Parliament Act 2025

Parliamentary privilege - Article 9 of Bill of Rights 1688 - Prohibited impeaching or questioning of proceedings in Parliament

20: Use of evidence, etc, for interpreting legislation

You could also call this:

"Using documents to help understand what a law means"

Illustration for Parliament Act 2025

You can use certain documents to help understand what a law means. These documents are about what happened in Parliament. You can look at these documents in court, but only to understand the law, not to question what Parliament did. You can use these documents as evidence or talk about them in court. This helps the court understand what the law is trying to say. It is based on sections like Sections 18 and 19, and the Bill of Rights 1688. The court can look at these documents to make sense of the law. This is allowed, as long as it is only to understand the law. It does not affect what Parliament did.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS804148.

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"Keeping Secrets Safe in Court"


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"Using evidence to prove what really happened"

Part 2Parliamentary privilege
Article 9 of Bill of Rights 1688: Prohibited impeaching or questioning of proceedings in Parliament

20Use of evidence, etc, for interpreting legislation

  1. Sections 18 and 19 and Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 do not prevent or restrict a court or tribunal from doing any of the following for the sole purpose of ascertaining the meaning of any legislation (without impeaching or questioning the proceedings in Parliament):

  2. admitting in evidence, or taking judicial notice of, a document relating to proceedings in Parliament communicated under the House of Representatives’ or a committee’s authority:
    1. allowing the making of statements, submissions, or comments based on the document.
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