Education Minister referred to Privileges Committee

Newshub reports:

Parliament’s powerful Privileges Committee will consider whether the time it took for Education Minister Jan Tinetti to correct an inaccurate statement in the House amounts to contempt.

On February 22, Tinetti was asked during Question Time to categorically state she played no part in the delay of the release of school attendance information. She said she already had and it was a decision for the Ministry of Education for when to release the data.

But Newshub revealed this month that Tinetti’s office instructed officials to delay the release of the information so it could be timed with a truancy announcement by the Government. The minister told Newshub she wasn’t aware at the time that her office was holding up the data.

The Minister is either totally incompetent or a liar. Only an entirely incompetent Minister could have her office staff instructing the Ministry to delay by two months a regular release of data, without her knowledge.

If her staff really had done this without her knowledge, I would expect she would have sacked them. Has she?

Speaker Adrian Rurawhe on Tuesday said Tinetti received a letter from him on May 1 telling her the answer needed to be correct, and she did so the next day.

However, that correction came long after Tinetti learnt her office was involved. She found that out after Question Time on February 22.

She claims she didn’t know her answer needed to be correct until the Speaker’s letter, but Rurawhe said it should have been done as soon as possible. 

So even if you give her the benefit of the doubt, that she is incompetent and clueless about her own office, she still knew the truth for two and a half months, and never corrected her untruthful answer to Parliament.

“While mistakes are sometimes made, which can result in the House receiving an answer containing a misleading statement, it is vitally important that as soon as this is discovered, the minister returns to the House to correct the answer at the earliest opportunity.”

He said it was for the Privileges Committee to determine whether the “delay in correcting an inaccurate statement in this instance amounts to contempt”. 

“I rule that a question of privilege does arrive from the time taken to correct a misleading statement to the House. The question therefore stands referred to the Privileges Committee.”

It is rare for a Minister to be referred for an incorrect answer, but this was an egregious breach, so the Speaker has made a good call.

The Privileges Committee has eight members – Labour 4, National 2, ACT 1 and Greens 1. It will be very interesting to see what they conclude.