Parliamentary privilege a valid but Heavy Responsibility

“There is only one immunity of any substance possessed by the houses and their members: the immunity of parliamentary proceedings from any question or impeachment in any court or tribunal. . . . The immunity is usually referred to as freedom of speech in parliament, because it means that a member of parliament cannot be called to account before any court or tribunal for speeches in parliament.” See Papers on Parliament No. 52 December 2009.

Recently this immunity has become the subject of controversy where it has been used by independent Senator Nick Xenophon to disclose the identity of an alleged abuser (a Catholic Priest) said to have abused the now head of an international Anglican Church movement when he was a trainee priest at the age of 15. The disclosure relates to matters the Catholic Church says are still under investigation and a long way from having been proved or brought before a court of law.

On Tuesday night (13 September) Senator Xenophon told the senate that the Church had not followed the protocols of other churches under which a priest facing similar allegations would be stood down while an investigation was made. He said "The allegations are serious," and "they are made by a man with credibility and they have not been appropriately acted upon by the Catholic Church in South Australia." On the other hand the archdiocese of Adelaide has said it was "grossly unfair" to identify the priest before it had finished investigating. As well, Senator Xenophon was cautioned on the use of parliamentary privilege by Senate president John Hogg and later criticised by Coalition senators for undermining the presumption of innocence.

This is yet another example of the highly contentious nature of Parliamentary privilege and harks back to the similar case in NSW where Legislative Councillor Franka Arena named alleged paedophiles in the NSW upper house only to have it revealed later that such allegations were not supported. It would seem that as a concept or principle parliamentary privilege is a valid but heavy responsibility and possibly one in need of qualification so that some matters are deemed to be more appropriately decide only by courts or tribunals and not let loose in parliament on the judgment of a single senator or member.

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