Embattled Education Minister Jan Tinetti grilled by Parliament’s powerful privileges committee

Embattled Education Minister Jan Tinetti says she deeply regrets not fronting up about misleading Parliament earlier - a matter that has landed her before the privileges committee today.

Tinetti is in trouble for telling Parliament she did not have a say in releasing truancy statistics, when in fact she did. National’s Michael Woodhouse said that subsequent revelations have shown that Tinetti’s staff were in fact “donkey deep”, in deciding when the data was released.

The release of the data was around the time of a truancy announcement. Tinetti told the committee she was not aware early on of the timing of that announcement. National’s Gerry Brownlee did not think it was credible she was so unaware of that timing.

“How can you be functioning as a minister if you don’t know about this?” he said.

When she discovered this was incorrect, Tinetti did not immediately correct the record but waited 14 sitting days to do so.

Tinetti said it was “an error of judgement on my part that I regret deeply”.

She said the decision to not front up to Parliament was an “incorrect judgement to make”.

“I regret that decision. While not an excuse, it may assist the committee to provide an element of context,” she said.

Parliament’s Speaker Adrian Rurawhe referred Tinetti to the committee saying this unreasonable delay could be a matter of contempt of Parliament - a very serious charge.

“It is an important principle that the House can trust the accuracy of ministerial replies to Parliamentary questions,” Rurawhe said last month.

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

When correcting the answer early last month, Tinetti said she “subsequently became aware that my office did have input into the timing of the release of the data”, but did not say that this had been brought to her attention the very same day she made the incorrect statement.

Woodhouse said Tinetti’s staff “were donkey deep in the matter of when the data was released”

He said they “would have known or should have known the answer was well wide of the mark”.

Tinetti has said she did not think she needed to correct her incorrect answer until she received a letter from Rurawhe on May 1 telling her that she did.

Rurawhe said the issue raised a potential matter of contempt, and the Privileges Committee would determine whether the delay would amount to contempt.

“It is 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,” Rurawhe said.

In 2008, Winston Peters was referred to the Privileges Committee over whether he should have declared a $100,000 donation from businessman Owen Glenn in 2005 towards his legal costs.

Tinetti would be the first MP in 15 years to be found in contempt of Parliament. The most recent was Winston Peters.