Source: New Zealand Parliament – Hansard
ORAL QUESTIONS
Point of Order—Punctuation within Substantive Questions
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Point of order. Can I just ask you to consider, with respect to question No. 10, and compare it to question No. 7—
SPEAKER: Sorry, question which, sorry?
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Question No. 10, as opposed to question No. 7. In question No. 7, the questioner is asking and putting the quotes in inverted commas to signal that it is a quote. When you get to question No. 10, there is no such precision, no such exactitude, and I think it’s wrong.
SPEAKER: I think it’s because it’s a quote.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Well, continuing the point of order, if it’s a quote, it’ll be in quotes, won’t it? That’s the only reason why you’ll know that you can verify that. If it’s a quote, it’ll be in inverted commas so that you can then check to see its accuracy. At this point in time, none of us knows whether that’s accurate or not.
SPEAKER: My apologies; it’s not a quote.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, Mr Speaker, if that’s the case—
SPEAKER: Can I just make it clear—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does she stand by her statement—
SPEAKER: No, hang on—just a minute. For those who are watching, just to make it clear, questions are lodged with the Clerk’s office. They are considered by the clerks, who have considerable experience of these things. They’re signed off by the Speaker later in the morning. But the advice that comes from the Clerk’s office, generally, is that—in fact, most days—all the questions are in order. That has been the case today. But if you’ve got a point, I’m happy to hear it.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Well, my point is that, if it’s a quote, it should be in quotes so that we can, therefore, check against the evidence to see whether it’s honestly reported or not. If it doesn’t have any quote marks to it, no one knows what’s going on here, and with the greatest respect to the Clerk of the House, if this was a court of law, they’d ask for that as well.
SPEAKER: Yes, I know, but we’re not quite a court of law just yet.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: We’re the highest court in the land.
SPEAKER: That’s right, and we should do things properly. I’m assuming that the Clerk’s office has done the right thing here, and if that’s not the case, they’ll clearly review it, but we’re not going to review it in time to rectify it for this question time. So we’ll come to question No. 1, in the name of the Hon Carmel Sepuloni.
