Act list MP Owen Jennings "crossed the line" and defamed a senior Wool Board official when he repeated comments to the news media that he had made in Parliament.
In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Justice Richard Heron ordered him to pay $50,000 damages to Roger Buchanan.
In December 1997 inParliament, Mr Jennings was critical of Mr Buchanan and the Wool Board's sponsorship of a Barbarians rugby team tour to Great Britain. He alleged an illicit relationship between a Wool Board official and a rugby tour official.
In an interview with the Independent business newspaper, he further discussed the issues and "stated he did not resile from his parliamentary statements," Justice Heron said.
In this way he crossed the line and "went looking for further media attention in respect of his criticisms of the Wool Board generally to which Mr Buchanan's motives and role were necessarily attached."
What he did "seems to me to put it beyond any category where the remarks in Parliament may be unintentionally repeated in a media scrum outside Parliament or inadvisably referred to in an oblique way without any intention to give up the privilege which does and should result from parliamentary debate."
The events were largely of Mr Jennings' making because he did not have to grant the interview.
Although MPs should be able to debate freely in the House, a line had to be drawn so that the protection of Parliament was not used to allow defamation to be repeated to the media as had occurred here.
