Dear Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives,

Thank you for your email today in respect of my earlier request to your office. I will mark off your response as answered on this site in respect of the items covered in your reply.

I'm publishing the material here to maintain an accurate public record of my experience with the petition in order for me to familiarise my self with the process from your perspective and accurately present the facts for an article I'm about to publish.

The facts that remain obscured concern an outline of the reasons for taking no further action in s3.2 of the summary; as stated below-

3. Petition of John Creser: Justice Dept correct clerical
errors in Court of Appeal judgments made in 2003 9.25am – 9.30am

3.1 Papers tabled
 Email from John Creser (Potential actions to be taken on
petition)
 Draft report (Petition of John Creser)

3.2 Consideration
Resolved, That the committee write to Mr Creser outlining the committee’s
reasons for not taking further action on his petition.
3.3 Deliberation
Resolved, That the draft report be adopted.
The Chairperson announced, That she would report to the House accordingly.

I referred to this document when we discussed this over the phone and you said you were waiting for it to be typed up,and you only had what I assumed to be the pro forma report from the subcommittee.

To date, the committee has provided no reasons for their decision which is completely unacceptable. The right to petition parliament as last resort in matters like this has been available for generations, and after waiting three years to table the evidence, simply being told to go away without an explanation doesn't work for me.

Accordingly, please disclose the reasons as per s3.2 of Justice Committee minutes dated 12 August 2021 for not taking further action on petition 87688

Yours faithfully,

John Creser

Dear Mr Wilson,

Thank you for your request for clarification and I accept you were discussing the minutes referring to the provision of the reasons rather than the actual production of reasons for the decision.

I've now taken the issue up with the Speaker of the House as copied below. Please let me know if you believe I've misquoted or misstated any of the facts I've attributed to either you or your office-

Dear Mr Mallard,

I'm writing to ask you to consider granting leave to submit this petition again. I realise that Standing Order 372 does not allow the submission of the same petition twice in one term of Parliament, however I believe the speaker may consult with the petitions committee and allow an exemption. I've written to the Clerk of the House and outlined my view of the lack of due process .

Natural Justice
The biggest concerns I have are the lack of reasons given by the committee for their decision and their refusal to table any evidence. The committee minutes confirm they'd agreed to provide reasons, but in this case they've said no but haven't determined why first. Likewise the committee secretariat offered no assistance, failed to acknowledge correspondence and tabled none of the evidence I'd forwarded from the Law Society, Justice Department, Privacy Commissioner, Ombudsman & Chief Archivist.

While the UK parliament sees fit to refer to the NZ natural justice guidelines for select committee procedure, its David Wilson's view as stated on FYI, that the committee can make whatever decision it likes without considering the rules of fair play and natural justice, can you confirm the clerks stated position that the Justice Select Committee can do whatever they like without considering natural justice?

After spending 18 years suffering from the effects of this error (concealed by the court for 12 years) surely it's reasonable to expect the Committee to table the evidence and give me 10 minutes to present a submission.

Public Records Act
Chief Archivist Stephen Clarke has said; "A key purpose of the Public Records Act 2005 is for the government to be held accountable by “the creation and maintenance of full and accurate records of the affairs of central and local government” (section 3(c)(i)). Archives New Zealand expects that the records that are created and maintained by regulated parties are, therefore, accurate by default.There is no policy per se to ensure that “fraudulent” records are not created."

"Like all Government agencies, Archives New Zealand follows the Solicitor-General’s Prosecution Guidelines. Offences under the Public Records Act 2005 are considered Category 1 offences under the Criminal Procedure Act 2011. This means that prosecution can only occur within six months from the time that event takes place. Archives New Zealand does not have a view on whether Crimes Act 1961 provisions relating to concealing documents could apply to the handing of public records by government employees."

This petition seeks a law change to the Public Records Act 2005, although I've maintained the concealment and alteration of court records is a criminal offence, this is not a case of a petition seeking prosecution of the offenders. I'm seeking to address the issues confirmed by the Chief Archivist which assumes records created by the Government are accurate by default, while having no view upon the act of concealment by the registrar of the court.

Bill of Rights / Human Rights
The Justice Committee, and in particular the chair Ginny Anderson have marginalised & objectified my petition as coming from someone who is out of touch with reality. On the two occasions I've spoken with the Hutt Electorate Office, the first being over ten years ago, I was immediately told by one your staff the sad story about the man (also named John) whose wife went mad and son committed suicide because he couldn't give up his quixotic battle with the Crown. I've attached a photo of this employee from your office but haven't identified her in the public domain.

I met with Ginny Anderson's in late July 2021 because I'd not had a reply from the justice secretariat to written & oral requests to confirm the hearing date. I was astounded to be given the same "John Quixote" speech again by Ginny, who smiled, took a picture of me and said she was sending a message to the secretariat to remind them to contact me about a date for oral submissions. I discovered a month later that the committee had already met on April 1st 2001 without giving me notice of that hearing and realized that the Chair had lied about the content of the message, which if disclosed would do doubt support my view that I've been the subject of discrimination. The Chair has now refused to respond to a public request for disclosure.

Access to Justice
The right to petition parliament has long been seen as a last resort when other methods have failed. MP's are quick to say its not appropriate for them comment on matters that have been before the court, but in this case the Attorney-General has already interfered by issuing a stay to halt the prosecution for the alteration of court records, despite a district court judge agreeing there was sufficient evidence to proceed.

Please ensure that-
The justice committee provides the reasons for their decision as referred to in their minutes as follows. Resolved, That the committee write to Mr Creser outlining the committee’s reasons for not taking further action on his petition.

The Chair of the justice Committee discloses the photograph of the petitioner and the message purportedly sent to the secretariat.

The petitions committee give reasons for not assisting the petitioner nor tabling documents submitted as evidence.

Yours sincerely,

John Creser