Winston's war with the Speaker

If you've been watching Question Time for the last few years, you'll know that NZ First leader Winston Peters really does not get along with Speaker of the House David Carter. And now he's escalated that, with a formal motion of no confidence in the Speaker on today's Order Paper:

Rt Hon Winston Peters to move, That this House has no confidence in The Rt Hon David Carter as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, due to his gross misunderstanding of Standing Orders, for inconsistent Speakers' Rulings and for abusing his power as Speaker during and after Martin Matthews' appointment as Auditor-General, and for inaccurately reporting the proceedings of the Officers of Parliament Committee yesterday when he claimed that the decision of that committee was unanimous and again repeated his personal view of the propriety of the Auditor-General's appointment, all of which is resulting in an absolute failure to uphold and protect the standards and reputation of this Parliament.

All of which is true. Carter is the worst Speaker I can remember, a partisan hack who twists the rules of the House to advantage his party. What's also true is that Winston is a grumpy old fart with a seniority complex who is often incapable of remembering the point he was trying to make a sentence ago, which doesn't exactly help the order of the House. In other words, there are far better reasons to dump Carter than this. Unfortunately, due to the general chickenshittedness of the opposition. this is what we have.

Unfortunately, member's motions are not voted on, though I expect we'll see a move today to gain leave to debate and vote on it.

An abuse of the Speaker's chair

Last week NewsHub revealed leaked MPI reports which showed that MPI had been turning a blind eye to widespread criminal behaviour in the fishing industry. Today was the first day of Parliament since those revelations, and given their seriousness, it was unsurprising that someone took the opportunity to ask for an urgent debate on the matter. Speaker David Carter turned them down flat.

Which is interesting, because the Minister responsible during some of those investigations (and who oversaw the pattern of non-prosecution which has become rampant) was none other than... David Carter. So, he used the Speaker's chair to shut down Parliamentary inquiry into his incompetence while a Minister.

This is an outright abuse of the Speaker's chair for personal political gain, and we should not tolerate it. Speaker Carter must resign.

Correlated contents

Over the past few months, I've noticed a disturbing trend in Question Time of the Speaker being harsh on NZ First MPs. Their questions are interrupted, they can barely open their mouths on a point of order before the Speaker effectively accuses them of wasting his time (creating an adversarial air which is not conducive to the good order of the House), and barely a day goes by without one of them being thrown out for some imagined slight. So why is the Speaker so pissed off with New Zealand First?

Simple: they've vetoed his cushy retirement plan:

Behind-the-scenes jostling between National and NZ First may have dashed Speaker David Carter's chances of a plum diplomatic post to London.

Carter has long been thought the frontrunner to replace current High Commissioner to Britain Sir Lockwood Smith when his term ends early next year.

But it is understood NZ First is demanding that if in a position to get National across the line for a fourth term, then it would want Carter hauled back from the London posting should he have already gained it.

[...]

In a speech to students at Victoria University, Peters announced the party would block any "unsuitable" political appointees and require them to return home if it held the balance of power in government.

Like a knighthood, High Commissioner to London is seen as a political reward for services rendered: a few years living fat off the taxpayer and hob-nobbing with bankers and inbreds while making connections you can use in your post-Parliamentary business career. And its a common reward for former Speakers: Jonathan Hunt got it, as did Lockwood Smith. It shouldn't be that way, of course - its a serious diplomatic posting, and should be awarded on merit to a serious diplomat, not a loyal has-been - but that's the way National and Labour have always done it, as part of their corrupt, cosy, two-party arrangement. So, I'm glad to see NZ First saying they'll put a stop to it (OTOH, I'm also cynical enough to suspect that the reason Winston would recall Carter is because he wants that post for himself...)

As for Carter, allowing your decisions as Speaker to be influenced by personal animus over personal gain is inappropriate and debases the office. He should resign.

Another show trial

Another day, another show trial for an opposition MP for calling the Speaker on his bias. This time, the target is Ruth Dyson, who in various tweets supposedly called the Speaker "incompetent, biased, doesn't like the job, lazy, sexist, doesn't give a toss". Sadly, truth isn't a defence in National's kangaroo court. Meanwhile, in doing this, National's Deputy Speaker made it clear he thought Dyson was guilty, effectively pre-determining the outcome. But natural justice doesn't apply to National's kangaroo court either. Instead, there'll be a show trial, followed by conviction on a whipped vote and a forced, insincere apology. Its an abuse of power reminiscent of the days of absolute monarchy. But that appears to be how National wants to run the country.

National's Deputy Speaker also complained that the opposition's allegations of bias had damaged the public's opinion of parliament. Bullshit. You know what damages the public's opinion of Parliament/ Show trials. And if National wants to stop the House being perceived as lower than dogshit, a place we wouldn't piss on if it was on fire, it should start by stopping them.

Again, if the Speaker feels his reputation has been impugned by these comments, he should sue for defamation. The fact that he is instead demanding a show trial before his own kangaroo court tells us everything we need to know about the merits. He is biased (and incompetent, and lazy etc). He is National's Speaker, not Parliament's.

Today's must-reads

While I blogged about the Speaker doubling down on bias yesterday, I didn't blog about the real news: the mass silencing, ejection and walkout of female MPs. The reason for that is that, to be honest, I didn't feel that I could do it justice. Fortunately, there are people who can:

• Haddassah Grace on National's dirty policy history of neglecting rape victims
  
• Deborah Russell's an object lesson in silencing women
  
• "Claudia"'s story
  

Read them, then tune in to Parliament at 2pm to see if the Speaker will apologise for his outrageous behaviour yesterday.

Doubling down on bias

David Carter's bias as Speaker has been a matter of public record for a long time now, but came to a head yesterday after his outrageous behaviour in allowing John Key to accuse the opposition of backing rapists. And in response to the opposition 9and public commentators) callign him on it, National's Speaker has doubled down, dragging both the Leader of the Opposition Andrew Little and Labour's chief whip Chris Hipkins before the Privileges Committee for comments made outside the House.

This is permitted by Standing Order 410(o), which gives as an example of breach of privilege

reflecting on the character or conduct of the House or of a member in the member’s capacity as a member of the House

I've long argued that this is rule is inconsistent with democracy and with freedom of speech in a free and democratic society. While the need to maintain order in the House means there's a need for such a rule in the debating chamber, in a democratic society there's absolutely no justification for such a rule outside of it. And it speaks volumes that its primary use thus far has been to punish a member of the public who criticised Peter Dunne's relationship with the liquor and tobacco industries. Now, its being used specificly to target members of the opposition for comments made outside the House. What are we, Nauru?

As for the process, Little and Hipkins will now be dragged before the Privileges Committee - a political kangaroo court with whipped votes. Its not a court, and there's no possibility of a fair hearing - whipped voting sees to that - and there's a high likelihood that they will be convicted on the (National) chair's casting vote. This is what passes for "justice" in our Parliament.

Of course, if the Speaker really felt that his character had been harmed by these allegations, he could sue for defamation. The fact that he and his party have instead chosen to pursue matters through the privileges committee tells us everything we need to know: he won't sue because he won't win. And he won't win because the fundamental allegation is true: he is biased, a patsy of his party. And no amount of show trials and forced, insincere apologies and extorted fines can disguise that.

Sack the Speaker

Today saw the most appalling behaviour in the House I can remember, with John Key responding to questions about his weakness in the face of Australian abuse of New Zealanders by accusing the opposition of supporting rapists. This is obviously highly offensive and exactly the sort of thing (like calling someone a "gutless little quisling") that tends to lead to disorder in the House. And yet Speaker Carter did nothing, and invited opposition members offended by it to leave.

And so they did. You can watch the whole sorry business on In the House, if you can stomach it, but its exactly the sort of thing that reminds kiwis of why we hate politicians.

At the end of Question Time, Labour filed back in, and sought leave for a motion of no confidence in the Speaker. National denied it to protect him, because after today they weren't sure that it wouldn't pass. But the mere fact that it has been lodged shows that Carter does not have the confidence of the House as a whole. His partisan hackery, incompetence, and desire to protect his caucus mates and turn a blind eye to their offences has gone too far.

Lets be very clear: Carter is not the "Speaker of the House" - he is National's Speaker, the "Speaker for the National Party". And that's just not sustainable. He should resign, or the House should sack him.

A new low from Speaker Carter

This morning Andrew Little's Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) was drawn from the member's ballot. There is a majority for the bill, and I was wondering how National would try and stop it (since its non-financial they can't use the veto). And now we know: at the beginning of Question Time Speaker David Carter invoked Standing Order 264(a) (which prohibits bills which are the "same in substance" as a bill already voted on being proposed in the same calendar year) and essentially threatened that he would rule the bill out of order unless it was delayed. The problem? The ruling is bullshit - the bill is not "the same in substance" as the earlier version, at least under the usual understanding of Standing Orders.

There's an earlier Speaker's Ruling on this: 103/1 (in the 2011 edition):

The purpose of the Standing Orders is to prevent a question which has already been decided from being brought up again in an altered form, and the same in substance can be expressed as meaning “having the same effect”. A question is not substantially the same because it contains four out of five points of the question as originally proposed. The quantitative interpretation cannot be sustained. The important point is the effect of the words not the amount.

[Emphasis added]

Member's bills have long followed this guidance, both to avoid pre-ballots and to avoid being ruled out of order if they won. Marriage equality was passed in New Zealand in part because multiple MPs spammed the ballot with slightly different ways of doing the same thing. And bills which have failed are regularly reintroduced by finding slightly different ways of achieving the same objective. Little's bill does this: Twyford's bill allocated the power to set standards to EECA, while Little's one gives it to MBIE. Both require landlords to follow those standards, but the different regulator makes them different bills.

Carter should have noticed this. The fact that he didn't tells us that he didn't bother to read the two bills before ruling and that he is an incompetent, partisan hack who is unfit to be Speaker. The sooner he gets shuffled off, the better.

The fingerprints of a biased Speaker

Winston Peters has compiled the data on MPs ejected from the House by the Speaker, and found that yes, there's a pattern:

Opposition Members of Parliament are more than twice as likely to be expelled from the House as government MPs since National has become government, says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters.

The data speaks for itself. Lockwood Smith threw out 17 MPs in his 4 year reign. 11 of those were from the Opposition, 6 from the government. But David Carter has thrown out 14 MPs already in just half that time - and just three of them have been from the government. So, the pattern of bias is both clear, and getting stronger.

As for what it means: a Speaker who has to throw people out this often simply does not enjoy the confidence of the House. We've seen again and again how Carter's biased decisions and his support of the government promotes disorder in the House. He's a rotten, biased Speaker, and he should go.

Twitter and Parliament

Yesterday, in response to a complaint from the National Party, the Speaker referred the issue of MPs tweeting from the House to the Privileges Committee. Ostensibly this is to "clarify the rules", but its pretty clear that he wants to stop people from slagging him off. And this is a gross over-reach of his power.

Parliament's Standing Orders exist for one reason and one reason only: to ensure a modicum of order in the House so it can do its job. No more, and no less. They're not there to police the conduct of MPs generally, and they're certainly not there to police the conduct of members of the public outside the House (as some of the examples of breach of privilege purport to do). Unless something poses a direct threat to the functioning of the House, it is simply no business of the Speaker, end of story.

MPs tweeting from the Chamber does not pose such a threat. Unlike verbal interjections, they do not lead to retaliation in the House which interferes with its function. Criticising the Speaker on Twitter rather than verbally challenging them does not lead to disorder, as it is confined to another forum. It may make the Speaker feel bad when he is told about it later, but protecting the Speaker from hurt feelings is not the function of Standing Orders. Neither is protecting the Speaker's sense of "authority" from things said outside the Chamber. While he gets to be a petty tyrant in the Chamber, he just has to put up with what people say about him outside it (subject of course to the law of defamation). And if he feels that those outside statements prevent him from performing his job impartially, then the only honourable course of action is to resign.

What MPs tweeting from the Chamber does do is give us a direct line into our democracy. Its immediate, its informal, and its responsive - and therefore hugely valuable in terms of citizen engagement. We also get to see our MPs warts and all - Judith Collins' bullying and vindictiveness, Tau Henare's humour, Jan Logie's over-extended simile - and judge them accordingly. And by threatening it, Carter is undermining a key part of our democratic conversation. And that's not something we should let him get away with.

House of the 1%

The 2014 Register of Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests of Members of Parliament was released today, showing once again how different the lives of MPs are from the people they purport to represent. Multiple homes, numerous trusts, investment properties, lavish gifts - the overall picture is of a House of the 1%. Ordinary people don't get given a single smartphone by its manufacturers in a year - let alone three (why does John Key need three Galaxy S4's anyway? Does he break them? Or keep multiple ones for different purposes?)

But the most disgusting thing in it: the Speaker of the House, David Carter, reports owning substantial shareholdings in both Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy. He voted for a privatisation law, then he brought shares in the privatised companies. And that is simply corrupt.

Unfit to be Speaker

If anyone was in any doubt, we've had proof today that David Carter is unfit to be Speaker. First, he ruled a question asked by Metiria Turei which began with a reference to a "sleazy deal" out of order. Then, when asked, he said that that was not unparliamentary language. Finally, when then asked to justify his given this apparent contradiction, he threw her out. The obvious conclusion: Carter's decision was unjustifiable.

We see this day after day in Question Time, and it is not sustainable. Carter's performance as Speaker has been arbitrary, authoritarian, and inconsistent. Rather than enforcing the Standing orders of the House neutrally, he abuses them to protect the government and limit them being held to account. And every day he does this, he undermines confidence in Parliament, and our system of government. He brings our House and our democracy into contempt. He should step down.

Spying on journalists III

Last week when we learned that the Henry inquiry had asked Parliamentary Services for Andrea Vance's private phone records, we were told that they had not been handed over. It was a lie:

Speaker David Carter has confirmed three months worth of phone records for Fairfax journalist Andrea Vance were handed over to a ministerial inquiry.

Carter today apologised to Vance and Fairfax group executive editor Paul Thompson and acknowledged answers given last week in response to the journalist's phone record were wrong.

[...]

Carter said today he became aware on Friday his answer in response to questions about Vance's phone records was wrong.

Three months worth of phone records had "inadvertently" been supplied to Henry by Parliamentary Service during the course of his investigations.

The information had been collated by parliamentary contractor Datacom.

Henry claims that he never requested those records, and had instead been seeking records of Ministers. But its hard to see why they would have been supplied except in response to a direct request. Interestingly, last week Carter said they were requested. Given that he's now changed his story twice, I'm not sure we can trust him to be telling the truth now.

But even if we accept his latest story, it tells us that Parliamentary Services are a bunch of muppets, and that contracting out services subject to Parliamentary privilege to companies with no understanding of the concept is not a good idea. Again, heads must roll for this - and the chief executive of Parliamentary Services is the prime candidate, for letting this happen on their watch.

Also in the "not a good idea" category is Parliament supplying telecommunications services to the press gallery. Clearly, merely paying for it is not enough to ensure ownership or to protect such communications from random government snooping. And again: if their data traffic goes across the same phone lines, it should be regarded as fundamentally compromised.

Finally: John Key's spy bill would let the GCSB do to everyone what Henry did to Vance, legally and in secret. We cannot permit it to pass. This spying government must be defeated.

His own worst enemy

I've just watched an extraordinary exchange in Question Time, which saw Speaker Carter threatening to punish the Greens for following proper process.

Metiria Turei had tried to ask the Prime Minister a question about his crony deal with Sky City. Key didn't want to answer it, so it was transferred to the Minister for Economic Development. As the question was asking whether the Prime Minister stood by one of his statements, Turei quite rightly challenged that transfer. She then, as is usual practice, tried to change the Speaker's mind when he refused. Having failed, she then sought a further point of order. At that stage, the speaker went berserk and started issuing threats. After a prolonged exchange which tied up the House for a good five minutes, he finally relented - at which stage Metiria was allowed to ask her points of order: to seek leave for the question to be transferred back, and then to exercise her right to withdraw the question.

So, a party which tried to follow the proper and accepted process - seek a ruling, attempt to argue it once, seek leave to over-ride it, then withdraw the question - was threatened by the Speaker for doing so.

Its an unpleasant example of Carter's biases - and of his failure as a Speaker. He is his own worst enemy in the role: his authoritarianism and partisanship make the job unnecessarily difficult for him, in the process wasting valuable House time and bringing the House into contempt with the public. Bluntly, if he wasn't such a dick about it, his job would become significantly easier. But sadly, that's probably too much to expect.

(The irony: one of those vague "does the Prime Minister stand by all his statements" questions I hate provided a gateway for the Turei to bypass the transfer and ask Key directly. Which he Did Not Like. Which means Carter will probably be moving to limit the scope of such questions in future in order to protect the Prime Minister from public shame).

A farce

Question Time has descended into a farce today with Trevor Mallard walking out and New Zealand First declaring an ongoing boycott over David Carter's rulings around United Future's recognition as a party. Carter had ruled that he would not cease to recognise United Future, as the consequences would be severe and Dunne assured him the party would be re-registered within a week. This, despite clear Standing Orders saying that only registered parties would be recognised. He then refused to release the advice he had received on the matter, or even to say who he had consulted (hint: Gerry Brownlee).

The latter is particularly troubling. The Speaker is the servant of the House. He has neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak except as the House directs him. It is not the Speaker's advice, but the House's advice, and the House has a fundamental right to see it. If the Speaker refuses, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that it does not support his ruling and he is hiding it to cover up that fact.

Carter covers for Solid Energy

On March 7, Solid Energy CEO Garry Diack lied to the Commerce Select Committee by denying that former CEO Don Elder had offered to attend the select committee. It was an open and shut breach of Parliamentary Privilege, and one which needed to be punished in order to ensure that other CEOs do not also lie to Parliament. But Speaker David Carter has refused to forward the complaint to the Privileges Committee. His reason? He won't even give one.

This doesn't just strike at the heart of Parliament's ability to hold the state sector accountable; the later also strikes at one of our most fundamental constitutional conventions: that decision-makers (especially in quasi-judicial roles) must give reasons for their decisions. Carter is behaving like an autocrat here, someone who does not believe he is responsible to us or that his decisions can be judged by us. And that is simply not acceptable.