Parliamentary Privilege

Retired Appeal Judge Ted Thomas has a column of why the law should not be changed to overturn recent court decisions that an MP saying they affirm what they said in Parliament, is not covered by privilege.

As much as I despair at how some MPs abuse privilege (Peters and Mallard especially) I think it is important to have. And I do think the current court rulings have created somewhat of a nonsense that after an MP says something in Parliament, every broadcaster and person in the land can repeat it, but the MP can not simply say “Yes I stand by what I said in Parliament”. I mean everyone knows they stand by what they said, so you end up with semantic games.

So I tend to favour the proposed law change.