Speaker withdraws five trespass notices

Speaker Trevor Mallard has withdrawn five trespass notices issued after the Parliament occupation following pushback from Winston Peters and MPS across the House.

Peters has confirmed that one of the withdrawn notices was his own, as have National MP Matt King and former Māori Party coleader Marama Fox. The five come from a pool of 151 trespass notices, with 144 of those being people who were arrested by police during the protest.

Mallard said seven additional notices were issued to ‘‘persons of interest’’ with five of these being withdrawn – and two remaining in force.

‘‘I have been working with police and Parliamentary Security to constantly assess threats to Parliament, and the advice I have received is that it is no longer necessary to retain trespass notices for these five people,’’ Mallard said. ‘‘The behaviour of some individuals was clearly more egregious than others, and on that basis it has been relatively easy to identify those persons issued with trespass notices who no longer are regarded as being a risk.’’

Peters attended after Speaker Trevor Mallard closed the grounds to the protests and issued a trespass notice, an action taken after protesters erected tents and blocked off the roads around Parliament. He did not speak at the protest or participate over several days – as King did.

Peters said in a statement that it should not have taken his threat of judicial review for the Speaker to back down.

‘‘This whole issue from the start to finish has been an absolute shambles, and has caused a number of people unnecessary anguish and expense,’’ Peters said.

He said he would be be filing

an Official Information Act request about the matter. Parliamentary Service is exempt from this law, however.

Mallard’s backdown came after the original trespass orders were widely criticised.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that Mallard had received feedback from many MPS across the House around ‘‘the question’’ of whether the response was proportionate.

Mallard said that the actual decision to trespass Peters and King was not made by him, but by Parliamentary Security, whom he had delegated responsibility to.

University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis said that if Peters was elected to Parliament in 2023 the trespass order would likely be voided by a court. Trespass charges against Green MP Sue Bradford were dropped in 1999 when she was elected.

‘‘I think that would have to happen, in that even if you had a Speaker who refused to withdraw a trespass notice, a court would hold it ‘‘unreasonable’’ to allow it to stand and so deprive the voters of their elected representative,’’ Geddis said. ‘‘The whole power of the Speaker to issue a trespass notice/maintain a trespass notice is coloured by this ‘reasonableness’ requirement, as per High Court jurisprudence.’’

‘‘The whole power of the Speaker to issue a trespass notice/maintain a trespass notice is coloured by this ‘reasonableness’ requirement.’’ Andrew Geddis

University of Otago law professor