Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Committees

Privileges Committee

Inquiry into Breach of Committee Deliberations and Report Contents

Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria—Minister for Water, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Equality) (09:37): Pursuant to standing order 23.29 I lay on the table a report from the Privileges Committee on the inquiry into breach of committee deliberations and report contents, including an appendix. I move:

That the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Ms SHING: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

In doing so I want to make a couple of brief remarks in relation to an inquiry into breach of committee deliberations and the way in which this occurred in a public setting prior to publication of a committee report. At the outset I want to thank members of the Privileges Committee, including the deputy chair, Mr Grimley, alongside the secretariat, who worked to engage with members of the Parliament and with secretariat staff and to seek information about the way in which information had been provided to committee members, whether substantive or participating members, in the course of the preparation of a final report following an inquiry into medicinal cannabis, a breach of standing orders and a contempt of the Parliament.

These matters are of a serious nature, and they go to the heart of the parliamentary rules, frameworks and conventions, which operate to regulate the functions and the conduct of parliamentary committees. This Privileges Committee inquiry followed the publication of a story in the Age on 5 August 2021, prior to the tabling of the Legal and Social Issues Committee report into the use of cannabis. This report contained references to private committee deliberations and included extracts from the chair’s foreword and comments by a committee member, including unsourced comments from others. This matter was then referred to the Privileges Committee.

There are a number of observations and considerations in this report which go to the final report as it was tabled and the way in which such public commentary had foreshadowed a range of matters germane to the consideration of that particular report and its findings. In this regard I note that there have been significant cooperative steps from at least two members of this Parliament, including Mr Limbrick and the chair of that committee, Ms Patten, as they relate to, again, a willingness to provide information—which was not forthcoming, I note, in relation to other breaches of privilege which have occurred in other committees before this and indeed in previous parliaments. To that end I think that this is a significant and welcome departure from what has previously been an extreme reticence to provide information in the interests of understanding the nature, scope and existence indeed of leaks and breaches of the privilege that operates pursuant to conventions and obligations for the purposes of parliamentary committee work.

I also want to note that the findings of the Legal and Social Issues Committee report were foreshadowed in discussions and unsourced comments but the work of this particular committee was concerned chiefly with comments made by Mr Limbrick, as attributed, and comments made by the chair of that committee, Ms Patten. There are findings in relation to Mr Limbrick and Ms Patten at pages 5 and 6 of the report relating to a conclusion on balance that there was a breach of the standing orders by Mr Limbrick amounting to contempt, albeit not of a wilful or malicious nature. In relation to the chair of that committee, Ms Patten, there was a finding of a breach by Ms Patten which amounts to a contempt of Parliament. The report provides a note and a recommendation about the way in which those matters might be addressed and attended to to reflect the importance and seriousness of these matters.

These are issues which have been canvassed extensively throughout the investigation. On that basis I would commend the report to the house, thank everybody involved in its preparation and thank those to whom this report applies for their preparedness to participate in a process which is about, fundamentally, integrity of parliamentary procedures.

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:42): (By leave) Thank you, President, and I thank the house for providing me with leave for this. I would like to just take this moment to unreservedly apologise for this breach and for this contempt. To be honest, I provided quotes from the foreword of the report, and as that foreword did not form part of the committee’s considerations of the report, I actually honestly thought that I could provide quotes from that foreword to a journalist. I did, and I understand now that that was a contempt and that was at odds with our standing orders, so I would just like to take this moment to apologise for that.

Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (09:43): (By leave) As the finding notes, I technically breached by expressing disappointment, although I did not disclose anything other than my disappointment to the media or externally. For that I unreservedly apologise. I did not intend to do that, and I will be much more careful in expressing my disappointment in future.

Mr ATKINSON (Eastern Metropolitan) (09:43): I have been in this place for a very long time, and the Privileges Committee in the upper house has never been so busy as it has been in this particular Parliament. That is unfortunate in some respects. In other respects it has visited a number of issues that I think are quite important in terms of the integrity of the Parliament and has reinforced the importance of the responsibility of members to each other and to the institution of Parliament in terms of the way they behave, the confidentiality of the matters that they deal with and the appropriate time for discussion of or debate upon those matters.

The integrity of our committee system is of absolute paramount importance to this Parliament because, apart from anything else, so many people provide statements and submissions and appear as witnesses before our committees on the basis of that information being handled responsibly, in some cases confidentially, and always with an understanding that that information is going to be used to address complex issues without the political tap dancing between members of a committee. Most members will say that the most important work they do in this place is often with the committees, and they appreciate the fact that when they work with other members of the Parliament in those committees there is a collegiate approach to the matters, the matters are dealt with in a way that is fair and genuine and they can have confidence that the remarks they make in those committees will not be released publicly outside. I seek leave for an extension, President, if you are about to cut me off.

Leave granted.

Mr ATKINSON: I thank the government for the nodded extension. I will be brief—thank you, Mr Quilty. However, in this case in particular, with the report that has come down today, what I would like to comment on is the fact that both of the members that are subject to the recommendations of the report were prepared to make admissions and were prepared to indicate to the Parliament with all due honesty what they had done and the fact that they had been involved in the publication of that article, perhaps inadvertently, not realising that what they were saying was a breach of the Parliament’s protocols and therefore did constitute a contempt. But in both cases I acknowledge the fact and I think the committee acknowledges the fact that they did make those concessions. That was important because apart from anything else it goes to establishing beyond all doubt the importance of that committee process and the importance of that confidentiality. I think by those breaches and then by their admissions they have in fact reinforced the importance of this to all of us and the responsibilities of all members in this place.

I thank the staff of the committee for the work that they did. I thank the Chair and the Deputy Chair particularly for the work that they did. The committee met under some fairly difficult circumstances in terms of timings and so forth in this Parliament but was very fair and thorough in the way it approached this issue and certainly recognised the gravity of the circumstances. I hope that members will take this as a very important lesson going forward that this really, as I said, has re-established the importance of confidentiality in our committees and that there ought to not be breaches, not just by members but indeed also by chairs of committees, even in the respect that, yes, most of the committees say, ‘Okay, if there is to be media comment of any nature, then it should go through the Chair’. That is fine, except that it should not contain information that is part of that investigative process or indeed part of the report before it is tabled in this place.

Motion agreed to.