Matter of Privilege

Matter of Privilege, Speaker's Statement

The SPEAKER (12:05): Before I call on Mr Clerk, I wish to make a statement regarding the privilege matter that was raised regarding Veterans SA. I make the following statement with regard to the matter of privilege that was raised by the Attorney-General, the honourable member for Bragg, in the house on 18 June. Before addressing the matter, I wish to outline the significance of privilege as it relates to the house and the members in the house.

Privilege is not a device by which members, or any other person for that matter, can seek to pursue matters that can be addressed by debate or settled by the vote of the house on a substantive motion. As we have heard, McGee in Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand in my view makes the test for whether or not a matter is a matter of privilege by defining it as a matter that can genuinely be regarded as tending to impede or obstruct the house in the discharge of its duties.

Generally speaking, any act or omission which obstructs or impedes the house in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any member or officer of such house in the discharge of his or her duty, which has a tendency to directly or indirectly produce such a result may be treated as contempt and therefore be considered a matter of privilege even though there is no precedent of the offence.

I would also like to take this opportunity to confirm my role in these matters as to the inquiries I undertake in coming to my decision on matters of privilege, as they recently arose in the last sitting week. I refer to Speaker Oswald's statement in the house on 2 July 1998, page 1270 of Hansard, and I quote:

…I would like to clear up any confusion about the Speaker's role in these matters. Simply stated, it is only to decide whether to give precedence to a motion which would then be put to the House, presumably alleging deliberate misleading of the House by the Minister—and I emphasis the word 'deliberate'. Standing Order 132 provides that any question of privilege suspends all other business before the House until the matter is decided. However, the practice has evolved, since at least the early 1970s, of the Speaker's listening to the allegation, deliberating on it, and later giving a ruling on whether a prima facie case has been made out and, if so found, to give precedence to a motion. This is what occurred on this occasion.

He goes on:

Whether my decision is favourable or unfavourable, nothing should be read into that decision for precedence to suggest that I have formed a judgment about the allegation but merely, on the information contained in the Leader's allegations, there may be issues that are appropriate for the House to decide upon. I stress, so that no member should feel threatened by this test, that the act of misleading the House must be deliberate rather than inadvertent…In coming to my decision, I want to stress that I am in no way confirming the allegation or adjudicating on whether the Minister has deliberately misled the House. That is for the House to decide.

Further to the statement made by Speaker Oswald, I have also informed myself of a quote from McGee's Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, fourth edition, pages 787 and 788. It states:

The Speaker does not inquire into the veracity of the evidence presented, and does not hold a full inquiry into the matter that is raised…The Speaker appraises the evidence submitted in support of a complaint to determine whether it points to a reasonable (rather than remote) possibility that a breach of privilege or contempt has occurred.

Members affected by a matter of privilege raised with the Speaker may make representations about it to the Speaker. It is expected that a member who is implicated in a complaint of breach of privilege or contempt will wish to make known his or her point of view for the Speaker's consideration. But members must take the initiative in making such representations…

I refer to the matter raised by the Attorney-General in relation to queries asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the house on 4 June 2019. More specifically, the Leader of the Opposition asked the following question to the Premier: 'Are you abolishing Veterans SA as a standalone agency?' The Attorney-General went on to quote a further question asked by the leader, namely: 'Will it,' Veterans SA, 'retain a status as a standalone agency within Defence SA?'

The Attorney-General, in raising this matter of privilege, advises the house that the leader has since gone on to write a letter to the veterans community arguing that Veterans SA may be abolished as a standalone agency. The Attorney-General notes that Veterans SA has never been a standalone agency but, rather, a program of government. The Attorney-General alleges the leader should be aware of this arrangement and, by purporting in his questions to the Premier that Veterans SA was a standalone agency, the leader knowingly misled the parliament.

I have examined the Hansard record and the letter of the leader, as referred to by the Attorney-General. The letter contains references to Veterans SA, stating:

…it was the previous Labor government that established Veterans SA as a standalone agency back in 2008 following requests from the RSL and other Ex-Service Organisations (ESOs).

While I am not in a position to verify the veracity of the statement or content of the letter, the tenor of the letter is consistent with the leader's questions in the house that refer to Veterans SA as a standalone agency. The Attorney-General has provided me with extracts from budget papers for the periods from 2011-12 to 2017-18, and I note in the extracts that Veterans SA appears to consistently be referred to as a program within an agency.

Whilst there is a requirement that information contained in a question should be authenticated by the questioner, this requirement is very rarely applied unless the accuracy of the information is challenged, and usually challenged at the time. As the content of the leader's questions were not challenged at the time, I take it the Premier had no doubt in his mind as to the intent of the questions.

Whether, as alleged by the Attorney-General, the leader was purporting in his question that Veterans SA was a standalone agency, I believe in the context of the questions being asked this did not reach a threshold where it could generally be regarded as tending to impede or obstruct the house in the discharge of its duties. In support of this contention, on reading the Premier's answers to the leader's questions, his responses are quite general in nature.

For these reasons, on the evidence available to me it is not clear that a prima facie case has been made. Accordingly, I do not propose to give the precedence which would enable this matter to be immediately pursued as a matter of privilege. However, this decision does not prevent the Attorney-General, or any other member for that matter, from proceeding with a motion on a specific matter by giving notice in the usual way.