Editorial: Bad smell from Parliament in Field debacle

Opinion

Seldom has Parliament left itself in a worse odour than by its failure to act on the report into dubious dealings of one of it members, Taito Phillip Field. For three weeks since the release of the disturbing but inconclusive report by Queen's Counsel Noel Ingram, we have waited to see what the Government or Parliament would do about it.

There was never much doubt the Government would do as little as it could get away with. The Prime Minister made it clear Mr Field would not be reinstated to the Cabinet but she was not inclined to act on Dr Ingram's advice that a more powerful inquiry was needed to get to the bottom of the MP's dealings with prospective immigrants.

The Ingram report was severely hampered by the refusal of a significant number of witnesses to be interviewed and it had no power to compel them. It was unable to resolve several key questions about the personal benefit Mr Field appears to have gained, in the form of low-cost labour on his house in Samoa, from an applicant for a New Zealand entry permit. The Labour Party strenuously resisted a further inquiry, plainly because it feared Mr Field might walk out of the caucus, depriving Labour of its one-seat margin over National. But no such concern should have influenced Parliament's Speaker, Margaret Wilson, when the National Party moved to refer Mr Field's conduct to the House privileges committee.

Parliament is literally a law unto itself. It is master of its own rules and procedures and no court can interfere. Parliament, in fact, can hold any citizen to be in contempt of its procedures and impose any penalty it wishes. Its powers are supreme and they are enforced by its privileges committee.

The Speaker refused to send this case to the committee on the grounds that, strictly speaking, Mr Field's conduct had not contravened the standing orders governing Parliament's "privilege". He had not directly or indirectly obstructed or impeded the House, or any MP or officer of the House, in discharging their duties.

Yet the Speaker acknowledged that the allegations against Mr Field involved a standard of conduct and Parliament's reputation. The solution, she suggested, lay in adopting a formal code of conduct and Helen Clark has vaguely indicated it might be done.

Ms Wilson's decision may have been strictly in line with the House rules but this was a case where Parliament's reputation required something more of her. She might have noted the questions Dr Ingram raised about Mr Field's failure to tell the Minister of Immigration about the work the applicant was doing on Mr Field's house in Samoa. Could that failure not be construed as a possible obstruction to the ability of the minister to perform his function as he should?

Parliament's failure to act has left more than one side of the House uneasy. This week the Greens' co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, proposed to Labour that Mr Field make a formal apology to the House in response to a censure motion that she would move. National, however, blocked that arrangement, believing more political mileage might be gained in continuing to press for a select committee inquiry.

Mr Field made his "apology" outside the chamber instead. He said that "issues raised in the [Ingram] report have brought the principle of not accepting any consideration from constituents on whose behalf members are advocating, into question". That was an odd way of putting it. The principle was never in question. His adherence to it was, and remains, the issue.

This episode has been an abject performance on all sides. The public has wearied of the spectacle but if Parliament cares for its standards, the case cannot rest here.