Prayer protest to Privileges Ctte

Press, 11 September 1981, Page 4

Prayer protest to Privileges Ctte

PA Wellington Parliament’s Privileges Committee will consider the anti-Springbok tour protest of about 80 mostly middle' aged people who intoned Parliament’s prayer in the public gallery of the House on Wednesday evening. The Leader of the House (Mr Thomson) moved yesterday that the “conduct of strangers in the gallery” at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday go to the committee. The Speaker (Sir Richard Harrison) had earlier ruled that the matter involved a question of privilege. Mr Thomson had raised the matter with Sir Richard on Wednesday evening. The Opposition immediately attacked yesterday’s move, the Deputy Leader (Mr Lange) saying that the Government was “making a fool out of the House.” The motion mentioned only “strangers” and the House was being asked to refer an indeterminate number of unknown persons to the Privileges Committee. The matter was “Gilbert and Sullivan,” he said and ought not to be referred to the committee.

The people in the gallery — who included senior public servants, academics, writers, and clerics — had not interrupted the House, Mr Lange said. They had intoned the very prayer that the Speaker was intoning and had left in a respectful manner when required. The Government was

trying to get “some mileage” out of the matter and was seeking for its own political purposes to attack a body of people among whom were some of the most senior public servants and the leaders of responsible churches. Mr Lange asked whether saying the House’s prayer was a wilful or vexatious interruption, as the Standing Order referred tp by Mr Thomson required. Other more extreme examples of protest in recent years, such as the throwing of ping-pong balls and a coat from the gallery, had not been referred to the Privileges Committee.

The Prime Minister. (Mr Muldoon) said that once the matter had been ruled on by the Speaker, it invariably went to the committee. By debating the matter the Opposition was going to the very edge of the Speaker’s ruling. If any semblance of Parliamentary dignity were to be retained there was no alternative but for it to be sent to the committee, Mr Muldoon said.

He said Mr Lange was quite wrong to say that there had been no interruption. The Speaker had been “interrupted while reading the prayer. You (the Speaker) stopped, people in the gallery carried on. When they had finished, you recommenced the prayer and carried on from there.” Mr Muldoon said that some of the people had been

recognised, and one identified himself on the radio that morning, saying he was the leader. . “He was named as a Mr Patterson, and curiously he said that he had for 20 years been an agnostic,” Mr Muldoon said. “But he came in here to interrupt our prayer and say a prayer.” One was also recognised as the “man who was on the football field at Eden Park" last Saturday. “I thought what he did on Saturday was rather funny,” Mr Muldoon said. “But I did not think what he did last evening was funny. “Ana I do not think he would think it funny if a group of parliamentarians went into his church on a Sunday morning and interrupted his prayer. He would call it sacrilege.” The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) said that the move to refer the intoning of the prayer to the committee was a prime example of the misuse of the privilege system which had incurred public wrath in the late 19705.

The group in the gallery "did no more than repeat the prayer of this Parliament which so many members apparently listen to but forget about all too readily.” The Social Credit leader (Mr Beetham) said that he “thoroughly disapproved” of the incident, but it was one of the milder forms of interruption he had experienced in Parliament.