4 May 2005


Office of the Domain Name Commissioner
InternetNZ
PO Box 11-881
Wellington 


Application for a New Second Level Domain - .parliament.nz

I refer to your letter of 13 April 2005 addressed to the Hon Margaret Wilson, MP, 
Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the application for a new second level 
domain - .parliament.nz.  The Speaker has asked that I reply on behalf of the 
Parliamentary Service Commission, which represents all parliamentary political 
parties and is chaired by the Speaker.

Two significant criteria that underlie this application are that it represents an 
identifiable community of interest and that it will create a unique identity that will 
not be confusing to the general public.  Indeed the application seeks a clearer 
separation of the identity of “parliament” and its agencies from “executive 
government” and its agencies, while providing the basis for expanding a nascent but 
discrete community of interest that currently is not apparent to the general public.

The evolution of parliamentary political parties under the MMP electoral system, 
and the coincidental increase in the use of electronic media as a vital component of 
political processes is opening both the interest in and need for additional unique 
identities in the parliamentary electronic environment.  Rightly or wrongly, the 
“.govt.nz” domain name has become strongly associated with executive government.  
Some non-government parliamentary parties and members of Parliament find that 
the “.parliament.govt.nz” domain associates them with the “Government” in the 
eyes of the public when their very purpose in being in Parliament is to oppose the 
government of the day, at least for the time being.  The current arrangement is 
confusing in that respect.

As the “.govt.nz” domain has become so strongly identified with the government of 
the day, rather than the broader association with the three branches of government, 
there is confusion when the parliamentary political parties, which have a strong 
partisan political profile, become associated with the neutral public service profile 
associated with executive government and the “.govt.nz” domain name.  In this 
respect, staff of the E-Government Unit of the State Services Commission, the 
moderator of the “.govt.nz” has expressed a view that it is not appropriate for the 
names of parliamentary political parties to be associated with the “.govt.nz” domain 
name.

The second level domain name of “.parliament.nz” is intended to be used to create a 
presence for those agencies and organisations associated with Parliament that are 
part of the broader public service and yet not part of executive government and are 
covered by the definition “Offices of Parliament”.  Whilst this would include the 
parliamentary departments (Office of the Clerk and the Parliamentary Service) it 
would extend to other parliamentary agencies such as Office of the Ombudsmen, 
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Auditor Generals Office.  

In addition to these publicly funded bodies the parliamentary political parties will be 
eligible to use a domain name based on the parliamentary party, for example, 
“labour.parliament.nz”.  This would distinguish the parliamentary presence and 
activities of the parliamentary political parties (recognised under the Standing 
Orders of the House of Representatives and funded by the taxpayer) from the purely 
political presence and activities of political parties (outside of Parliament and not 
funded by the taxpayer).

The creation of this domain will also provide unique identities for members of 
Parliament, for example “Joe_Bloggs.parliament.nz”, allowing them to create a web 
presence that identifies them as part of a larger community based on Parliament.  
The creation of separate identities for select committees is another possible 
development, for example, the Constitutional Arrangements Select Committee is 
currently using a forth level domain name.

The second point to be made is that with the introduction of “parliament.nz” the use 
of “parliament.govt.nz” will be phased out thus reducing the possibility of confusion 
for the general public.  The dropping of the “govt” makes a clear distinction over the 
role and institution of Parliament in the democratic process, which will be reinforced 
by the introduction of a new web site towards the end of the year.

Yours sincerely




Joel M George
General Manager