P.M. claims breach minor

Press, 15 December 1982, Page 6

P.M. claims breach minor

PA Wellington The Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, was yesterday referred to Parliament's Privileges Committee for allegedly divulging the committee's proceedings before its official report back.. Mr Muldoon told the House he was not against his case going to the committee on which he normally sits, but he made it clear lie believed the alleged breach was minor.

The move to make him answer to Parliament's most senior select committee came after the Speaker, Sir Richard Harrison, had ruled that Mr Muldoon’s accusations in the House last week had involved a question of privilege. The alleged breach centred on a rowdy exchange last Thursday evening when Mr Mudoon said of the Labour member for Auckland Central, Mr R. W. Prebble. “He wasn’t prepared to front up tonight to the. Privileges Committee." The reference was immediately challenged by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rowling, who followed it up in a letter to the Speaker.

Sir Richard said yesterday that Parliament's Standing Orders noted that the proceedings of select committees should remain “strictly confidential" until the committee’s chairman — in this case the Minister of Justice, Mr McLay — reported back to the House. Mr Muldoon's remarks contained “an element of divulging the proceedings," he ruled. The matter was referred to the committee by the Leader of the House. Mr Thomson, with little debate, although Mr Muldoon recited a list of similar cases since 1974. In many, no prima facie breach had been established and where a breach had been found, it had generally been ruled minor and technical.

Mr Muldoon was last before the committee in 1975 as Leader of the Oppositon, after he had alleged in a newspaper column that the then Speaker, the late Sir Stanley Whitehead, was biased. The breach was found proved by the committee — then dominated by a Labour majority — which moved that Mr Muldoon be “appropriately censured."