‘Gun ban search warrant raises legal questions’
WELLINGTON - There are unresolved legal questions about how police got information for a search warrant they carried out at the house of a right-wing blogger, a law professor says.
Armed officers searched Dieuwe de Boer’s house last week suspecting he had a prohibited firearm magazine.
They did not find it and left the house empty handed.
Mr De Boer had made a public written submission to a parliamentary select committee in April last year, including details about the prohibited magazine attachment, which he republished on his blog and was subsequently shared on other blogs and social media.
Law professor Andrew Geddis said the law forbids courts from using Select Committee submissions in court proceedings, including obtaining a search warrant, under the Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014.
He said whether the same submission reproduced online had the same privileges was a question which had not been answered in the courts before.
“If the police were unaware the blog post was reproducing his select committee submission, then the police couldn’t really have brought it to the judge’s attention — that’d be fair enough,” Mr Geddis said.
“But if the police were aware that this had come from a select committee submission, it would have been incumbent on the police to inform the judge that that was the case.
“And the judge would then have had to consider whether a reproduction of a select committee submission is protected by the same privilege as is the submission given direct to the committee, which is an as-yet unconsidered point of law,” Mr Geddis said.