Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill

The Hon Paul Goldsmith has six minutes and 13 seconds remaining to speak—OK, Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an honour and a privilege to stand here to make a contribution on the second reading of the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the sponsor of this bill, Ginny Andersen. She also chairs the Justice Committee, and I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee that has brought this bill to the House for the second reading. I’d like to acknowledge the work of the officials—the Ministry of Justice, the Office of the Clerk, and Parliamentary Counsel Office—for their contribution also. I’d like to acknowledge the 25 submissions that the select committee received, and the select committee heard from six of them.

Although I was not in the select committee, in reading the information, I am confident that the voices of those submitters are reflected in the report of the select committee. So the Labour Party supports this bill, and it will help protect all New Zealand children from harm. This is especially important—especially with the online platforms’ increasing use amongst our young people. With this opportunity also comes the increased use of the opportunity of harm from others. So, as I said before, Labour supports this bill, and we are committed to protecting children from harm. The Prime Minister refers to New Zealand being the best place to be a child, and that includes every sector of our lives, and this is definitely one which is really important.

As shared by the sponsor, Ginny Andersen, in her first speech, she spoke about the surveys that have been conducted. One survey conducted in partnership with NetSafe and the Ministry for Women on the experiences of teenagers with online risk found that seven in 10 teens surveyed had experienced at least one type of unwanted digital communication in the past. Also, it found that nearly 19 percent of teens surveyed had experienced unwanted digital communication that had a negative impact on their daily lives—most of which involved being contacted by a stranger, by someone they didn’t know. So 19 percent of young people surveyed had been asked to share images that should be private. The bill, therefore, introduced aims to protect all children who are at risk from harm of exploitation through digital communications.

Following the select committee process, the Justice Committee had decided that any new offences should cover digital harm as well as any other type of communication or conduct with a young person that leads to harmful prohibited behaviour. I refer to the experience in Blenheim where there was a teacher who had admitted to sexually abusing two schoolboys and was convicted in the Blenheim District Court for two years and six months in jail for offending. Because there were no offences that covered her grooming the teenage boys and communicating digitally and providing harm, those charges were never laid—because there were no offences at that time. So what this bill does is that it actually makes it an offence to communicate digitally with young people.

In the select committee, as I will cover in my speech, they talked about the inclusion of in-person grooming behaviours. We like to think that we live in a nice, safe country here in Aotearoa, and we like to think that we trust those who are teachers—or, in a case in Whanganui, there was a dance tutor who also had sexually abused young girls and was never charged for grooming. So what this bill does is it actually recognises that those harmful behaviours exist, and the select committee has diligently covered all those points. In reading some of the submissions from the submitters, like I’ve said before, the submitters support this bill. They support this bill, and they acknowledge too the ever-increasing threat of online harm.

One submission spoke about the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children overseas, which records data about referrals from agencies regarding online abuse—a huge, huge number of abuse that has doubled since 2019. Actually, the numbers are huge. In 2021, it was 9,971. And it is ever increasing. I’ve mentioned the case in Blenheim where the teacher was first convicted and charged and the dance teacher in Whanganui who also was not charged for grooming but was convicted of other charges—and the reasons for that—and, as I said before, this bill would make it an offence. And I will go to the notes from the select committee where the select committee recommended replacing clause 4 of the bill with the committee’s proposed clause 4 to insert a new section, section 131AB, into the Act. This section would make it an offence for someone over the age of 18 to communicate by words or have conduct with a person under the age of 16. So the Justice Committee recommended unanimously that the bill be passed, and they recommended all amendments unanimously, replacing two offences with a single offence and including in-person grooming behaviours.

As introduced, the bill focuses on digital harm. The committee heard from a number of submitters, as I have said, who define grooming behaviour as broad strategies to facilitate sexual contact, which happens both online and in person. The committee believed that any new offences should cover digital harm as well as any other type of communication or conduct with a young person that leads to harm or prohibited behaviour. A sexual grooming offence should align with existing offences in the Crimes Act. The bill, as introduced, proposes that section 126A and 126B offences would be inserted in Part 7 of the Act under “Crimes against morality and decency”. As I’ve said before, the committee had considered, in depth, that these proposed offences should be replaced with an offence that closely aligns with existing section 131B of the Crimes Act under “Sexual crimes”. Just a reminder: section 131B is a sexual grooming offence that requires the groomer to meet or attempt to meet the young person. The new offence will similarly capture grooming for sexual conduct but would not require the groomer to meet the young person. So as I’ve said before, the proposed new offence is in section 131AB, and the committee found that much of the behaviour the bill intends to capture would be covered under existing legislation.

I would like to move on to the convictions. A person convicted of an offence under the proposed clause 131AB would be liable to up to three years’ imprisonment. So this would align with penalties for similar existing offences in the Crimes Act and Harmful Digital Communications Act—also, deleting the proposed increased penalty under section 131B.

As I conclude, I want to acknowledge all the victims—young children and young people in New Zealand—who have suffered through trusting adults or communicating with adults or people older than them. In my experiences working as a social worker and as a manager at Oranga Tamariki, I know that these harms continue on through generations, and I want to acknowledge Ginny Andersen’s attempt to make grooming an offence. I want to commend her on that. And, again, my thoughts are with those who have experienced harm through no fault of their own, and I commend that they seek help. It is never too late to seek help—even in adulthood. And on that note, I commend this bill to the House. Mālō.

I just want to acknowledge the previous speaker, Anahila Kanongata‘a-Suisuiki. I think that the last piece of advice she gave was a very good one, and that was: never be afraid to step forward and seek help. I’ll share a personal story of mine, shortly.

But I do want to acknowledge the member Ginny Andersen for bringing this bill as a member’s bill into the House. She’s also the chair of the Justice Committee. She’s done a very good job on this.

Can I thank the other committee members. I am a member of that committee. Like the previous speaker, can I acknowledge and thank our advisers on this bill, because there were some technical parts of it that we actually had to work on and work our way through.

I said I was going to share my own personal experience around not necessarily the grooming but certainly the risks that our young people are exposed to. I’m sure that anyone in this House that has children of their own, or nephews or nieces, has probably had some sort of experience. But mine related to my daughter when she was 15 years old. We live in a golden age, without a doubt, in terms of communication and the ease of communication and all the different social platforms that are available that we can use. But with that, of course, now comes enormous risk, as well.

My story was quite simply about my 15-year-old daughter, whom I’m very close to and raised as a single dad for a good period of time through her lifetime, and I felt that she would always come to me and she’d always feel confident to be able to confide in me. But I started to notice in her all the classic symptoms of when something is going wrong in a young person’s life, and that was a withdrawal. She was a very outgoing and confident young woman and she started to withdraw. Alongside of that was weight loss; she started to lose weight. Of course, like any of us as a parent, I tried everything. I tried to see, if she didn’t want to confide in me, would she confide in my mum or my sisters or other adults in her life that she trusted.

But, anyway, finally, there was a circuit-breaker and she did confide in me. Quite simply, what had been going on is that she had been bullied online by a boy at school, and other kids had joined in. She didn’t know how to deal with it and it had created massive stress and anxiety in her life.

Once I was aware of it, we took steps to try and address it. As hard as we tried to address it through the school, it was actually very difficult. I think that’s another issue, another problem that we have to try and constantly deal with and work out in terms of how we can provide leadership inside our schools so that we can move towards a zero-bullying policy, whereby every child in this country can get out of bed in the morning without having the fear of being bullied at school—whether it be physical bullying, verbal bullying, or bullying online. Look, I couldn’t sort that issue out for my daughter until I actually ended up having to go direct with the parents myself and highlighting the behaviour and encouraging an intervention to ensure that the young man involved understood the harm that we was causing, the inappropriateness of the behaviour that he was engaging in, and to try and get a change in that behaviour.

But the reason why I raise that as an example is because grooming of young people generates the same type of response where, often, they won’t share it. They can be living in the same house with their family members, and the family members will be completely unaware of, actually, what’s going on and the harm that’s being created.

What Ginny’s done is she’s identified the fact that there was no actual legislation or law that was able to deliver with the front end of this offending, which is the grooming. So there are laws that are on the statute book that deal with the actual offending of engaging in an unlawful behaviour or contact with someone under the age of 16, but there’s no legislation that actually deals with the grooming and the actions that are taken leading up to that. So this bill here actually does a very good job of filling that gap and now making it an offence for someone to actually groom a young person online.

The only thing that I would say—and it’s a message that I’ve relayed to my children and tried to teach my children from a very early age—is that if you’re using email or social media, whatever you choose to put out there, once you press the send button, even if you feel that you’ve got a high degree of trust in the source of whoever’s receiving that email or photo or information, or whatever you may be sending, the minute you press the send button, you have lost control of it; you no longer control it. So don’t ever send anything that you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see, because you do not know where that is going to end up—that piece of information, that photo, you don’t know where it is going to end up.

By the way, when I ran my own company, that was actually something that I’d regularly send out to all my employees and my team: a reminder around email protocol. Email is not there to solve problems. Walk out of your office and go down and sit with someone. Email is quite simply a way of sharing information. And, by the way, again, do not press send on any email that you’re not prepared for the whole world to have a look at.

But coming back to the bill, some of these numbers are actually quite sobering, Mr Speaker, and I acknowledge you and your past experience as a law enforcement officer and dealing with some of these issues. Seven in 10 teens have experienced at least one type of unwanted digital communication in the past year. So just think about that number. Seven of 10 of our children have experienced some type of unwanted digital communication. Nearly 19 percent of teens experienced an unwanted digital communication that had a negative impact on their daily activities, the most common of which involved being contacted by a stranger. So almost 20 percent of our young people are being contacted intentionally by a stranger, and that’s having a negative impact on them. Nineteen percent of young people have been asked to share nude or nearly nude images of themselves. This is something that I feel really strongly about in terms of communications through the school, through parents, through mentors, through positive role models in our young people’s lives, coming back to the fact: please, double-check and think before deciding to take a photo and share an intimate image, because you never know where that might turn up, or when it might turn up. Just double-check.

The bill seeks to help protect children from harm online and is modelled on recent Australian legislation. The bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 to provide for additional offences relating to persons over the age of 18 using electronic communication, such as a social media platform, to make false representations relating to their age or identity, intending to meet with persons under 16, and to procure or plan to cause harm to persons under 16. It then goes on to say that although—like I said earlier in my contribution—there are laws in place right now that deal with the Act, there weren’t any laws in place to deal with the actual grooming or the actions that were taking place before the Act.

So, look, I’m just very happy to stand and take a call in support of this legislation. I think that, as members of this House, we put a member’s bill in because there’s something that we’re passionate about, we think we can make a genuine, real difference and contribution—in this case, to making our young people safer. I’d just like, again, to acknowledge Ginny Andersen in bringing this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too want to add my voice to the voices of the previous speakers in thanking Ginny Andersen for bringing in this bill, the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. She is the Hutt South MP, who works hard, and I’d like to thank her for her diligent work in bringing this bill to the House. Ginny talked about being inspired as a mum to do this, and the online activity of children today is a nightmare for every single parent in Aotearoa and beyond. Having all of the House of Representatives coming together and doing this is quite commendable, and I’d like to thank all the political parties for agreeing to support this bill.

It’s an open secret that our children spend significant time online, often unsupervised, which means they are exposed to unimaginable harms. There are evil-minded people out there and their sole intention is just to prey on young children and to harm young children, who can’t see bad from the evil.

The recent online harm against children today is rampant, and the social media companies have failed to do anything about it. That’s why we need the proper tools to deal with this evil, and I believe that this legislation is going to achieve that. The bill will help to mitigate these harms against our tamariki. As introduced, it intends to protect children from the harm—primarily focusing on the harm of online grooming, to be specific. It’s good to see that some good work is being done in this space, because, as the previous speaker Mr Mitchell has mentioned, there has been a gap in legislation, and now it’s good to see that something is being done to deal with this phenomenon.

The bill aims to protect children who are at risk from harm—harm that’s caused by exploitation committed through digital communication. The bill also introduces into the Crimes Act a new offence in new section 134AB, in clause 4, of grooming for sexual conduct with a person under the age of 16 years, where a person commits an offence if they communicate by words or conduct with a young person and do so with an intention to engage the young person in conduct that would be an offence. The bill also creates a new defence for the offence, which is that before they communicate, they must have reasonably taken steps to find out the young person’s age, and at the time that they communicated they believed on reasonable grounds that the person was over 16 years old.

The Justice Committee have done a good job in terms of hearing from submitters, scrutinising the bill, and eventually making recommendations. The committee unanimously recommended that the bill be passed.

The committee also recommended the following amendments. Initially, the two offences were increasing the penalty for intentionally misleading a young person about their age or identity and subsequently meeting or arranging to meet them—this could have caused up to seven years’ imprisonment—and a person over 18 years old who digitally communicates with the young person intending to cause harm or who is reckless as to whether the young person is harmed or not also could cause imprisonment for five years. The select committee recommended that an offence include all types of communication but need not require the grooming to meet the young person. The committee obviously recommended this—to repeat what is in other legislation because it’s better-aligned with existing legislation, and because the policy intent of this legislation is to protect children from harm. Much of the behaviour covered in this bill is covered by existing legislation, in the Crimes Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015. Penalties are less and better match other penalties of this type—up to three years of imprisonment.

The submissions from various organisations defined child-grooming behaviour as broad strategies used to facilitate sexual conduct, and this includes online and in person. Other related information included, obviously, the survey done—this is quite alarming—by the Ministry for Women and NetSafe, which found that seven in 10 people have experienced this one type of unwanted digital communication. Obviously, not all of this resulted in harm or distress. Māori, Pasifika, and other minority children are highly unlikely to report the unwanted digital communication, and this is for quite obvious reasons. Also in the survey, two in 10 young people had experienced unwanted digital communication that had a negative impacts on their lives, probably for the rest of their lives.

The general reports showed that harmful digital communications have increased by 24 percent. This should worry all of us, and we should be doing everything we can to fight this.

Between 2015 to 2020, about 200 people have been convicted—this is according to NetSafe—but NetSafe also said that they have supported about 14,000 victims of harmful digital communications. This is a very, very scary number.

To mention some examples that the media have reported: for example, we can mention the schoolteacher who groomed two 15-year-old boys. It started with a text message and gradually became explicit photos. This eventually culminated in her having sexual intercourse with two boys in a locked car in a public place.

A mother found out that her son was being groomed online by looking at the phone. The 14-year-old had an Instagram account to, obviously, keep in contact with gaming friends, which is quite innocent. Messages from a random girl of apparently the same age, or claiming to be the same age, who had the same interests quickly became explicit.

I want to acknowledge everyone who contributed to this bill. Obviously, there are the submitters—the 25 people who submitted, who were interested and took time to submit on this bill, and six of them submitted in person—the select committee members, the clerks, and everyone else who contributed to bringing this bill in front of the House. But my specific acknowledgment is to Ginny Andersen, who not a long time ago brought another significant bill in front of this House, which was the miscarriage bereavement leave bill and which was passed by this House. Ginny, as the mother of young children, has done a good job. It took interest and it took time in putting this together—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Omer, can we just use surnames, please, just for the dignity of the House. You’ve several times gone to first names—so just full names, please. It just maintains the dignity of the House.

IBRAHIM OMER: Thank you. I apologise, Mr Speaker. Ms Andersen has worked diligently to bring this piece of legislation in front of this House. My acknowledgment, again, is to all the House in coming together to support this bill, because this is not any bill; this is a bill that deals with the issue that affects our most vulnerable—our kids—at a time when social media and smartphones have changed everything.

I’d like to say how similar this phenomena is: leaving your child to use social media unsupervised is like dropping a piece of meat in a river and expecting the crocodiles not to eat it. So I hope that every parent pays attention, but I hope also that this legislation gives every parent here in Aotearoa and beyond peace of mind, because this will deal with the issue that we are dealing with. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise and, to begin, would like to congratulate my friend and the chair of our Justice Committee, Ginny Andersen, for having her bill, the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill, drawn from the ballot and progressed in this way—it seems with consensus across the House at this reading, as well as at its first reading.

This is a bill that creates two new offences, as others have said, to try and capture the types of activities that, for years in the courts, we’ve described as “grooming”—communications that are intended to mislead a young person about the offender’s age and subsequent meetings and arrangements with the young person with the aim of, and the result of, sexual abuse. When I practised law, we did have an understanding—those of us who worked at that front line of the justice system, and all of the service providers and people entrusted with the work of dealing with sexual abuse of young people—that grooming is a really big part of that. All of these types of activities, whether it was by text message, whether it was in person, and increasingly in online spaces, are complex and often far more hidden than what parents, supervisors, and others might have access to. It existed, for example, as part of a trial to show that the offending had taken place, and by that point we’re talking about far more serious offending. It existed at the sentencing stage, as an aggravating factor. It, again, showed the lengths that the offender had gone to, to facilitate their offending, and the premeditated nature of the offending that would have eventuated in each case. Again, by that point, we’re talking about far more serious offending and assault and rapes and other types of sexual exploitation of young people.

It wasn’t quite adequate to say that we’re capturing it at that point, because, of course, it meant that we didn’t have a way of capturing this type of activity as harmful in itself, and we didn’t have a way of capturing or intervening with an offender at that point, including in terms of rehabilitation, but in particular in terms of keeping young people safe from the much more serious offending. So this makes sense, but it increasingly makes sense in the context of the lives that young people now lead, almost as much online as not, and in terms of the ways that they are increasingly vulnerable to sexual exploitation in those online spaces, with all of the different pressures to share their information, to share images, to appease their peers—and, when I say their peers, I mean obviously including the type of person who may not in fact be their peer but is online, passing as what a person under the age of 16 might see as part of their community. That’s where the harm comes in, and that’s where the vulnerability comes in, and all of those pressures needs to be captured by our justice system.

I do want to just say, though, that what we know about any kind of activity—in particular, the type of activity that aims to victimise and marginalise a vulnerable community—is that criminalisation in and of itself isn’t enough. So what I would hope is that we will continue to do the work—and I know that we have, for the first time ever, in this Government, a Minister for domestic and sexual violence, the Hon Marama Davidson—of capturing that community support, empowering the service providers and the people who have been doing this work of keeping our different communities, in particular young people. But, again, young people across different communities have different vulnerabilities, have different support systems, and have different mechanisms that we as a Government and Parliament need to resource, highlight, amplify, and support in order to ensure that young people are safe.

Criminalisation has its place in terms of the type of offending that this bill captures, but, for example, I would notice, again with dismay, that New Zealand still doesn’t have standardised courses in school that include consent education, or sex education at all. Our sex education that we provide in schools is not standardised. That’s a failure of successive Governments, and it persists. So we have different community groups come into schools and provide it, but we have no idea what standard is being provided, what information is being provided, whether or not it captures the needs of young rainbow community members, whether it resonates with our young migrant background communities, or Māori, or whether it even includes issues of online sexual exploitation. In particular, it doesn’t include consent, and that is a huge gap.

So we’re talking about protecting young people in online spaces against predatory behaviour, but we haven’t necessarily empowered them to know what that looks like and what they can do when faced with it. So resourcing that education in an inclusive and accessible way would also work, to do the work of this bill. But we also know increasingly that people become isolated in online spaces, including young people, and again young people are impacted in different ways depending on their background, depending on the other aspects of their community. Whether it’s lower socio-economic background, whether it’s children, whether it’s Māori, whether it’s migrant communities, whether it’s religious minorities, we know that they become isolated and have different needs and have different means. When this House came together and I had the privilege of working with women across this House to sponsor a bill on female genital mutilation, we were moved to do that by members of the communities that are actually impacted by that kind of harm. So we know that that type of empowering action—that culture—exists within all of our communities, and we can empower those voices and those communities and those young people by resourcing and bringing their voices into this House and keeping their work going in their communities, as part of this work.

This is a good bill; I do commend it to the House. I would just say, on behalf of the Green Party, that there is much more we can do beyond formal criminalisation.

Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. As always, it’s a privilege and an honour to take a call in this House of change, especially on members’ day and on this, the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill.

If I can first—she’s not here in the House—congratulate my colleague and my friend Ginny Andersen on bringing this bill to the House and passionately shepherding this kaupapa through. I know Ginny Andersen feels very passionately about this bill and its kaupapa, to protect our tamariki and our rangatahi not only because that’s what we do on this side of the House—the Labour Government want to protect our babies—but also as a mother. Myself as well, as a mother of three, we know not only wanting to protect our kids but the challenges of parenting young tamariki in this day and age.

I know many before me have said it’s always more challenging—every era—to parent your children. But I must say with the internet, what’s available to them, it is really scary. Before the internet, you had a little bit more control, I guess. If your kids were doing anything naughty—not that I did, mum and dad, just to make that clear—you had the neighbours down the road, you knew more or less where your kids were at; you did have that community feel.

Well now, with the internet, that community is much broader, it includes all kinds of overseas groups that, as a parent, makes you so nervous. At the same time, online is the way of the world. So of course, you want to be able to support—and I know Ginny’s the same—our children online, but safely as this bill talks about.

So that is the conundrum and like I said, our kids—and actually, society—spend massive amounts of time online, our children, especially, for entertainment, education, and socialising. So parenting and keeping your children safe while they are online is a real challenge in this day and age.

That is why this bill is great. It will help keep our kids safe from harm online, and it is super important. Unfortunately, there are many stories of our young people with the grooming online, being bullied online. And we know that, unfortunately, there are many predators out there—and again, as a mum it freaks me out, just being really honest—whose sole purpose is to dupe, sexually exploit, and bully our children online.

So, like many, unfortunately, we are all too often hearing of those stories and I also happen to know of someone who was quite close to my family—a young Māori, Pacific, and at the time she was 12, beautiful young girl who was navigating all of that: what it meant to be a young woman; what it meant to be a 12-year-old, a tween; what it meant to be Māori; what it meant to be Pasifika; and what that meant for her and her family’s life; what that meant for her and her friends’ life; but also what that meant for her on her online world, as I call it.

While she was working all of this out, she met a friend online—and this was about a six-month period. So she met a friend online, was speaking to this friend, quite quickly that became her boyfriend, they were sharing photos, and quite quickly they started sharing more than photos of just them hanging out. He was able to convince this beautiful young girl to share photos of her in her undergarments, and then unfortunately he convinced this young girl to share more than just that and baring a bit more than that.

I heard across the House, as Mr Mark Mitchell was talking about, once those photos are online, that’s it; they’re there forever. Like I said, this young girl was really swept up and had this beautiful young boyfriend online and was really willing to do whatever it took to hang in there and carry on with this young man.

So during this time, I just want to make it really clear that her whānau were doing the right thing, so far as the internet goes. They were spot checking her social media, they had passwords; so doing all the NetSafe recommendations of young people being online. They were checking all of her social media—or what they thought was her social media—and the passwords to all of what they thought was her only social media.

But as I say, in that six months, this young boy had groomed her so much that she had another social media account that her family didn’t know about, and that was where she was sharing a lot of those photos as well. Of course, unfortunately, there was some really sexual language that went along with that as well. And I just want to remind the House: this was a young 12-year-old girl.

She trusted everything that this young man—or young boy—had said to her online. And when her family started to notice that she was isolating herself straight after school, she’d lock yourself in the bedroom, wouldn’t want to come out to family gatherings, didn’t want to do anything in the weekend, they were getting more and more concerned.

Again, she had that secret social media account. Without knowing what was happening, they started to limit her time online. What that did was: this girl was so under the control of this young boy—she’d been groomed that much—that she started to steal phones. She stole phones of her family and she stole phones from school—anything to get online to talk to her young boyfriend.

It got to the point where this young girl started to access online at school, and so that is when NetSafe had gotten involved—because it was the school system—and the school system was shut down. That was over a period of six months that this person was able to come in and groom this young, beautiful 12-year-old girl.

Once NetSafe came in, a detective spoke with this young 12-year-old girl. Even after they said to her that the boy wasn’t a boy—he was in his fifties, he lived over in America, he now had these photos of this young girl forever, all of that—she was still convinced that they were lying to her and that her beautiful young boyfriend—you know.

So that took some time. Again, as a parent, the mental—and actually the physical, because you become unwell on that—the physical abuse was really far-reaching in just the six-month period. That young girl is now 15 and only just starting to come right from that.

Again, that’s another example of how important it is for kaupapa or bills like this. I know I keep banging on about being a mum of young kids; we want to make sure that they can go online. That is the online world, we want them to be educated, we want them to be connected, but we want them to be safe. And that is what this bill does.

Just in my last couple of minutes, while that was an example of someone overseas, we know that we have, unfortunately, many examples here in Aotearoa New Zealand. And unfortunately, they are rising. So many of them are these similar situations that I just described.

This bill will, in real life, be able to deal to some of those who are out there grooming and they will be able to be charged with a crime of digital online grooming and abuse. Just going to the bill, one of the things this bill will do is: if a person’s first offence is the digital communications for a person under 16 with intent to mislead—which means that someone who is 18 years or older, who digitally communicates with someone who is under 16 with the intent to mislead them about their age or identity, and then meets or wants to arrange a meet with them—the person can now be imprisoned.

We want to prevent that from ever happening, but if that does, we know that this bill will make sure that they know—us parents know—that we’re taking this seriously, that digital harm or digital abuse and grooming is a real thing, that we won’t tolerate that here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This is a great piece of legislation; awesome member’s bill. Again, I just want to congratulate Ginny Andersen, say thank you to her not only as a colleague and a friend but as a mum of young children as well. I really look forward to watching what happens with this going through select committee. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill at this, the second reading. We support the bill and the amendments that have been made at select committee, and I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the officials that have done a lot of work on this bill. It was a complicated bill, and not only did we have to rearrange it but we had to understand it and its flow-on effects with other pieces of legislation. So in that respect I’d like to acknowledge Chelly, from the officials, and I won’t give her full name but she did a really good job there helping us to understand the changes that did not occur and the changes that did occur.

I also would like to acknowledge the submitters that came to select committee: 25 gave written submissions and six came in for oral submissions. I’d also like to acknowledge the Justice Committee. We’ve worked well together on this piece of legislation, and it’s pleasing to be able to come to the House where we all support a good bill as it passes through. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge Ginny Andersen, who brought this bill to the House. She said she did this as a mother; she did this for all mothers. She did it for all grandmothers, for all the women out there—and the men—who have children who are being affected by what’s occurring now in this digital age. We’ve heard personal stories from across the House about how young ones in the lives of our members here have been affected by digital communications, by people who pretend to be someone that they’re not. What I’ve picked up in just the few speeches that we’ve heard tonight is there are signs there for parents to look out for, and they’re common signs; when your child starts to become reclusive, when they start to lose weight, when they don’t stop looking at their phones and in fact start stealing them from others—these are standard signs that we as parents and grandparents can pick up on to make sure we can protect our youth, our rangatahi, as they move forward in what is becoming a very digital world.

I’ll get to the bill now. This bill amends the Crimes Act 1961, so it will protect children who are at risk of harm from exploitation through digital communications. When presented at first reading, the bill was set to introduce two new offences. Both were to protect under-16-year-olds from sexual exploitation and grooming. The first proposed offence was if someone over 18 years old who communicated with an under-16-year-old by digital communication—so that just means communicating by text message or through social media, as an example—so that they are intentionally misleading the young person as to the older person’s age or identity, and then arranging to meet with them, that would have made that an offence.

The second offence was for someone over 18 years old to communicate with someone under 16 years old by, again, digital communication, with, again, the intention of causing harm to or being reckless as to whether or not that person is being harmed. I’m reminded here about a case we heard during the harmful digital communications bill recently, where a parent sent their own child sexually explicit photographs of the other parent in order to harm that other parent. The result was that the child was the one that was harmed, and should never have been sent such messages.

This bill also sought to increase the penalty for an existing offence in the Crimes Act whereby the author of the bill wished to increase, from seven years to 10 years, the penalty that relates to actually meeting up with a young person following digital sexual grooming. After hearing from officials and submitters during the select committee process, the bill was changed to replace those two first offences with just one offence, and the proposed increase in penalty from seven years to 10 years was dropped because it didn’t align with the existing penalties for similar offences that are already in the Crimes Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act. So as a select committee—with advice from officials and after hearing from submitters—we agreed to change the two offences by making concerns coverable by one offence, which is new section 131AB, which is headed up “Grooming for sexual conduct with a young person”.

The changes we made will mean that if a person is aged over 18 years and they communicate by words or conduct with a person who is under the age of 16 and they have the intent of engaging them in or being part of conduct that is explicitly outlawed within the Crimes Act, then they can be prosecuted. So it’s taking the best of those two proposed first offences and placing them into one.

Those crimes, already explicitly outlawed, refer to certain clauses detailed in section 98AA(1) of the Crimes Act 1961, and include dealing with a person for the purpose of sexual exploitation where selling, buying, transferring, bartering, renting, or hiring a person for that purpose; also where a person is detained, confined, imprisoned or kidnapped; and where a person is removed, received, transported, imported, or brought to a place for sexual exploitation; and where a person is induced to sell, rent, or give themselves for the purpose of sexual exploitation. This added clause makes it clear that a potential victim does not need to have responded to any of the grooming attempts, they just needed to be a participant in it.

For those with concerns about knowing the age of a person they may be interacting with, there is a defence to this new clause and that is that the accused took reasonable steps to ascertain the age of the young person and they believed, on reasonable grounds, that the young person was over the age of 16. A former police officer told me the story of a case some 20 years ago where a 33-year-old male who called himself a photographer advertised in the paper for young models. With promises of fame, he arranged for photo shoots with many of these young girls in a dirty garage. Only one girl complained, but many lives were affected by that one person. The same police officer told me of another story about how a 26-year-old chef was dismissed after it was found that he had been text messaging a 14-year-old girl. Thankfully, that was stopped before anything major happened.

These are the stories of near misses, and we don’t get to hear of all the ones that we could not stop. This bill will make a difference to the lives of our youth, and gives consequence to those who take advantage of them. In that respect, ACT thanks Ginny Andersen, again, for bringing such a good bill to the House and for getting cross-party support for something that will help all parents in this country feel safer for their children. On that basis, ACT commends this bill to the House.

As a member of the Justice Committee and as a backbench MP—actually, let me just start, as a backbench MP, by expressing my deep admiration and envy for the luck of my colleague and friend, and chair, Ms Ginny Andersen. Luckily, the bills she draws are exceptionally worthwhile, otherwise one would really be wanting to spike her on the way to the ballot box.

But, leaving that personal—and yet, deeply felt—moment aside; Ginny, we don’t hate you, but do it again and you’re in trouble! Apologies, Mr Speaker. This is a really important piece of legislation, and having worked with Ms Andersen—I believe when she was in the process of formulating this bill or thinking about it; actually, I think it had been around for a while. But in the process of thinking about it through the Harmful Digital Communications Act that we worked on, the amendments to that, with Louisa Wall; this topic of grooming and the misuse of the digital space to exploit, particularly, young women, but also young people and particularly young people from the rainbow community came up again and again and again, and it affected all of us quite deeply.

So it is a real pleasure to stand here, as a member of the committee that was able to then work on this bill with Ginny. And I think it does talk—as Ms Ghahraman said—to the Government’s wholly new steely determination to deal to sexual and family violence; not to wring our hands or to engage in mere talk, but to actually roll up our sleeves and settle into trying to change something that is deeply rooted in a toxic attitude to sexuality. Unfortunately, it’s a toxic attitude towards masculinity that has infected so much of our culture, to the detriment of so many of our young women, but to the detriment of so many of our men. I think when we talk about sexual offending, we need to recognise that. Sexual offending comes from many places and I think this is important to recognise when we look at why it is important to have what is really a kind of a precursor, or an add-on offence.

We have the big ones, right? We have rape, we have sexual exploitation, we even have arranging to meet and meeting a young person with the purpose of committing a sex offence. Why is it important to go back and take a look at the precursor behaviours? The reason is because they are so insidious, and they are so deeply rooted in the culture of toxicity towards sexuality—and the sense of entitlement that lies behind it—that we really, really do need to take these multiple steps. And I really commend and admire the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, Marama Davidson, for what she is doing to try and craft a whole-of-society response, and we on this side of the House are wholly behind our Minister there in the work she is doing.

Let’s think about grooming. Grooming is the act, as has been said by many of my colleagues—the process of trying to convince a person to engage in sexual conduct. And if you spend any length of time in the criminal courts—or indeed the family courts—working with sexual offending, it becomes extremely familiar to you, because it is so common as a tactic.

So it starts small. First, the person attempts to inveigle themselves into the lives of a likely victim. And let’s make no bones about it; these people do actually seek out, deliberately. They deliberately seek out vulnerable children, often those who they know have been abused previously, compliant children, isolated children—and they befriend. They befriend the parents first, then they befriend the child. Touching, innocent touches, normal touching, such as any child should be able to accept from an adult, an arm around the shoulders, gradually progresses. And it is normalised, and it is normalised, and it is normalised, and then the sexual touching begins, and the sexual talk. And before you know it, the poor child—as in the example of my colleague, Teresa Ngobi—may even believe that they welcome the advance, they may even believe they are in control of the relationship; they are entangled and enmeshed and it is all downhill from there. And unfortunately, we have multiple examples of that happening.

It is a deeply deliberate behaviour by sex offenders. Now, I’m not going to say in all sex offenders, because I think there is quite a lot of evidence about sex offending that says some of it is about, often, men—usually men—who have not themselves got good boundaries around what is sexual touching and what is affectionate touching. And we all need affectionate touching, but where you’re told that the only touching that is appropriate if you are a man is sexualised touching, then we have a recipe for disaster. But for many of them, that is a deliberate act. And that is why I think that what Ginny Andersen is doing here is so relevant. This is an offence that targets people when they start to communicate and they start that very common grooming process. Kudos to Ms Andersen—when she saw the whole situation and she got the submissions back, she did not limit it to digital, which was her initial intention; she moved it wider to all forms of grooming, because it is often a mixture. It is often a mixture. It is subtle. It can take months. It can take years. We need an offence that captures it all.

But the particular reason that I am wholeheartedly in favour of something where it might seem like a small tag-on—and as an ex-prosecutor, I suspect that this will be what will happen. We’ll have the actual offence of assault on a child under 12, sexual assault on a 12-year-old—and then we will tag on to it the offence of grooming. And that will be where Ms Andersen’s section stands; it will be a tag-on. It is relevant, though, because it does something that I often criticise the Nats for wanting to do futilely. I think this is one of the very few times I have seen, in my vast career in this House—it is one of the very few times I have seen a piece of legislation that aims at deterrence and might actually get there.

I’ve many times said deterrence is a fool’s errand, because most offending happens in the spur of the moment. It’s done by people who are being stupid, and stupid people are rarely amenable to reason. And the exceptions to that are white collar crime—there’s an offence that actually can be deterred, because most of those people are thinking long and hard about what they do—but the other possibility is sexual offending, because a lot of sexual offending is actually premeditated over months and years. And these men know what they’re doing. They may even target multiple children at the same time. That is why this is such a great thing to do.

I actually have some hope that when this passes, as I hope it will, this offence, properly publicised, will actually put the fear of God into sexual predators. Those sexual predators who are currently looking for their next victim or set of victims to offend against, my hope is that for those people this will actually put a little kink in the sails, and they may in fact pull away from doing this, because if there is a record of the contact that they are trying to make with their would-be victims, then it should be reasonably easy to get them on that. And my hope is that by doing that, another small chink in the armour of sexual offending falls away, and we can shine light into a very dark, dangerous, and sad place for so many of our children and our young women.

So on that note, I really do want to commend Ms Andersen. It was a pleasure to work on the bill, it was a pleasure to see her pivot, as she did, to this inclusive and more useful form, and I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on Joseph Mooney for five minutes.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party in respect of the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. I commend Ginny Andersen for bringing this bill before the House and guiding it through to this point in time.

This bill has had a little bit of a journey through the Justice Committee and we now have new section 131AB—in clause 4—inserted into the Crimes Act. There is currently a section 131B in the Crimes Act, which is a sexual grooming offence that requires the groomer to meet or attempt to meet the young person. The new offence, new section 131AB, would similarly capture grooming for sexual conduct but would not require the groomer to meet the young person.

Under this bill, a person aged 18 years or over will be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years if they communicate by words or conduct with a person under the age of 16 years and they do so intending to facilitate the young person engaging in or being involved in conduct that would be an offence against this part. It includes Part 7 of the Crimes Act, relating to “Crimes against morality and decency, sexual crimes, and crimes against public welfare” and paragraphs of section 98AA of the Act, relating to sexual exploitation of a young person.

National supports this bill which draws on an example of recent Australian legislation to protect children and young people across New Zealand for those who look to do them harm. Its journey has been focused on trying to address the issue of children being contacted by online groomers, although I note that it’s not limited just to that now, the way it is phrased.

Our kids certainly are becoming more connected and engaged with technology than ever before. Unfortunately, that does mean there are also predators online who take advantage of those tools, and there need to be rules in place to capture the people who would do harm to our children. While social media has given our kids many positives—such as the ability to make new friends and learn remotely and play games online, etc.—it has also opened doors, unfortunately, for people with bad intentions to prey on young people. A NetSafe and Ministry for Women survey revealed that seven in every 10 teens have experienced some form of unwanted digital communication over the last year, and nearly 19 percent of teens had experienced unwanted digital communication which negatively impacted them.

So online predators, unfortunately, do have the ability to target children through tools available online. This is a small but important little change that will make it easier to hold people to account who try to prey on our young people. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I stand here this afternoon actually wearing my inclusive rainbow pin on my suit. This represents not only our pride community, but as we become far more inclusive as a community, this pin also ensures that that pride is a broad, broad church—there is the transgender community, there are people of colour who are queer, there’s our intersex community, and the list goes on. As I read this legislation and looked at what it does and who it aims to protect, I could only look at it from an inclusive rainbow lens.

I am someone who comes from this community. I know, thankfully not for myself and my age in life—I didn’t have the challenges that exist today when it comes to this online existence and this online world. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I’m grateful to Ginny Andersen for bringing this to the House and taking it through. I’m grateful for all members of Parliament and all parties for supporting this this afternoon as it’s being ushered through the House.

It’s so important, because for me and my experience and as a member of the rainbow whānau, so often—so often—things have been done in secret, and we’ve heard stories of that this afternoon, of people who have had secret accounts or a 12-year-old girl that’s got herself into a situation. But within our rainbow whānau, I know that the secrets are often because you might feel shame. You might be afraid. You might wonder if you’re going to be rejected or cast out of your own whānau and your friend groups. So, often, living in the shadows has been something that my community has experienced and has lived in.

So as I look at this legislation and think of young people, of teenagers, of children in our rainbow communities around Aotearoa, I think not only is there the challenge of them discovering themselves, becoming affirming in who they are and who loves them and who they can love, I also think they have this added extra thrown on top of it when it comes to this online world. I do often wonder if, in a decade’s time, we’re going to look back and think, “What the heck was that experiment we were playing in terms of social media and this online world?” There is an ability to be so connected, and yet the World Health Organization talks about the epidemic by the year 2030 of loneliness around the globe that gets greater and greater, the disconnection, even though we’re so connected.

The Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill goes some way to protecting our young people, to protect our children. It’s about protecting their wellbeing. It’s around protecting their innocence. It’s around protecting their childhood. I know that all generations have had their crosses to bear and their experiences to get through, but I think it seems so much more heightened in the 21st century, when in your pocket is a device that gives you access to the world, in your pocket is a device that means you can connect with people not only in your own street or in your own school but on the other side of the world. But it doesn’t protect you. This device doesn’t protect you from online predators, from people grooming, from people who create fake profiles. So I look forward to us moving quickly through so we can pass this into law, so we can make sure that the predators out there, those out there grooming, don’t maintain power and don’t maintain the secrecy that the online world often brings. For the rainbow whānau, for my community, I support this legislation because I know it’s one part of the shadows that we’ve often had to hide in that we need not hide in any more. I commend this bill to the House.

As has been offered by all, it sounds like, across the House, we’re supporting this, the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. Of course, it’s just returned from the Justice Committee and it’s important to acknowledge the member sponsoring this bill, Ginny Andersen. It’s been my observation sitting on that committee that not only she has to balance the chairship but obviously her personal views on this and she’s done that very positively and also demonstrated, I think, the passion behind this.

It ended up as quite a discussion of how to make this work. I think it’s fair to say the committee was in agreeance that this should go forward; it was just a matter of how to make it happen. And so, without taking away from the intention, which was excellent, a lot of work was undertaken particularly by advisers to give us a way through. Fundamentally, what started as two proposed provisions has now seen the select committee in effect trying to tie this amendment bill back to existing laws.

Joseph Mooney, who resumed his seat earlier, noted that one of the critical points in this is making it clear that those who are involved in grooming of young people—so under the age of 18. Actually, I should make the distinction. To be quite clear: those over 18 involved with grooming those under 16—the grooming itself is an offence. The meeting is not a necessary requirement any more. I think that’s quite critical as obviously it’s what this bill’s trying to achieve, but the other thing is, of course, we don’t want these people meeting the under-16-year-olds. It was one of the very quick discussions because we were all, I think if memory serves me right, in agreeance—the idea that one would have to just wait for the groomer to go and meet this young person to trip the current law just seemed wrong and inappropriate. So it’s good that that is there.

There’s been talk about the penalties that are in play. These are now more aligned to equivalent offences, I think, rightly. The initial presentation of this law had much higher fines and I think even the suggestion of seven years in prison. That’s been dialled back and I think it’s important for those in the public to understand this is not the Parliament at this point suggesting we should be soft on these forms of crimes but more that we want to align the penalties with what already exists.

So it’s a good bill. I think it’s actually a really positive example of a good member’s bill. There’s a lot of stuff that comes through—by all parties, I’d better add—that can be seen as superfluous. This one is not. But it’s also a very good example of a very good intention, which has, if you will, shown the best qualities of a select committee, their advisers, Parliamentary Counsel Office, and others to actually bring about some workable aspects.

My final thought, though, is—well, I think it’s complementary to what others have said. Look, ultimately, this is sort of not quite ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, but it’s trying to stop something which is already in train. And the only thought I’d give this House is that when we come to think about who we are as humans, our relationships, our families, sexual relationships and others, that needs to be grounded in values and ethics and morals. Now, there’s not one moral or ethical code, but that needs to be grounded in some sort of values.

The more modern view, and we’ve heard it from some speakers much earlier who are wanting to reduce relationships to, effectively, transactions that can be taught, consented to—you know, attend a few classes in school and all will be well. That has failed, dismally failed, over many, many years. So if we want to continue to address child exploitation, family violence, and the like, it’s certainly my view that we need to return, as I say, to a view of family and relationships that’s based on a value system and not simply on transaction.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is an unexpected call to be given—to speak the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill—but a good surprise and one that I’m pleased to speak on.

I want to acknowledge my colleague Ginny Andersen. This, as we’ve heard for the last few hours, has been an excellent piece of work lead by herself and the Justice Committee, which she chairs. I had the fortune of working with Ginny in the New Zealand Police service well over a decade ago now. We worked on many things, but one of Ginny’s great skills was to work on policy and to get things right and to look at the detail. This comes as no surprise to me, knowing Ginny like I do.

It’s also been noted that it’s come with the full support of the House, so I really want to say congratulations. That must be rare for the select committee—common on select committees that I’m on, in terms of the Māori Affairs Committee, for example—but I think it’s good if we can reach this point. Well done to members from across the House. We’ve heard that the advisers were great too in terms of getting those technical aspects worked through.

Ginny was inspired by her children and, I guess, the potential harm. I know that many MPs will have stories from their constituents, from their family lives, and I’m no different. I’m father to a seven-year-old, and his knowledge of the device is impeccable—better than mine. He will know how to change the password very soon, but I don’t want him to get to that just yet. Like many other parents of young people, young children, it’s what they’re connecting to which is of concern. I hear many noises and all sorts coming out of that little iPad and the Nintendo Switch, and so I regularly check when I’m home, or on the weekends, and think, what is going on here? “It looks innocent, but how would I know?”, I sometimes say.

What I do know, and what’s been said by others, is that we are in the digital age and we are having to bring ourselves to confront digital communication. For some of us, it’s a bit more difficult than others. It’s been interesting. I’ve been attending prize-givings across the electorate lately, those that I can get to, and it’s of no surprise that this has come up. When I was interviewing for my Youth MP this year, this very question came up—how do we manage, I guess, the child exploitation and the abuse online at that very young age and grooming resulting in sexual abuse, and what is the mechanism for containing this? This bill goes a long, long way to doing this.

The last speaker raised a good point from one aspect, and that is he mentioned the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. I more like to refer to this as there’s a challenge there now to communicate this bill to the very people who can make the difference and to paint the consequences early, to let people know that this is the law, this is what is unacceptable, and this is what you can do about it if you are going through this and you are experiencing this, but as we’ve heard, you may not know or you may have an inner belief that everything is absolutely OK until you reach a time when it is not.

I was reading an article from the Wanganui Chronicle. I just went through some of the quotes, and some of those had things like, “‘I had eventually worked out just what happened to me.’ ‘I had been heavily groomed and brainwashed. I didn’t understand that it was sexual abuse—in my mind, it was a “relationship”.’ Looking back, she can see how easily she fell into it.” In this particular story it mentions “following the dream”. When I just had a brief look at some of these examples, I thought, too often we can be consumed into “the dream”. I know that looking at this bill, it will go some way to ensuring that we protect New Zealand children from that harm.

The other interesting aspect was mention of a survey in partnership between NetSafe and the Ministry for Women of the experiences from teenagers with online risk. It talked about, as a previous speaker has said, nearly 19 percent of teens surveyed experienced an unwanted digital communication. I think it’s probably more than that, because a couple of the words I had come to write down as I was preparing for this was the “stigma” and the “shame”. I really hope that this bill goes some way to addressing the stigma and shame of this and the inability to articulate what is happening and to tell those who are close to you. Interesting, again, in this article, again, it talks about, “There were times when I really wanted to share it with my best friend, but I told no one.”

So there’s proof there, from several stories that these issues come with the stigma, come with the shame and so it’s vital that that communication of this member’s bill is articulated at the right people. That’s, of course, parents but also those—I mean, maybe it’s an online messaging campaign. If NetSafe have worked with the Ministry for Women, maybe that’s a good place to start in terms of saying that once this has been adopted, then the communication plan for this is just as vital. I think that’s what the previous speaker was saying.

I know too there has been previous talk already that the select committee had replaced the two offences with one single one. I think that’s a great idea. That’s the value of having a select committee look at this and undertaking a process where, I think the number was 25, people submitted. I know that there would have been more. I know that when I talked to others about what the member Ginny Andersen was working on, I always got the “Oh, I would have submitted on that, too.” Six came in, I think—yep, six—and good on them. As I’ve said, I’ve talked about the stigma and shame; I think it’s great that people have, I guess, the guts to say that this is so important I’m going to come in and talk about it.

There is much more I would like to say, but what has been said has been said by my colleagues from across the House. I want to reiterate the great work and support of those who have supported the member Ginny Andersen in making sure that this bill is robust, that it’s relevant, and that it has the necessary impact to make the change for those little people of society and in our lives. I commend this bill to the house.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.