GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have a couple of points I would like clarification on. You will recall yesterday that question for oral answer No. 4 from the Hon Bill English to the Prime Minister attracted quite a considerable number of supplementary questions and ran to some three pages of Hansard. The result of the afternoon investigations I suppose by the Prime Minister led her to make a personal explanation in the House at 7.30 last evening that, in many ways, vindicates the lines of questioning that were being taken yesterday. We fully accept that. The question we have for you is this. Having looked at Speakers’ Rulings and the Standing Orders, it seems very unclear just where a personal explanation leaves off and a ministerial statement begins. It would be an interesting point for you to tell the House that a Minister decides when to make a ministerial statement, but there can be nothing personal about a Minister coming to the House, after a question that has been in the system for some 4 hours, and then that Minister clearly making what we will call a mistake in answering that question. That cannot be personal to the Minister. Surely, it is a matter for the Minister’s department, or his or her advisers, who we all know are very, very involved in the process of putting together answers to those questions.

So we are asking you to consider the Speaker’s rulings that are around both the personal explanation and the ministerial statement—there is very little around a ministerial statement—and the Standing Orders themselves, and perhaps come back to the House with a new ruling about where a ministerial statement should supersede a personal statement. This matter arose in question time in the House, and that is a time when a Minister is being questioned by the Opposition and is asked to be accountable for the way in which he or she is conducting his or her role as a member of the executive. It would seem that if a Minister can give answers in the House that are quite clearly wrong, and then at a later time, under the cover of a dinner break, make a personal explanation, and have that as the end of the matter, that is not appropriate. We think it should be subject to a ministerial statement. That is our first point. The second point of order—

Mr SPEAKER: I would like to hear the first point, one at a time.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) : I suggest to you Mr Speaker that this is not a question that will require a great deal of consideration upon your part. Standing Order 341 states: “A Minister may make a statement informing the House of some matter of significant public importance …”. Those are matters relating, for example, to some kind of disaster, event in international affairs, and things of that nature that require to be brought to the House’s attention. [Interruption] I assume that I will not have interjections during the point of order being addressed.

Mr SPEAKER: We will not. There is only one warning, and it has now been given.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I have never seen a ministerial statement being given in relation to a Minister correcting an answer, in the 21-odd years I have been in this House. It has always been done by way of a personal explanation. Indeed, I am aware of Speakers’ rulings—whether or not in the record, but certainly while I have been here—whereby Ministers, if they fail to make a personal explanation at the first available opportunity, can expose themselves to some risk.

I say from my own personal knowledge that the Prime Minister’s explanation at 7.30 p.m. was the first available opportunity in that the matter was brought to her attention in the dinner break. I say that very specifically because it was brought to my attention after the House rose at 6 o’clock, and I was informed before the Prime Minister was informed. So the Prime Minister did exactly the appropriate thing. She made a personal explanation at the first available opportunity, which was 7.30 p.m.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) : You will recall that some time ago I raised the issue of the timing of personal explanations by Ministers in this Parliament. The recent phenomenon or trend has been to wait until the press gallery has gone and then to sneak down to this House and give a personal explanation setting the record right. The real issue here, which required a number of us to apologise yesterday, was a Prime Minister going against all the evidence in front of her face in the introductory bill. That clearly meant that she could not have been telling the truth. That is not a matter of whether she was saying something deliberately or otherwise. On the bare plain facts before this House, she nevertheless asserted that she was telling the truth, when in fact she could not have been, because the introductory bill had the offending clauses in it. And then we had her comments, which were the subject of the question, when she said they had been introduced at the select committee.

So the first available opportunity about which Dr Cullen speaks could not have been 7.30 p.m. last night, but was straight away when she became aware that the bill, which I sought to table, had the offending words in it. That meant that she could not have been right on her radio broadcast when she said that those very clauses were introduced at the select committee stage.

I want you to address that issue, and the issue of this business of people coming down to the House, away from the glare of publicity, away from the glare of television’s coverage of question time, and the media presence, and getting away with saying that black is white, for 4 hours, and not apologising instantly when it is known to them that they have simply not been telling the truth.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) : The House has to accept the explanation given to you by Dr Cullen. There is no doubt that the proper way to correct an answer is by a personal explanation. There is also no doubt that it has to be at the first available opportunity. I know there is a view by some members that errors at question time should be corrected at the beginning of the next day’s question time because the whole House is here at question time. I was here at 7.30 p.m. and I doubt whether there were a dozen members in the House, and there was no one in the gallery. But that does not alter the fact that under the Standing Orders that was the appropriate time for the explanation.

The other issue is that it may well be that everything the Rt Hon Winston Peters says is correct, that the House is incredulous that a Minister cannot remember that the bill says all these things. Everything that Mr Peters says is correct, but we have to accept the Prime Minister’s statement that she is not conscious;we have to accept that.

Mr SPEAKER: I want to say that I completely agreed with the member’s comments right through until the last clause. This is a very easy point of order to resolve, and I will do it right now. It goes back over 37½ years of my experience. It is up to the House whether to give leave, and the House gave it. I have never yet seen an example of a question being corrected by a ministerial statement. The way that it was done was entirely appropriate.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) : I point to Speaker’s ruling 106/4. It states: “The fact that a member makes a personal explanation with the leave of the House does not deny another member the right to discuss comments made by the first member or by any other member.” I just want to get a clarification that that ruling will be upheld today, as you will see from the question sheet that there are questions there that will lead to supplementary questions that will inevitably will re-traverse some of this area. I just want to get a clarification that the existing Speaker’s ruling that allows that will be upheld.

Mr SPEAKER: A personal explanation cannot be debated, according to Standing Order 343, and that includes referring to it in a question. But the events that give rise to the explanation can be referred to, as long as the veracity of the statement made to the House by the member is not challenged or questioned.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday during the exchanges that occurred when the Prime Minister was giving her answers, I was one of a number of members who were required to stand, withdraw, and apologise for questioning the veracity of the Prime Minister and her answer. She has since come down to the House and given a corrected answer, which places me in a position of wondering whether there is any way the Hansard record can be changed to expunge the withdrawal and apology that I had to make, because what I was saying was proved to be correct.

Mr SPEAKER: No. It is never in order to question a member’s veracity, no matter what the circumstance, and, of course, if members want to take that any further there is a way of doing it by coming to me on another matter.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That last comment you made, which I am sure you meant to be some sort of assurance to us, is totally illusory. If we came to you and said that the Prime Minister was not telling the truth, you would have said: “But she has already explained that in the House at 7.30, and therefore your breach of privilege charge has to be denied.” That is what you would say, so the comment that we could come to you is simply not one of any substance, whatsoever.

Mr SPEAKER: No. It would have had to be raised with me before 2 o’clock today.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Whether it was raised with you at 2 o’clock today would not have mattered. If someone had raised this issue with you at 10 o’clock this morning—that the Prime Minister was guilty of misleading the House, and deliberately so—you would have said: “She’s explained that away at 7.30 last night in a personal explanation, and, therefore, such a charge cannot stand.”

Mr SPEAKER: I am sorry but I cannot deal with hypothesis. I do not know what would have happened.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I can. I am telling you what you would have said.

Mr SPEAKER: I am not going to have the member interjecting on me when there is a point of order. He will keep quiet or he will go out, and I mean it.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) : I thought it might be helpful to say that if the member has information that contradicts the personal explanation, and acquires that information after 2 o’clock today, then that becomes the “first available opportunity”.

Mr SPEAKER: Absolutely!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not dealing with hypothesis at all. You told the House that if members had any other concern they could not challenge the Prime Minister’s veracity—you said that would always be ruled out—but they could come to you. I assume that meant by way of a breach of privilege, a claim that is set out in the Standing Orders and numerous precedents, excepting—and this is not a matter of hypothesis in the way you sought to rule out my point of order, and I object to that strenuously—that had someone done just that, you would have said: “Well, this cannot stand, because the Prime Minister, by way of personal explanation, has come down to the House and put the record straight.” Now, that is the point I am making, and I object to the way you have frivolously slid past it as though it is of no moment at all.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think there is a deal of confusion in the member’s mind, in this respect. You are quite correct that if a breach of privilege charge had been raised with you before 2 o’clock today, you would have been looking at both what was said in the House yesterday by the Prime Minister, and at her personal explanation. For a breach of privilege charge to be referred to the Privileges Committee, the member would have to demonstrate evidence in contradiction of the combination of what the Prime Minister said and the personal explanation. What the member seems to be confused about—and confusion often seems to occur in this House—is that telling the truth does not mean to say that what one says is correct.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) : I wondered whether I could raise another matter with you, Mr Speaker, and perhaps the Prime Minister will contemplate your reply. Although I most certainly support your ruling that correction of a question should be done by a personal explanation, if one reads the personal explanation, one sees that it leads to some ministerial matters. We have to accept that, when the Prime Minister requested all relevant documents from her department, they were not sent over. There is something seriously wrong in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and that is a matter for a ministerial statement, and not a personal explanation. It is not personal; it is a matter relating to her ministry. The Prime Minister will no doubt be holding an inquiry into that matter, especially if the documents were requested in order to give answers to Parliament. It would appear to me that this is a matter that would be appropriate for a ministerial statement, and no doubt the Prime Minister is very keen to find out why she was misled, like the House. Members of Parliament were required to withdraw and apologise when, in fact, they were correct in what they were saying and the Prime Minister was wrong. That is a matter for a ministerial statement, is it not?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) : In my own experience—and probably in that member’s experience, as well—if a Minister had to make a ministerial statement every time the information that came from a department was not entirely complete, I doubt we would be doing any other business during the week.

Mr SPEAKER: No. The member was entitled to raise that point, but it is in the hands of the Prime Minister, or any other Minister, as to whether a statement is made. That is where the matter rests.