Winston Peters has issued judicial review proceedings against Speaker of the House the Rt Honourable Trevor Mallard, challenging Mr Mallard’s issue of a trespass warning against Mr Peters on 28 April 2022, which the Speaker then withdrew on 4 May 2022.
 

In his press release of 4 May 2022, Mr Mallard said he had been working with Police and Parliamentary Security to constantly assess threats to Parliament, and the advice he had received was that it was “no longer necessary to retain trespass notices for five of these people”.

Mr Mallard said:

“The behaviour of some individuals was clearly more egregious than others, and on that basis it [was] relatively easy to identify those persons issued with trespass notices who no longer are regarded as being a risk to the safety and security of others at Parliament”.

In his claim Mr Peters contends that he never posed any risk or threat to the safety and security of Parliament when he attended briefly on 22 February 2022, and the warning was issued for improper purposes.

He claims that the Speaker’s actions were unlawful, unreasonable, and irrational and he will seek declarations from the Court to this effect.

Mr Peters considers the Speaker’s actions raises significant questions of importance in a democracy and those actions should be scrutinised by the High Court in judicial review.

Now that the matter is before the Court Mr Peters will not comment further.

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