23 Sep 2008

MPs defend Privileges Committee

9:50 am on 23 September 2008

Some members of Parliament's Privileges Committee are defending the way it operates.

The committee is recommending censure for New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters for knowingly providing false or misleading information over pecuniary interests.

It says he should have declared a $100,000 donation from businessman, Owen Glenn, towards the legal costs of an electoral petition in 2006.

New Zealand First MP Dail Jones, says the system the Privileges Committee used was corrupted as it accepted inferences and circumstantial evidence.

He says it created a new form of interpreting the standing orders, which it applied retrospectively.

But Green Party MP, Russel Norman, who backed the recommendations, says there was good evidence on the basis of probabilities that Mr Peters had prior knowledge of the donation and he was in contempt.