Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this
I move, That—
(1) A provider of television coverage of the House must comply with the following rules:
Television coverage rules
1.The cameras will cover the member who has been called to speak until the member’s speech is finished or the member’s call is terminated by the Speaker. Coverage will normally be medium range, head and shoulders. The director may choose to vary the camera angle to add interest to the coverage. Switching between such shots should be done at an appropriate point in the speech.
2.The default shot will be on the Speaker or presiding officer, including the arrival of the Speaker’s procession.
3.The television director may choose other shots to reflect the business transacted, such as a wide angle shot of the chamber or, during oral questions, a reaction shot of the Minister being asked a question or of a member listening to the reply to a question.
4.The television director may use a wide angle shot of the chamber as a continuity shot, for instance, at the end of oral questions or when the House is going into committee. Sound from the Speaker or ambient noise microphones can be added to this shot.
5.Generally, interjections are not covered. But if the member speaking engages with the interjector, the interjector’s reaction can be filmed.
6.Officials (Clerks, interpreters, Serjeant-at-Arms) should be shown when they are participating in the business of the House by making announcements, calling party votes, interpreting speeches, or carrying the mace.
7.While a personal vote is in progress a graphic to this effect should be shown in place of live coverage. This graphic would be shown from the time the Speaker directs the Ayes to the right, the Noes to the left and appoints the tellers, until the announcement of the result.
8.Shots unrelated to the proceedings are not permitted, that is, interruptions from the gallery and business occurring outside the House.
9.In case of general disorder on the floor of the House, coverage will revert to the Speaker or presiding officer.
10.During an interruption to proceedings such as prolonged disturbance from the gallery, the coverage will be of the Speaker or presiding officer, with sound from only the Speaker’s and ambient noise microphones. Coverage from the chamber should continue, unless the Speaker or presiding officer indicates otherwise, either by suspending or adjourning the House, or specifically directing that coverage should cease. Television coverage recommences when the House resumes or at the direction of the Speaker or presiding officer.
11.Coverage ceases as soon as the Speaker or presiding officer announces that the House stands adjourned or the Speaker or presiding officer leaves the chair for the suspension of a sitting.
These rules apply also to any other filming from the gallery.
The Serjeant-at-Arms will intervene if it becomes apparent that cameras are filming matters not within the rules. Broadcasters who offend the rules may have their privilege of filming in the Chamber withdrawn;
(2) Any use of the television coverage of the House in any medium, must comply with the following conditions:
Conditions of use of coverage
Live coverage of the proceedings of the House of Representatives is made available for television broadcast, webcast, and recording in other mediums to provide greater public access to the legislature. The coverage is made available on the following conditions:
1.Any broadcast or rebroadcast of coverage must comply with the Broadcasting Standards Authority rules.
2.Coverage of proceedings must not be used in any medium for—
•political advertising or election campaigning (except with the permission of all members shown)
•satire, ridicule or denigration
•commercial sponsorship or commercial advertising.
3.Reports that use extracts of coverage of proceedings and purport to be summaries must be fair and accurate.
Breach of these conditions may result in a loss of access to coverage, and may be treated as a contempt and proceeded against accordingly; and
(3) The House may treat as a contempt the use of television coverage of the House, in any medium, contrary to paragraph (2) of this order.
This motion gives effect to unanimous recommendations of the Standing Orders Committee that flow from the 2003 decision to provide for an in-house facility for televising Parliament. It creates a sessional order, and it is important for Parliament to understand what that means. In other words it sets up a set of rules that will last for the life of this Parliament only. It can be revisited during the life of this Parliament in the light of experience and will need to be re-moved either in this form or in some different form during the subsequent Parliament to cover the rules of televising Parliament. Essentially, as I said, it has been triggered by the fact that we now have a new process of permanent televising of Parliament being brought into place.
Before turning to the substance of the rules, I would like to comment briefly on the process of developing these rules. The Standing Orders Committee is one of the few committees on which all parties are represented, in this case except for the Progressives. Unlike some committees, the Standing Orders Committee always seeks to reach a consensus before making recommendations to the House. I cannot remember a recommendation being carried through simply on the basis of a majority vote in the Standing Orders Committee. That is particularly important because the rules of the House need to have broad agreement from all members represented in the House.
I thank the other members of the committee for the constructive way that we all approached the process of developing what were always going to be, to some extent, controversial rules—more controversial outside this place than inside it, I think it is fair to say. I particularly acknowledge the role of the shadow Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, in attempting to reach some enduring rules, because we do not want to make these processes ones of partisan dispute. I should note that in the committee the proceedings that have been proposed here received unanimous support in terms of the recommendations, and all parties were present during the deliberations on this particular matter.
I turn now to the substance of the proposed rules. It must be acknowledged that these represent a substantial liberalisation of the current rules. The current rules are very restrictive, and do not allow the presentation of anything like a full experience of Parliament for viewers. The proposed rules are significantly liberalised in terms of allowing reaction shots involving questions and objections, and permitting more general background shots so as to illustrate the mood of the House and introduce some greater variety into the coverage of the House. The current rules do not permit reaction shots or coverage of interjectors or, indeed, wide-angle shots of the House.
This liberalisation of the rules around what can be televised, coupled with the provision of a free broadcast-quality live feed of all proceedings of Parliament, will allow the media much greater ability to cover the proceedings of Parliament than at present. It will also ensure that New Zealanders have greater opportunities to observe the performance of their elected representatives in the House.
The major controversy that has arisen from commentary by the press gallery is in relation to the rules that have been adapted from Australian experiences in relation to satire, ridicule, denigration, and other matters. The point the media has missed in this regard is that the most restrictive of those rules actually is one on members themselves and their political parties, and that is that coverage of proceedings may not be used in any medium for political advertising or election campaigning except with the permission of all members shown. That, of course, is an actual restraint on the ability of Parliament to use what may be misrepresentative pictures to misrepresent the experience of other members in the House. I am reminded of those United States advertising campaigns where a congressman is first of all criticised for not being in his constituency but instead being in Washington, and then is subsequently criticised for being in the constituency instead of being in Washington to vote on various important measures in front of Congress. It is very easy to misrepresent what happens within this Parliament through partial editing or through misrepresentation of those proceedings, and I believe that Parliament does deserve some degree of protection from that behaviour.
The matters around satire, ridicule, and denigration I think will need to be watched carefully and interpreted carefully, and not interpreted in a foolish or unnecessarily restrictive fashion. But I think one can sum up the seriousness of much of the objections by what happened on Wednesday morning in the Dominion Post. The media got me up against a wall—not an unusual experience—essentially parading their defence of Western democracy, liberties, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Magna Carta, and goodness knows what else in terms of the need to be able to show satirical representations of Parliament. At a time when journalists from major news organisations are held captive by Palestinian terrorists, and some journalists are losing their lives in the pursuit of the truth and news around the world, I am not convinced that one should take entirely seriously some of these protestations.
When we saw the evidence that what people really wanted to show was simply pictures of members of Parliament yawning, it seemed to me that we are actually dealing with trivial matters, not serious matters, at all. The fact that members of Parliament occasionally yawn in a House that sits until 10 p.m. at night does not seem to me worthy of a great deal of media coverage, at all. I have heard rumours that even members of the press gallery have been known to yawn in a variety of forms. I think that all that the public will discover from the fact that we yawn is that we are vaguely human, which probably will help us rather than hinder us in terms of their perception of members of this place. I might say that when I first came here loud yawning was one of the more frequent forms of interjection, one that has now fallen into disuse, by and large, thank goodness, within the House. I do not encourage its resumption as a major form of interjection within the House, particularly if it is in order to gather some kind of attention in the next morning’s Dominion Post. If pictures of members yawning is all we are really talking about, then I really think we are talking about matters that are trivial, and that demean not Parliament but the journalists who think such matters are important matters to be covered within Parliament.
Nevertheless, I do believe that these rules will need to be carefully interpreted and carefully monitored. They introduce a provision where some matters could be considered a contempt. That is to say they may be considered a contempt; they are not of themselves necessarily a contempt. I am quite sure that if charges were ever brought, the Privileges Committee would want to consider such matters very carefully before arriving at the conclusion that a contempt had been committed.
But I think that when we see pictures that, for example, show members reacting to something that in fact was not what they were reacting to—in other words, when editing has occurred—or when members are shown laughing at something they did not laugh about but were laughing at something completely different in the House, when members are captured in what one might call a human moment, which anybody experiences when they are working long hours in a place such as this, then the public gets a false impression of what is happening. That is not a true impression of Parliament; it is a false impression of Parliament. I was asked whether it would be possible for people to cover members being satirical about each other. I can assure members of the press gallery that they are perfectly able to cover any satirical speech within the House. That will not be a problem.
Let us see how these rules work. Let us take a deep breath. Let us interpret the rules liberally, and let us then proceed on from there. I have extraordinary confidence that democracy will continue to flourish in New Zealand, that there will continue to be robust debate within this Parliament, and that no member of the media outside will feel constrained in the kinds of comments he or she can make.
On that point, I just remind the House of one thing that most of the people here have probably forgotten. There was an occasion in this House—as I recollect, it was at the end of the 1983 session—when the incumbent Prime Minister was so drunk that when he stood to move the adjournment motion he stood for slightly over 2 minutes, unable to utter any words other than “Mr Speaker”. Not a single member of the press gallery reported what happened in that case. I rest my case in that regard.
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) Link to this
The National Party will support these rules being enacted as a sessional order in the Parliament this afternoon. One of the things that has perplexed us over the last couple of days is that when members sat on the Standing Orders Committee and made the decision to go ahead with the cameras here in the Parliament, it was largely with the thought that we were opening the place up, and that there would be more coverage, more access, and more opportunities for the public to see what goes on in Parliament, which has such a big effect on their lives. So it has been slightly perplexing that, as the week has unfolded, we appear to have narrowed down on two relatively simple matters, as far as I can see.
The first is the issue of whether still cameras should have the same flexibility as television cameras. I hasten to point out that the television cameras do not actually have all that much flexibility. The only advantage they have is that because there are multiples of them, a statement and a reaction can be seen from various sides of the House. I do not discount, though, that at some point in the very near future we will need to have a further discussion about the role and the access of still cameras. After all, if we want to have the place more open, then I do not think that should be too much of an issue for us to deal with. I certainly indicate that the National Party is saying—and I believe the Speaker has said this to the gallery and to other interested parties—that we can have more discussion on this matter.
The reality is that a sessional order lasts from the time it is passed today until the end of this Parliament. So there will be discussion in the Standing Orders Committee about what arrangements will endure from the start of the post - 2008 - election Parliament. In that, I think there might be—in fact, I would say there will be—some opportunity to overcome and get past some of the concerns that the media have. I want to state very firmly that in supporting these sessional orders, as I believe would be the case for everyone else here, there is no attempt to restrict the media in any undue way whatsoever.
I want to speak about the issue of the ban, supposedly, on satire, ridicule, and denigration. It is an interesting prospect that serious gallery reporters say they want the absolute right to satirise, ridicule, and denigrate the proceedings of Parliament. I do not think that that upholds their entire argument about wanting to have greater access to a more open democracy.
Satire will always have a place in the political arena; it does just about every day in the cartoons, and it does in the weekly wrap-ups that we see in our news media, particularly on television. To some extent, if the right journalist is doing it, it can be exercised on radio, and it is frequently the case in the Dominion Post that a particular reporter writes her almost daily column or commentary the day after the House has had proceedings.
Ridicule is an issue that the public should decide on. I would have thought that reporters would report the facts of any particular case or incident and the public would make their decision about how that was to be treated, and if ridicule was the result, then so be it. But to have the right to actively ridicule, at large, people who are elected here is not right. Denigration is much the same. It is interesting to note that the appendices that are attached are quite specific in saying that these matters all relate to what are already broadcasting standards rules. If they are read in that regard, I do not think there is a total ban on satire. I would find it exceptional if the Broadcasting Standards Authority were to uphold a complaint of satire in many of the cases that we could all outline where one or two of us may have felt somewhat aggrieved because we were the centre of attention on any particular day.
It is also worth noting that any censure or other condemnation that might come from breaching these rules arises as a result of the Privileges Committee making a decision. The step prior to that is that the Speaker determines whether a matter of privilege is involved, and the step prior to that is that the member or members who feel aggrieved take the step of writing to the Speaker.
I want to give an absolute assurance that if I am caught sleeping in Parliament and my photo appears in the paper, on the television, or otherwise, I will not write to the Speaker complaining. I know that if I did, the Speaker would find it very hard to suggest that publishing that photo was a contempt of Parliament. The proof of that is that although it is annoying and irritating, in the last few days when various photos like that have been publicised, there has been no such action taken.
It is very hard and unreasonable at times, though, that those photos appear. I know that journalists, particularly in the gallery, work extremely long hours and extremely hard for the particular media outlets that they represent. But members of Parliament do also, and I think it only reasonable to accept that from time to time there will be contributions made in this House that will be so difficult to listen to that if bottled, they would be a fine remedy for the worst insomnia anyone could ever possibly suffer. As a consequence, people do occasionally have their eyes shut, but that should be no impediment to the thought process continuing.
In short, the National Party will support these rules, because we have to have some rules in place from 17 July. Media outlets, once the televising goes free to air, can take still photographs or a range of still photographs off that feed, and they are not going to miss out in the way they might currently be protesting about. The only difference will be that they will not have to send a photographer along here to wait the many hours that might be needed in order to get that particular gem in the lens. But if that is what they want to do, then we give our commitment to talk further about that with the Speaker. We support these television coverage rules today because we need them.
This is, as I said before, a sessional order that will be in place until the 2008 election. As a sessional order, of course, it can be altered and changed at any particular point, so it is hardly a shutting off or a total denial of any particular rights. Beyond 2008 there will be Standing Orders that we hope will reflect the best interests of the people of this country, because ultimately that is what this should be all about.
I conclude by simply saying it was our intention, and I believe the intention of everybody who sat on that Standing Orders Committee, to open Parliament up to greater scrutiny and view, so we remain a little perplexed by some of the extraordinary reactions in the last couple of days. We accept that they are genuine, we will take them on board, and we will discuss them further. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.