Don't let MPs off defamation hook: lawyer

By GRAHAME ARMSTRONG, Political Editor - Sunday Star Times

A LEGAL expert has attacked plans to give MPs even more protection against being sued if they make defamatory comments.

Parliament's privileges committee is recommending, for the second time in four years, that the law be amended to extend protection for MPs beyond the walls of parliament.

MPs have felt exposed ever since former Act MP Owen Jennings was successfully sued for $50,000 by Wool Board official Roger Buchanan.

The high court in 2001 ruled that Jennings had defamed Buchanan when, outside parliament, he said he did not resile from claims made in parliament.

But Professor Noel Cox, of Auckland University of Technology's School of Law and a member of the Auckland District Law Society, says MPs do not deserve more protection.

If anything, he says, MPs need to be more responsible and accountable for what they say in parliament.

Examples of claimed abuse of parliamentary privilege include:

The identification in parliament of former National Party vice-president Dick Dargaville as the accused in an assault case, despite a court order suppressing his name.

National MP Judith Collins, the current police minister, calling former Labour MP David Benson-Pope a pervert.

Former Labour MP Dover Samuels naming in parliament the woman who accused him of raping her.

Parliamentary privilege dates back to the 1689 Bill of Rights, and was designed to ensure MPs could speak freely in parliament without fear of retribution from the king.

In May the privileges committee urged the government to extend protection for MPs to outside the house "as soon as possible and [the committee] are disappointed that it has not yet occurred."

The committee claims the Jennings V Buchanan case threatens free speech. There was also a constitutional understanding that the judiciary and the parliament did not interfere with the work of the other.

But Cox says the proposal should be scrapped, claiming the behaviour of MPs lately demonstrates they do not deserve more protection, especially if members of the public are not given the same rights.

The Auckland District Law Society's public issues committee says rather than expanding protection for MPs "it would be desirable to clarify that this privilege is limited to conduct within parliament."

In a discussion paper released last week, the society says MPs need to be made more accountable for their behaviour and what they say in parliament.

Cox said: "The problem is, it's giving politicians, rather than parliament, certain rights. That is almost elevating MPs to a higher status than everyone else, which is wrong in principle."

Cox believed the public would be wary of giving politicians added protection from being sued when MPs often abused parliamentary privilege for political gain.

MPs should be more responsible. "There is a broader issue in how people perceive MPs and how they behave. It's not a good time to be putting MPs on a pedestal when a number of them have been caught out misbehaving."

Charles Chauvel, the chair of the privileges committee, said Cox was overreacting and the intent was simply to clarify a law most people thought already existed.

"It seems a little precious to say we can't extend the privilege beyond what is said in the house or what is broadcast in the house.

"If you are at an event or standing outside the house and someone says to you `Do you stand by what you said in the house', you look bloody stupid if not being able to say `of course I do'.

"It just seems to me that if you don't allow a bit of latitude, you run into the danger of making freedom of speech itself in the house a bit of a mockery."