Education Minister Jan Tinetti has escaped being held in contempt of Parliament - but has now apologised for her “high degree of negligence” in misleading the House.
Parliament’s privileges committee has released its report into the matter today, which Tinetti has accepted. After being ordered to, she apologised to the House just before Question Time today.
Tinetti was referred to the committee at the end of last month for not correcting a false statement quickly enough.
Tinetti had told Parliament in February that she had no responsibility for the release of school attendance data. She was told later that day by staff she did, in fact, have input into the timing of the release.
The committee’s report notes that Tinetti had a five-minute “maximum” conversation with her staff about emails detailing her office’s involvement with the release of the data, and it was “not definite” about whether her statement in Parliament needed correcting.
Tinetti decided that it didn’t and, after a complaint to Speaker Adrian Rurawhe by National MP Erica Stanford, Tinetti stood by her February comments as late as April 29.
Tinetti corrected the record on May 2, a day after Rurawhe told her that she did, in fact, appear to have misled the House.
Tinetti appeared before the committee on June 8, saying she deeply regretted the error and that waiting so long to correct the record was “an incorrect judgment to make”.
Today the committee said it did not believe Tinetti had deliberately misled the House.
“The Minister has strenuously denied such intent in evidence to us. Although some of us find parts of her evidence unconvincing, all members of the committee accept that there is an appropriately high bar for making a finding of intent to mislead, which is not met in this case,” the committee’s report said.
But her actions led to the House being misled and “impeded in the performance of its functions”.
“This could be considered a contempt. We consider that the circumstances of this case are serious and there are good arguments both for and against making a finding of contempt. The committee has grappled with these arguments.
“We accept that the Minister’s actions reflected a high degree of negligence on her part, rather than any ill intention. It is our view that a finding of contempt should be reserved for the most serious of cases. For these reasons, we do not find she committed a contempt of the House.”
However, the committee stressed that it was “a significant error of judgment”.
“We consider that the Minister is deserving of criticism for having failed to correct her misleading statement when she had been informed of the information that later led her to accept her answer was inaccurate,” the committee said.
“Her actions and the impact of them on the House’s operations are serious and it is for that reason we consider that the Minister should be required to formally apologise to the House.”
The committee noted that Tinetti has changed her practices, including reviewing video and the Hansard record of oral questions asked in Parliament.
The committee said that, in this case, she took no action to look into the information she gave on February 22, and didn’t review the accuracy of her statements until the Speaker’s letter on May 1. She stood by the answer she gave in February in her letter to the Speaker on April 29 “in a manner that we find erroneous in light of the evidence”.
”The House cannot be in the position of being deprived of truthful information from ministers over significant periods of time due to serious errors of judgment by ministers. To find no fault in this case would risk undermining the responsibility that ministers have to the House, and the trust that members may have in the House’s procedures for scrutinising the executive,” the report said.
“It is reasonable to expect ministers to make sound judgments and appropriate inquiries when they are informed of facts that may render their statements inaccurate or misleading. That did not occur in this case.”
Tinetti told reporters on her way to Question Time: “I accept the report and I will apologise to the House. That is all I’m going to say at this stage.”
Acting Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni said Tinetti isn’t the first minister to make an error of judgment, as opposed to a deliberate effort to mislead the House.
Derek Cheng is a political reporter for the Herald and has worked in the Press Gallery in Parliament for several years, covering the Helen Clark, John Key, and Jacinda Ardern governments.