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Title

Ch19 Parliamentary privilege / ACTS CONSTITUTING BREACHES OF PRIVILEGE AND CONTEMPTS / Obstructing Members and House employees in the discharge of their duty

Database

House Practice

Date

01-05-2005

Source

House of Reps

Parl No.

41

Chapter

Parliamentary privilege

Chapter No.

Chapter 19

Page

730

Section No.

 

System Id

procedural/practcer/chapter19.42.doc


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Ch19 Parliamentary privilege / ACTS CONSTITUTING BREACHES OF PRIVILEGE AND CONTEMPTS / Obstructing Members and House employees in the discharge of their duty



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House of Representatives                                Ch 19                                                 p 730

 

Parliamentary privilege / ACTS CONSTITUTING BREACHES OF PRIVILEGE AND CONTEMPTS

 

Obstructing Members and House employees in the discharge of their duty

To cause or effect the arrest of a Member in a civil cause during periods when the immunity conferred by the Parliamentary Privileges Act applies could be pursued as a contempt ( see p.  724 ); so too could molestation of a Member while attending, coming to, or going from the House.

In 1986 the Committee of Privileges considered a case in which the work of a Member’s electorate office had been disrupted as a result of a considerable number of telephone calls received in response to false advertisements in a newspaper. The committee’s report stated that the actions in question were to be deprecated; that in all the circumstances it did not believe that further action should be taken; but that harassment of a Member in the performance of his or her work by means of repeated or nuisance or orchestrated telephone calls could be judged a contempt. 1

The Committee of Privileges has also considered the effect of industrial action which involved bans on the delivery of mail to, and the despatch of mail from, Members’ electorate offices. It found that the actions had disrupted the work of electorate offices, and impeded the ability of constituents to communicate with Members, but that as the actions were not taken with any specific intention to infringe the law concerning the protection of Parliament an adverse finding should not be made. 2

In 1995 the committee reported on a complaint following the execution, by officers of the Australian Federal Police, of a search warrant on the electorate office of a Member. The committee concluded that, although the work of the Member’s electorate office had undoubtedly been disrupted, and that although the actions complained of amounted to interference in the free performance by the Member of his duties as a Member, the interference could not be regarded as improper interference as required by section 4 of the Act and so no contempt had been committed. 3

The Parliamentary Privileges Act also confers, by section 14, immunity from arrest in civil causes of officers required to attend on a House or a committee for certain periods ( see p. 725). The obstruction of House employees in the execution of their duty, or other people entrusted with the execution of its orders, or the molestation of those people on account of their having carried out their duties, could be found to be a contempt. To commence proceedings against such people for their conduct in obedience to the orders of the House could be pursued as a possible contempt.



House of Representatives Committee of Privileges, Disruption caused to the work of the electorate office of the honourable Member for Wentworth made in response to false advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald of 20 September 1986 ’, PP 282 (1986) 5-6.



PP (122) 1994.



PP 376 (1995); and see p. 713 re the status of Members’ records.