Attorney-General fires back at Bridges
The Government has escalated a stoush with National leader Simon Bridges over the legal advice behind the coronavirus lockdown, promising to refer him to a highpowered parliamentary committee.
Attorney-General David Parker yesterday responded to an attempt by Bridges, as chair of the Epidemic Response Select Committee, to summons high-ranking officials and force them to hand over the Government’s Crown Law lockdown advice.
Parker promised to refer Bridges’ efforts to parliament’s privileges committee over the ‘‘constitutional outrage’’, saying the epidemic response committee had no power to force Government to waive its legal privilege over advice. Bridges says Parker has thrown up a ‘‘smokescreen’’ to dodge public accountability in a way that shows the Government knows the lockdown was unlawful.
Parker declined to be interviewed yesterday. In a lengthy speech over a Facebook livestream, he again asserted the lockdown was legal and listed the various emergency powers the Government has given itself.
He said the Crown Law advice confirmed the legality but, because of the lawfulness of the lockdown being challenged in court, he declined to go into greater detail.
The court challenge claims DirectorGeneral of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield was unable to order the whole country to quarantine under law. But Parker said the Health Act allowed it. He said it was important Government and Cabinet ministers could receive confidential legal advice from Crown Law, the Government’s law firm, as without this protection lawyers might ‘‘trim’’ advice fearing how it would be perceived outside government.
Bridges was ‘‘offered a confidential briefing on the legal advice and declined’’.
The epidemic response committee issuing a summons to the Solicitor-General, the Government’s top lawyer, along with Bloomfield and the police commissioner was a ‘‘constitutional outrage’’. Parker said the Government had shown a willingness for public accountability by agreeing to the have the committee, and its majority of National Party MPs, scrutinise the response to the pandemic.
‘‘In my opinion the current effort to turn over centuries of legal principle ... may in fact be beyond the powers of the select committee. I will be asking the Speaker of the House to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee to consider.’’
The Privileges Committee is a parliamentary select committee that investigates allegations that Parliament’s rules have been breached, or that an MP has acted in contempt of the House. It is usually chaired by the Attorney-General.