for breaching their (parliament-imposed) rule that members must obey Parliament's standing orders. But no such lever is available here. So Parliament is claiming a right to punish random journalists for reporting on matters of clear public interest, simply because the reporting was "too soon" for the politicians' taste. Which is simply tyrannical bullshit. Even more so when you remember that the Privileges Committee is a partisan kangaroo court, whose procedures and biases would be laughed out of court were it ever able to be subjected to proper judicial oversight.The high-powered Parliamentary committee has the power to censure members of the public and could bar The Post’s political team from entering Parliament.
The story in question referred to a leaked select committee report about Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). It was not written by a member of The Post’s Parliamentary press gallery team.
Tyranny from the Speaker and parliamentary institutions has been an unpleasant theme this term. We've had threats to use the Privileges Committee to imprison without charge or trial (which fortunately resulted in the purported power to imprison being removed); an outright Parliamentary lynching of Te Pāti Māori MPs for too effectively representing their constituents; and an utterly lawless Speaker applying the rules in a nakedly biased, partisan, and sexist manner. This is just the latest in a long line of abuse. But where previously the abuse has been confined to MPs, or members of the wider parliamentary community, here they're targeting someone with no connection to the institution at all, before a partisan kangaroo court.
This tyranny cannot be tolerated. Our over-mighty parliament needs to be brought under control, because it is currently a threat to our democracy. As for the solution, a good start would be repealing the 350 year old law which gives them their impunity, and bringing them under the oversight of some neutral adults - the courts.
