Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill

I move, That the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The principal Act was passed around 11 years ago, and most of its fundamentals remain sound. However, over the decade or more that has elapsed since, there have been huge changes in information technology, which have spectacularly changed the environment in which the Act operates. The 1993 Act was, essentially, a regime for regulating hard-copy distribution of publications. Child pornography, at that time, was limited to media such as photographs and videos, and distribution was much more restricted than what modern technology now allows.

The Internet has become the prime vehicle for the worldwide proliferation of child pornography. Offending can and does take place in electronic form. At alarming rates, offenders are able to download, share, and swap literally thousands of child sex-abuse images through their home computers. As a result, there has been a need to change both the style of policing this abhorrent trade and to increase the resources for policing it. That has happened, and I have to say that the Censorship Compliance Unit of the Department of Internal Affairs is second to none in the world in tracking down and prosecuting child pornographers. That fact is recognised by Interpol. It is recognised by organisations like End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes, and by the Stop Demand Foundation.

The prosecution rate of the compliance unit is close to 100 percent in its success rate. It has shown the ability to distinguish between hard-core child pornographers and curious teenagers inappropriately accessing sites, and to respond accordingly in each case. The unit has universal respect amongst campaigners against child pornography and amongst parliamentarians who have taken the trouble, as I have, to examine its operation. The increase in its resources granted in last year’s Budget was well justified. I have to say that I utterly reject some ignorant Australian journalist writing for Time magazine questioning whether this country is a haven for pornographers. I quote from one of the most respected anti-pornography campaigners in this country, Denise Ritchie, who said that it is simply sensationalist rubbish that is nonsense and Kiwi bashing, and there is no truth at all to it.

There is also the need to send a clear message to child pornographers that their aberrant behaviour is utterly unacceptable and that continued involvement in it will attract harsh penalties. As a result, this legislation increases tenfold the maximum prison sentence available for the courts to impose on those involved in producing, trading, or distributing material ruled as objectionable. This in most cases will involve child pornography, but it is not limited to that. Material such as snuff movies and abusive sexual violence in videos and on the Internet is covered under that definition.

The fact that a publication deals with child pornography will also be a matter under law that the judge must take into account as an aggravating factor in sentencing. The maximum penalty of 10 years reflects the fact that although traders in child pornography may not themselves be directly involved in abusing children, by promoting a market for abuse images, they are in fact indirectly responsible for it.

The bill as introduced and reported back by the Government Administration Committee increases the penalty for possession from the current maximum fine of $2,000 up to 2 years’ imprisonment. However, it has been brought to my attention that in comparable countries the penalty for possession has been, or is in the process of being, increased to 5 years. That is the case in Canada and the United Kingdom. There are currently proposals before the Parliaments of Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, where it is proposed to increase existing penalties up to 5 years. It makes sense that New Zealand penalties across the board are consistent with like-minded countries. It is therefore my intention to introduce an amendment, by way of a Supplementary Order Paper, to effect this change during the Committee stage.

A further Supplementary Order Paper has been tabled. It is of a technical nature, and it clarifies aspects of the process for applying for a review of the decision of the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Maximum penalties for possessing and trading objectionable material will apply in the cases of large-scale, prolonged, or systematic offending, and also, of course, having regard to the nature of the material possessed or traded. Less serious offending will likely attract a lower penalty.

The bill also introduces a new power to obtain search warrants when an offence of knowingly possessing objectionable material is suspected. Currently, search warrants are available only in relation to trading in such material or for possessing it for the purposes of supply, and this new search power will facilitate the role of the police in cracking down on child pornography. Under the bill, the offence of distributing an objectionable publication will encompass all the different ways in which offenders arrange to share, exchange, and access material on the Internet. It will include distribution, such as peer-to-peer sharing, as well as commercial transactions. People who provide access to objectionable material, either by actively sending material to another person or by allowing their computers to be used as virtual libraries, will be caught by the Act’s offence provisions. On the other hand, the amendments made by the select committee will make sure that a person is not liable when he or she unintentionally or unknowingly provides access to an objectionable publication. For example, an Internet service-provider who provides access to the Internet will not be liable simply because the service is used by others to provide access to objectionable publications.

I welcome the select committee’s scrutiny and very careful consideration of the meaning of the word “objectionable” in the Act. This provides the standard for prohibition. Placing new limits on fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression, must be careful and deliberate. This bill maintains a clear focus on the censorship of sex, horror, crime, cruelty, and violence that is injurious to the public good. However, during the committee’s consideration of the bill, it became evident that more flexibility to impose age restrictions was necessary to protect children and young persons. Accordingly, new section 3B, inserted by clause 4A, deals with a small group of additional matters where the nature of harm to young persons would be serious and justifies an age restriction.

The bill also introduces a new provision, new section 3A, also inserted by clause 4A, to enable the censors to age-restrict a publication if it contains offensive language that is harmful to children even if it does not deal with the classifiable material of sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence. The committee has recommended that the provision be tightened up so that it is not seen as a vehicle for restricting language that is simply insulting or offensive to particular groups or individuals.

The issue of covert filming was brought to the Government’s attention by the committee’s 2003 inquiry report into the Act. This highlighted the inadequacy of legal sanctions against such behaviour. Again, this is an increasing problem as new technology, such as cellphones with photographic capabilities, is developed. Separate legislation to address covert filming will be introduced into this Parliament within the next 6 months or so. The Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill will create a tough new environment and penalty regime that reflects the abhorrence with which the Government and the public in general view the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography.

The final thing I would like to say is that invidious comparisons were made between the performance of police in New Zealand and police in Australia in following up lists of people trading in pornography, from, I think, American customs agents. I have made further inquiries with the New Zealand Police and with the Department of Internal Affairs. The Department of Internal Affairs advised me that in fact the Australians received this material very early last year, around February, and that it took them 6 months to bring prosecutions. This material has been held by the New Zealand Police only since September. That information was provided to me tonight. I look forward to these measures taking effect on the passage of this bill.

I rise on behalf of the National Party to support this bill. This afternoon I thought I would have to come down to the House and give the Hon Phil Goff a right royal bollocking, but I am not going to do that. The reason is that the Minister has listened to the pleas of ACT MP Deborah Coddington and of Denise Ritchie from End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT New Zealand). He has listened and he has decided that, yes, our laws about the possession of child pornography should be at least the same as those of our comparable neighbour, Australia, and of Canada. But that is the least of it.

As a mother—and I am sure many mothers listening to this would agree—I cannot think of any penalty tough enough for the people who use children in those pornographic and disgusting ways. Frankly, sentencing them to be hung, drawn, and quartered might be a little too soft on them. I see my colleague on the other side Jill Pettis agreeing. There is absolutely no reason at all why anybody, in any circumstance, should ever be able to trade, produce, or enjoy—if we could ever think of using such a word in relation to that sort of degradation and abuse of children—such material; yet we think we are doing such a great job in stating that possession is punishable by 5 years’ imprisonment and trading by 10 years’. Frankly, we cannot think of anything else to do but to lock them up and throw away the key.

Unfortunately, as the Minister has stated, there has been a proliferation of that sort of smut and filth ever since the Internet became something most of us use. Unfortunately, the ease with which that material is sent around the world means that we are talking about young teenage boys accessing such filth. I know that that is judgmental, but I am never afraid to be judgmental. Frankly, on some occasions we just have to say: “That is filth.”, because that is the sort of thing that is going on, unfortunately.

I note, having read the bill, that there are all sorts of offences to do with showing pornography to under-18-year-olds. The Minister has told us tonight how much he thinks of Denise Ritchie, who runs ECPAT New Zealand and the Stop Demand Foundation, for whom I also have a very high regard. He has told us how much he thinks of her, but he was not thinking much of her when she asked this House not to do the things we did with the prostitution reform legislation, because of the fears of having younger people driven into and kept in crimes of prostitution. What we have in this bill—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: It’s just an underhand attack on Don Brash for supporting the prostitution bill.

The Minister had a fair go, and he should let me have a fair go. The Minister should not seek to attack someone just because she is telling him the truth.

This bill states that it is an offence to show pornography to children—children, mind you—under the age of 18. But we all know that around this country—in Christchurch, as we heard from Tim Barnett; in South Auckland, where my electorate is; and certainly all around the country—children of 12, 14, and 16 years of age are prostituting themselves on the streets. We get all excited about preventing people from showing children pornography; yet nothing is happening now to stop those kids from being abused. For anyone to say that those children know what they are doing—well, they might know exactly what they are about to do—is to say only half the story. I say to such people that, by goodness, those children do not know the consequences. It is an unfortunate irony that we can get all excited about restricting pornography but we are not really brave enough to do something about the people who abuse those children.

When I looked through this bill I saw that the commentary stated that the select committee will look at “hate speech”. What will be next? “Hate thought”? For goodness’ sake! Do we in this Parliament not have something better to do than to try to regulate “hate speech”? We might as well, in fact, regulate “hate thought”.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: The member’s own party supported that; the members sitting behind her—Shane Ardern and Lindsay Tisch. Why doesn’t she talk to her colleagues?

It is about time that that Minister took some responsibility for the fact that it was his negligence that allowed the House to get this bill in this state. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): To help the honourable member, I refer my colleagues to Speaker’s ruling 56/1. Interjections are to be rare, reasonable, and—as a former colleague used to say—if at all possible, witty, though I have given up on that.

One could not call the Hon Phil Goff witty—not by a long shot.

If we are to regulate this “hate speech” the Minister is shouting about, there are many other things we could also look at. We could look at the fact that 12, 13, and 14-year-olds are wandering around the streets of inner-city Christchurch, prostituting themselves—as told to us by Tim Barnett—yet nothing happens. What will be the next move for “hate thought”?

I would like to say, on a positive note for a moment, how pleased I am that the Department of Internal Affairs is doing a good job in catching the low lifes who trade in and use the sorts of images dealt with by the bill. However, as I did on the first reading of the bill, I would like to sound a word of warning about possession.

I am concerned about all the spam emails and the secret things hidden in emails. We in this Parliament get an awful lot of them. Fortunately, we have very sophisticated technology that is supposed to stop them coming into Parliament, but a lot of people would not have that technology at home. It worries me that people might have illegal things on their hard drive and not even know they are there. Unfortunately, someone who does not know they are there could end up being prosecuted. We know from the Australian experience of the arrests that have occurred there that this sort of crime does not just affect a particular group or even a particular gender; it is prolific and goes right through our society, among people in any occupation and people who lack an occupation. It is not something of which we should ever say: “It’s just a particular group.” It is not. We have seen that in New Zealand only recently. That is a far more important issue than something like “hate speech” or even “hate thought”, which is sure to be the next thing.

I note that the Minister talked about covert filming. Of course, we will have to be very careful in relation to covert filming; otherwise, the news media will not have anything particularly exciting to show.

💬 Dianne Yates: Why are people in swimming pool dressing rooms doing it?

As Dianne Yates has pointed out, we certainly do not want to see people being filmed as they get changed to go into the swimming pool. She is quite right—especially not most of us here, who would not look too good.

💬 Dianne Yates: Especially not me.

She says: especially not herself! But I agree with her; I fully support her. That issue is certainly something we want to look at.

But at the same time let us look at the really big stuff that we know is already happening in New Zealand. Again, I mention child prostitution, yet we sit here, turn a blind eye, and say that it is all right because we have said they can use condoms—or something silly like that. At the end of the day none of it will be made better by the current Government. Although the Government likes to talk tough, unfortunately Time magazine has said that this country could in fact become a safe haven for paedophiles.

💬 Jill Pettis: It had George Bush as man of the year! I cancelled my subscription.

I am very concerned that the chief Labour Party whip has just insulted the President of the United States here in the Parliament of New Zealand—considering that the United States is our second-largest trading partner. That is the sort of anti-business rhetoric I would expect from that particular party and that particular member, who is now—[Interruption] She is, is she not? I am sure that traders and farmers in this country are listening to this and asking what the Government is doing in trying to upset our second major trading partner. In fact, all it is doing is trying to avoid looking at the issue. The Government hates it when it is told the truth.

I would like to close by saying that I support the changes the Minister says he will make. We have not actually seen them, of course; he only says he will make them. He said so today only after Denise Ritchie got on the phone to people in this House and told us what the changes to the bill should be, after Deborah Coddington came to this House and told us what should be done, and after Time magazine pointed out that this Minister and this Government have made our country a particularly soft option for paedophiles.

Although the previous speaker said she was supporting the bill, she certainly did not let facts get in the road of a good argument. I will point out some of the things that happened at the select committee. I want to thank two select committees—the Government Administration Committee before the election, and after the election. The first select committee’s inquiry came up with a report on the Films, Videos, and Publications Act, and there was also work done by the Ministry of Justice, but the second committee did an excellent job of looking at the legislation. The first Government Administration Committee did a very large inquiry and came up with an excellent report. That report was presented to the Government, and the Minister of Justice has responded with this bill. We note that the committee was generally unanimous. It was a very good committee. The two Government Administration Committees that have worked on this legislation worked very well together in a spirit of consensus.

💬 Stephen Franks: I wasn’t on the committee. It was a pathetic report.

I hear the member who was not on the committee interjecting. He cannot afford to comment on the processes that the committee went through. The committee, as I said, worked very well and was unanimous about objectionable material that included child sex-abuse images. The committee also went to visit the Chief Censor of Film and Literature and looked at the work that is done in his office. It also visited the Department of Internal Affairs and looked at how the problems of monitoring an alarming problem—the trade of child pornography through the Internet—are dealt with by the department. The bill aims to address that trade in some measure.

The committee also looked, as has been mentioned, at the issues of hate speech and covert filming, because they were brought up by submitters. The submitters asked us to look at these issues. We did not consider that they came within the scope of this bill but, once again, the committee was unanimous that we needed to look at these issues in greater detail. This was not because of events that have happened since we reported back to the House. I hope the member for Piako, Lindsay Tisch, will take a call, because he had evidence of hate speech that was directed against Roman Catholic people in his electorate. Many of the submitters gave examples of hate speech that they felt should have been dealt with by this bill, but which did not fall within its ambit.

That is why the committee unanimously agreed that we should continue to look at the issue of hate speech, and get a balance between the freedoms that are guaranteed already in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the possibility that New Zealand differs from some other countries in our ability to vilify sectors within the community.

The present legislation deals with certain freedoms in relation to ethnicity, nationality, and race, but it does not deal, in some aspects, with religion and other situations where certain people in our community could be prevented from having, and acting within, the same democratic rights as others. Although we all uphold freedom of speech, we also need to get a balance with freedom from discrimination. That is what the terms of reference of the hate speech inquiry have suggested. I am surprised that the previous speaker has not looked more fully at the report and the terms of reference of that inquiry, because if she did so she would understand in greater detail what it was about and the sincerity of the committee in looking into these issues—[Interruption] That is condemning other people of one’s own ilk, as well.

The committee also received submissions on covert filming, as has been mentioned. We thank the Minister of Justice for committing that issue to legislation and for his commitment to further legislation on that matter.

The committee had to deal with some very difficult issues—the issues around nude images of children. We did not want to condemn nappy advertising on television; yet, on the other hand, it was pointed out to us that many images are overtly sexual. We believe that the legislation, as it is now, has struck a good balance in enabling issues that are injurious to the public good, and the sexual exploitation of children, to be dealt with. I point out that some of these are very, very difficult issues to deal with and that there is often a fine line between what is sexually provocative and what some people might consider to be innocent depictions of children. The committee looked very, very carefully at those issues.

The other issue was the matter of penalties. The committee advocated that the penalties be increased. We have looked at certain anomalies, and the Minister has indicated that he will be presenting a Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that we are consistent with both Australia and Canada in terms of the penalty for possession. As has been mentioned, right through the whole process—both the inquiry and the bill—we have had submissions from people such as Denise Ritchie of ECPAT New Zealand and other people who are concerned with the welfare of children. They have made extensive submissions to ensure that we are dealing not only with the child sex-abuse images, but that we protect the children who are used to produce these images. We think that it is right and fair that the penalties should be increased.

A number of other issues came about with regard to the labelling of publications, as has been mentioned. There are issues about age restrictions. That has also been mentioned by the Minister and has been supported by the Opposition. Once again, I thank those members who are on the committee—Shane Ardern, Steve Chadwick, David Cunliffe, and Lindsay Tisch—and those who were on the previous select committee, which at various times included Richard Worth, Pansy Wong, and others involved who contributed both to the inquiry and to the bill.

As I said, the committee worked very carefully and very cooperatively to come up with what we believed would be improvements to the Films, Videos, and Publications Act—improvements that prevent the exploitation of children. This committee was certainly unanimous that in no way did we want exploitation of children and that we absolutely and positively did want restrictions on the trade of child pornography that is on the Internet. So I thank again the committee members for their cooperation and for the way in which we all worked together so well.

I would like to make it quite clear from the outset that New Zealand First does support this bill. It is certainly a significant step in the right direction. It is unlikely that I will take my full call, because to some considerable degree the Minister of Justice has stolen the thunder of the Opposition. I hope the Minister appreciates that we are honest enough to say that. [Interruption] I am not prepared to stand here, like Mr Worth, and just talk for the sake of using up my 10 minutes.

I know I talk for my colleagues when I say that we are very delighted that the Minister has taken on board the information that has been conveyed to us by Denise Ritchie, and that he will toughen up on the penalty regime. That is a large part of our criticism of this bill. It is one significant criticism that we have—that the bill, as it has come back from the Government Administration Committee, is not tough enough in terms of penalties. Perhaps for the enlightenment of Mr Worth, I would like to ask why the two National Party members on that committee did not pick up that the UK and Canada are tougher than we will be under the provisions of this bill, nor that Australia will be toughening up its legislation. Maybe they—

💬 Dr Richard Worth: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not sure whether the invitation that has been offered to me to offer an explanation is an indication of the member yielding, but if it is, I am very happy to take advantage of that invitation.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): That is not a point of order and should not have been raised.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to the fact that New Zealand First members usually sit here quite quietly and let people have their 10-minute say in whatever way they want. If Mr Worth wants to heckle behind me—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): That is not a point of order. I had dealt with that spurious point of order.

Such interruption throws a person out of gear, but I will get back to it. I question why the two National Party MPs did not see fit to examine at the committee what the legislation in the UK, in Canada, and in Australia contains in terms of penalties. Maybe they would like to focus their minds on that, rather than sitting there harping on as if they know everything. One concern that I have in particular—I know that it is shared by many of my colleagues—is a missed opportunity with this bill, and that is the opportunity to tighten up on censorship across the board.

💬 Stephen Franks: It has not been missed. They are doing it.

They are doing it?

💬 Stephen Franks: You have to read it carefully.

One would have to read it very carefully to get that impression. I am interested in the member’s comments, and I will have to listen to him when he takes his call. New Zealand First was not on the select committee. By reading this bill fairly carefully, I get the impression that some of the films that are currently coming into this country are actually disgusting. I refer to films like Baise-moi; I have never seen such a disgusting film in all my life and I do not want to ever see another like it. I have read many of the censors’ reports on other films. I will not name them. They degrade women, in particular; they accommodate violence; and there are graphic sexual scenes. There is one film, which I shall not name, that apparently shows the rape of a young woman for 9½ minutes. I am curious to know—maybe Mr Franks will tell us when he takes his call—whether he thinks this tightening up will address those sorts of problems, because it is my understanding that it will not, but I hope I am wrong.

I share some of the concerns stated by the National Party member before me, in terms of hate speech. I just wonder whether this is taking life a little bit too far. Not everybody has nice thoughts about everybody all of the time, and sometimes these things come out and they become quite spiteful. I find it a bit unusual that we are looking at hate speech in a way that might limit the freedom of a person to have a frank and honest view on an issue or the actions of a particular group of people. If the select committee is to instigate a committee of inquiry into this, it should tread very, very carefully. I am interested to know how far that inquiry has progressed.

The commentary, in referring to the scope of censorship law, states: “After careful consideration, we do not consider the scope of what may be classified as objectionable under the Act should be widened relative to the original intent of Parliament.”, with no thought or recommendation there of the committee having any sort of investigation into the actual films and videos that the censor allows to come into this country. A huge number are readily available, and there is no inquiry into whether they are worthwhile or what benefits they have.

I point out that people who get involved in child pornography, and those sorts of devious actions, start somewhere else. It starts with adult pornography. I am aware of a frequently heard saying: basically, human beings are what they eat; if they fill their stomachs with garbage food, then their bodies suffer. I suggest that people are what they read and what they watch. If they fill their minds with weird and wonderful activities, with pornography, then it is no wonder that we turn out far too many deviants and perverts in our society.

Having said that, I would like to end on a positive note. New Zealand First will support this bill this far. We hope the Minister will be true to his word—he usually is—and produce a Supplementary Order Paper that tightens up the penalty regime, in which case New Zealand First will support the bill through to its final reading. We look forward to seeing the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper in which he tightens up the penalties and put us in line with Britain, Canada, and some of those Australian states that are currently tightening up their penalty regimes.

ACT will support the increase in penalties in this bill, for the obvious reason that we think most penalties in New Zealand have become too short, too small, and too trivial by half or more. But I am not sure whether we can support this bill. The reason for that is that the bill is, I think, quite a sinister piece of deception in one respect. I believe that this bill achieves the objective that the Government Administration Committee tried to achieve with its appalling report a couple of years ago. It was of such a poor grade, intellectually, that the Minister of Justice could not proceed—he could not be seen to implement it. But the bill achieves that objective covertly, and I say that because this bill, I think, sets out to reverse the effect of the Court of Appeal’s decision in the Living Word Distributors video case.

The bill’s commentary states that the bill does not really do that, but just clarifies the situation. It states that the bill preserves the gateway role, or the gateway notion of the censor’s role. In fact, when we see what it is doing, purportedly to protect children, we find that two new sections are inserted that completely bypass the gateway provision. A publication may be age restricted if it is likely to be injurious to the public good. The definition of what the legislation can ban, or ban through an age restriction, includes material that describes physical conduct of a degrading, dehumanising, or demeaning nature that may encourage people to treat themselves, or others, as degraded, dehumanised, or demeaned. Well, that is a description of what the chief censor said the Living Word Distributors video did. The Court of Appeal did not agree with that, or it felt that free speech entitled Christians, or any other group that had a strong view about a matter, to import a video that had some boring-looking talking heads, in that case, describing homosexuality as disgusting.

This bill reverses that decision, and it does so by wrapping up in a whole lot of other words some words that the Chief Censor can then use to go back on something like the Living Word Distributors video decision and ignore the gateway. We see in new section 3D inserted by clause 4A that the new powers are not limited by the sections that the Court of Appeal used to throw out the censor’s decision. I think that is important. I am fascinated to see that the Government has been so blatant as to put in new clause 4B, which provides that the censor can even go backwards and retrospectively apply the new powers. In the course of the Committee stage I would like to hear a categorical assurance that that is not the intention, and to consider amendments designed to make sure that it cannot happen. As a start, the clause that bypasses the protective tests for free speech that the Court of Appeal was able to use should be removed.

There is another reason why I do not feel that ACT should be party to this bill, which is that it is just cynical. It is law being used for propaganda—law as theatre, law as slogans, and law as camouflage. I think that Judith Collins got on to it, but she said that she would suppress her reservations and vote for the bill because it made threats against paedophiles or people who showed an interest in child pornography. She needs to look again, because it does not matter whether the penalty is $5,000 or $10,000, or 2 years or 5 years in prison. What really dictates the penalty is the climate that the Government creates around an offence. Let us look at the case of Te Kaha to see an instance of how irrelevant a maximum penalty is. There was the possibility of a $250,000 fine, of confiscation of the gear, and, from memory, I think of 4 years in jail, although I may be wrong about that. What did Te Kaha get? For a cold-blooded, commercially motivated offence of taking 100 kilos of shucked pāua in a scheme that is happening all over the country—and it is a major problem—Te Kaha was sentenced to go out to corrupt a few more kids. He was given community work. The Government will make sure that his community work is counselling kids.

What use is all this legal drivel when we have a Government that actually thinks it is OK for kids to be out there as prostitutes and will not allow the police to ask their age, a Government that does not care that the Aussie police are about to make a swoop on a paedophile network that will then warn all the New Zealand members, and a Government that we have to suspect must have not wanted to see that swoop made? I suspect there will be some high-profile people on that list. I think this Government has probably deliberately fluffed it because it did not want the embarrassment of some of its ilk ending up as victims of that swoop. This kind of bill that the Government wants to see rushed through the House on a wave of emotion is dangerous. It is dangerous because it is so easily misused. The honourable member Dianne Yates gave us a good idea of what this bill is really about when she immediately turned in her speech to describe the hate speech objectives. The Government wants to be able to ban free speech that is offensive to it and its mates.

We already have an Act. I have the Act here, and the gateway provision is pretty well framed. It does not allow, for example, an innocent family that happens to have pictures of its kids playing in a swimming pool to be caught, because it has some very sensible tests that require there to be an overall context, a volume, an objective, and a promoting effect. That section, which protects our innocent family, Dianne Yates’ proposals will now avoid. Section 3 of the Act is to be avoided under the new provisions of this legislation. Section 3 protects innocent people from being caught up in the net that we all want to see cast over those who are truly offenders: those who use pornographic material, abuse children to generate that material, and trade in that material, which, of course, we all want to see stopped. But the existing law covers that, so Minister Goff has introduced the vague idea that the technology has got ahead of us. We have instead seen a set of provisions that could one day be used to simply suppress political opinion the Government does not like, on the grounds set out in this bill that it may be harmful.

It is interesting that the age restrictions can be promoted, and unless I have missed this in the Act, the Government could set an age restriction that no one under 60 is allowed to read something. I am not sure whether that is the case, but it appears to me that would be open to the Government. The Government may say that that would be ridiculous, but who would ever have thought that a group of earnest Christians who were eager to persuade their children that they should not become homosexual would one day become the victims of a film censor? Who would have thought that a party like United Future, which purports to stand for those people, would end up wanting to vote for a bill that allows the censor to do just that? I think it is hilarious the things that United Future has voted for. Of course, it has just voted to help the Government to make sure it keeps on looting the excise tax. It is minor that United Future now says that it will vote in favour of something that gives the censor the power to attack its own supporters.

If one looks at the definition of offensive language, one can see that it is language that is offensive to the public in general. Most new ideas at some stage have been offensive to the public in general. Most reformers have been vilified at some stage. Most reformers have had newspaper editorials tell them that they are raising a proper purpose but that the way they are doing it is offensive, and that they should not be allowed to carry on. The whole purpose of free speech is not to protect language that no one finds offensive; the whole purpose of free speech is precisely to make sure that people can offend. There is no other kind of language that people bother to try to suppress. That is why this bill is dangerous, I suspect. This is a cunning and deliberate scheme to tie together increased penalties at the same time as pushing through the potentially dangerous stuff.

The Green Party will support this bill and the positive changes to enable us to deal more effectively with child pornography. However, the Greens are sickened by today’s bidding war between ACT and Labour to see who can have the longest sentences. It is bad enough when Labour moves to the right in order to try to take National’s ground, but it is even worse when it tries to take ACT’s ground. Under the bill at present the maximum penalty for possession of objectionable material moves from a fine to 2 years in prison. Surely that is enough; it is absurd to move it to 5 years. At 1.30 this afternoon Deborah Coddington issued a press release calling for 5 years. Four hours later Mr Goff fell into line. Surely, our prime target is the actual pornographers: the people who force children into sexual activity and make money out of distributing images of that activity. They will be hard hit by this bill, with a maximum of 10 years in jail. But why bump up the penalties for simple possession of objectionable material to 5 years?

One of the problems with this bill in areas that relate to the possession of child pornography is that it extends the definition to images of “young persons who are nude or partially nude” where the images are “reasonably capable of being regarded as sexual in nature”. That definition, as the Law Society pointed out in its submission, is very loose. The Society of Authors stated: “Under this bill it is conceivable that many major works of art, particularly those from the high Renaissance, could be seen as objectionable because they depict naked infants, often cherubic, in a way that the censor might deem to be sexual.” Recently, there has been a debate about the images in Germaine Greer’s book The Boy, with Ms Greer asking why women should not enjoy looking at images of boys as beautiful images rather than pornographic images. It is very hard for the community to come to a general consensus on where to draw the line between what may be beautiful or artistic and what may be pornographic. The issues are very controversial.

This bill makes drawing that line even more difficult because it is not just talking about nude images, but also “partially” nude ones. In discussing that problem the Law Society said that that could mean we would have to ban many of the music videos on TV that are currently running on three music channels. They are often videos of under-18-year-olds with bare midriffs, dancing around and projecting some degree of sexuality. It would be much better to use the more restricted definition of child pornography in the optional protocol of the convention on the rights of the child, as the Society of Authors suggested in its submission. That defines child pornography as representations of children engaged in “real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes.”

We want to get at the real child pornographers, and any heavy penalties should go on them. Instead, as many submitters to the Government Administration Committee complained, the new 10-year sentence is not confined to child pornographers, but potentially applies to anyone sending out “objectionable” material across the whole field of censorship in the Act, which is worded as “sex, horror, crime, cruelty, and violence.” Let us look at some of the silliness and inconsistency that that broad application of the 10-year maximum sentence across all offensive materials could produce. For example, last April the censors gave an objectionable rating to an imported magazine called Cannabis Culture on the basis of its “treatment of matters of crime, namely the cultivation and use of cannabis.” Freely distributing a magazine on the cultivation of cannabis, particularly to those 18 years and under, could, under this new law being proposed today, land one in jail for 10 years. Yet the maximum penalty for actually cultivating cannabis is 8 years. So somebody forwarding an email on the cultivation of cannabis to a few friends has the potential of being given a longer prison sentence than someone with a big marijuana plantation.

I mentioned the person emailing material on cannabis as an introduction to the broader problem of censoring Internet communications. That does not mean that we should not punish those who use the Internet to trade in child pornography; of course we should. But if we are looking generally at objectionable material, as this bill is, with “objectionable” being defined rather loosely, then email and Internet policing poses some problems, and the wrong people could get nailed. One problem, particularly when dealing with possession rather than trading offences, is that computer users often do not know what they are downloading or what is in attachments. In this bill, for the more serious convictions for possession the prosecution has to prove the possessor had knowledge of the material. But in several places in the legislation there is what is called a strict liability regime or an absolute liability regime for possession, where people cannot use as a defence that they did not know what was in the email or the attachment. If they did find out what the material was once they opened it up and then deleted it they still may get done, because forensic tests can check out what was on their system prior to deletion. The absolute liability regime for possession might have been OK pre the Internet when dealing with picture books and videos, because it is hard to buy a picture book without knowing pretty much what is in it.

The new Internet problem was dealt with by the select committee in some respect, in that the Internet Service Providers Association submitted that Internet service providers obviously cannot check everything that goes through their computers. So Internet service providers and telecommunication operators were let off the hook by the select committee. However, we still have the problem of individual computer users potentially being done for images they did not know about, be it for pornography or for going beyond that to various other inflammatory or objectionable written material that may be in people’s incoming emails, attachments, or stuff they download. It could be inflammatory, objectionable material that the computer user may have had no real chance to check out fully or assess. We could get considerable inconsistencies here, where the judgments as to whether to prosecute for Internet communications could be exercised by Department of Internal Affairs staff or by the police, maybe with less and less reference to the Office of Film and Literature Classification. There is, under the law, an ability for defendants to refer things to that office, but in practice that will happen rarely, with defendants being scared of what is happening and often being involved in plea-bargaining directly with the police. We should be a bit frightened about what the police judgments may be following their attempt to prosecute Aucklander Bruce Hubbard for an email that referred to the American Government “napalming babies” in Iraq. That offended the American Embassy, which received the email, and Mr Hubbard was prosecuted, although the prosecution was later dropped after a public outcry.

The Internet, and now cellphones, are such open ways of communication, with billions of messages and images zooming to and fro, that it would be silly for the censorship authorities to be chasing everywhere and filtering everything. There will be a lot of objectionable material circulating, and we do not want to imitate Governments such as that of China, with its draconian Internet controls. The only real control is to become a more ethically responsible society and, of course, to go after the very worst offenders, such as the serious child pornography traders. We do not want to have a huge censorship section in the Department of Internal Affairs or the police. I do think it is useful for the Office of Film and Literature Classification to have the ability to put an age restriction on offensive language and material, although there have to be the cautions that Stephen Franks referred to. But we also want to take a bit of work off the office and put into effect some of the submissions by the Alice in Videoland shop and the film festival organisers that there could be ways of cross-rating material from other authorities, rather than going through time-consuming systems.

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak on the second reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. First of all, I will give a brief summary of how the bill has ended up on the Order Paper today. The report of the Government Administration Committee was presented to the House back on 30 August 2004, but the Government seemed to be more interested in rushing the civil union legislation through the House in urgency before Christmas than in dealing with this bill, which is very important. Hopefully, this bill sends a message to those who engage in that sort of awful and despicable behaviour, and it increases some of the penalties for that behaviour. But that still begs the question as to why it had to sit on the Order Paper for 4 months before it was brought back to the House for its second reading.

There were a number of press releases over the holidays, if anyone was monitoring them, and a number of those came from my colleague Marc Alexander, who has been our representative on the select committee. He raised the issue with the Government members and urged them to bring the bill on to the Order Paper so that it could be dealt with. Denise Ritchie also made a number of statements about how appalling it was that we were not dealing with this legislation. So it is really no surprise that it has suddenly appeared for us to debate in the House today.

My colleague Marc Alexander has a particular interest in this bill, because part of it comes from the first member’s bill he introduced to the House as a new member, which was intended to deal with the appalling situation whereby it was possible for images of children undressing in changing sheds at the beach, swimming pools, and so on to be distributed by sick people to even sicker people on the Internet. He sought, out of very good motives, to address that issue, and it is pleasing to see that the intent of his bill has been brought into this Government legislation.

The bill amends the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act to address the impact of the Internet and similar technology on the nature and scale of offending related to the production and distribution of objectionable materials. Images containing nude, or partially nude, children or young persons that are reasonably capable of being regarded as sexual in nature are a particular focus of this bill. The bill uses the term “child sex abuse images” rather than “child pornography”.

Stephen Franks has raised some concerns about whether this bill could lead to some impinging on the rights of freedom of speech. As he said in his speech, those matters ought to be debated during the Committee stage of this bill, because we certainly do not want that to be the case. This bill is designed to deal with some very serious issues in our society, and it ought not to be hijacked by anybody who seeks to simply muzzle critics of behaviour that they find offensive.

However, the fact that we are debating this bill really begs the question of what kind of world we are living in today. It reminds me of a saying that I have used for a number of years in discussing the importance or relevance of laws in society: “The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws.” Here we are again having to look at passing legislation in this House. I think last year we passed 100 laws, which was a record, I believe.

Do we imagine the inventor of cellphones ever conceived that people would take those cellphones that have the ability to take pictures, slip into changing sheds around the country, and take pictures of innocent children as they were undressing so that those pictures could be distributed on the Internet? It is certainly a very sick society that we find ourselves in, in the 21st century.

Human history reveals that human beings have always been capable of some pretty sick behaviour, but it seems today that the lines that have been referred to in some other speeches are getting blurred. The movie Baise-Moi, which I have not seen but which was referred to by Mr Brown in his speech, is one of those examples. We raise children in a double-standard world that says that something is wrong if a person is under 18 or under 16, but once that person has had another birthday, suddenly overnight what was previously wrong becomes right for that person.

I believe that we kid ourselves. As Mr Keith Locke said, the lines are definitely blurred and difficult to distinguish. I think the problem is that we place so much stock on being adults in this world and on how adults are supposed to be able to handle anything, but if a child is brought into the situation he or she would probably pretty quickly identify for us that something is not art; it is actually pornography. Yet we look at it and kid ourselves that we should be able to handle it.

In fact, the Lord Jesus himself said that if we want to enter the kingdom of Heaven, we should become like a child, yet much of our society seeks to become adult and to handle all kinds of obscenity that we ought to know will not be good for us or for our children to see. In a civilised society we have the emergence of child pornography and it has spread across the world. We do have to try to pass laws in order to send a message about its abhorrence and to try to stop its spread.

I join others in commending Denise Ritchie, and others like her from the Stop Demand Foundation and End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes, for the work they do opposing and fighting child pornography. What a horror it is for a child to be caught as a sex slave. What an awful, awful lifestyle! I have walked in some of those places in Asia and have seen some of the images of children being kept in cages for exploitation by foreign visitors, and it is an unspeakable horror.

I commend the Minister for responding to Denise Ritchie’s appeals for an increase in sentencing. However, I had to agree with Judith Collins when she asked why he did not also listen to the woman whom he had such regard for in his speech today when she and many others warned about what would happen to our society if the prostitution law reform legislation was passed, or what would happen to young people when there was no clear distinction in that law between being under age and over age, and when we were not even prepared to allow the police to ask for proof of identity so they could do their job of protecting young people more effectively. That is a very good case of what is happening in our society as the lines are becoming blurred.

How is it OK for people to engage in selling their bodies for sex when they are 18, but if they are under 18, suddenly it is wrong and abhorrent? Since that law was passed, why has there been advertising for prostitution every night on television in New Zealand—from 1 o’clock in the morning to 5 o’clock on C4—when the law itself states that it is to be banned and is not to occur? Yet any member who chooses to turn on his or her television and look at C4 will find that from 1 o’clock to 5, there is uninterrupted, continuous advertising for prostitution.

Also, advertisements are appearing in the paper for students to try prostitution as a means of paying for their student loans. The advertisements say: “It is not so bad. Come along and we will help you. It’s not too bad at all.” Sir Barry Curtis, the Mayor of Manukau, has a local bill that he wishes to see introduced into this Parliament to ban street soliciting in Manukau, because he has video camera evidence of 12, 13, 14, and 16-year-olds on the street at Hunters Corner as a result.

I commend this bill to the House, because it is sending the right message that that kind of behaviour is not acceptable and that we do need stiffer penalties for those who engage in it. In fact, it is hard to imagine what penalties would be really sufficient for the damage done to young lives exploited and used in that way. United Future is pleased to support the second reading of the bill, but I do make the point that we kid ourselves when we think we can simply draw a line on ages or on certain behaviour when we have contributed, by some of the laws that we have passed in this House in the last 2 years, to the demise of our civilisation.

I am pleased to take a call on this very important bill. I just remind those in the House who were not members of the Government Administration Committee that this bill came about following an inquiry and the fact that technological changes have advanced over 11 years. We wanted legislation that would protect our innocent children, and we looked at the penalties for those who produce, trade, and distribute pornography. The penalties in this bill reflect the very protections that came out of the inquiry—so that process had to be done—and then this bill was made much clearer in terms of the direction in which we had to look. We had to look at what was deemed objectionable material—and that has been considerably strengthened in this legislation—and at the penalties for production, trading, and possession. I am thrilled that the penalties for possession have been increased to bring them into line with the UK and Canada.

The Time magazine article that intimated that New Zealand was a haven for pornographers and pushers of pornography has it completely wrong. The committee went to the Department of Internal Affairs and saw the robustness and rigour with which that very small, tight, and expert group of professionals trace pornography sites around the world and trace those who download pornography. I congratulate the Department of Internal Affairs on the work it does, and I am sure that they will be able to put a more robust case when they capture those who trade in that invidious trade.

I conclude quickly by saying that I heard the member Judith Collins talk about the hate speech inquiry. To a person, all of us on the committee who heard the submitters supported the hate speech inquiry. It was a cruel shock when others came to the House screaming about the inquiry and what an erosion of civil liberties it was, but we on that committee said to a tee that we would support the hate speech inquiry.

I start tonight by saying that the National Party will support the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. I acknowledge the officials here tonight who advised the Government Administration Committee throughout what was, on balance, quite a difficult process. That is what it is—an, on balance, difficult process. I listened with great interest to those who are much more learned in law than myself—including Mr Franks and a number of others—in terms of the concerns they raised. They have been sensible in the way they have raised those concerns, but I say to them that at the end of the day one has to make a judgment call and have some faith in the people we employ in our bureaucracy, like our Chief Censor of Film and Literature. Maybe the censor will get it wrong and maybe he will not. At the end of the day Parliament will ultimately be the judge of that, and that is how the process should be.

I also congratulate the Minister on accepting the advice of Denise Ritchie. I shall answer some of the questions as to why the committee itself did not come to that conclusion. The bottom line is that we looked at an enormous amount of information. We did not ask whether we were harmonising with like-minded countries on this particular penalty, and, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we should have. But having said that, Denise Ritchie and her group, Stop Demand, brought that to the attention of the Minister. The Minister has accepted the recommendations they brought forward, and I congratulate him on that.

As an aside, it is an interesting thing in politics, when one sees a Minister like Phil Goff so responsive to public demand like that, to think of what may have happened if the famous Phil Goff barbecue had been successful and he was the Prime Minister today. “Move over, Tony Blair.”, I would say. What a better country New Zealand might have been had that famous barbecue meeting come to fruition for Phil Goff. Having said that, we have what we have, and it is not Phil Goff—so be it. The electorate will fix that up at the next election.

I say to the other members of the committee that I too was fascinated by what we found out when we went to the Department of Internal Affairs. I was absolutely astounded. Being a poor, humble country boy, I genuinely never realised that such activity took place. I knew that there was a bit of pervert activity around the edges, but as to the actual volume of it, its sophistication, and the level to which people will go to trade in that—well, what can we describe it as? I can think of no word that is parliamentary. It is something that I find absolutely abhorrent, as would any father, mother, parent, guardian, or person who has had any involvement with children at all and who was a normal, sane person. That is where we must draw the line, because those who trade in this matter clearly are not normal, sane people. We cannot be PC about that. They are—what could we describe them as—less than human. They are insane, sick, or have something wrong with them to trade in and want to view what the majority of society finds to be absolutely abhorrent material. None the less, they do. The material exists, it is produced, and we need laws in this country to make sure that it is properly policed.

I listened with great interest to the contribution made by Keith Locke of the Green Party, who said that we need to be careful that we do not capture art. If there is any confusion between art and pornography, then we have allowed our laws to become too liberal. It is as simple as that. It is black and white to me. There is absolutely no confusion between what could be described as something artistic—[Interruption] I see that the member over there is shaking her head a bit. It is not for me. It is absolutely clear; I am absolutely black and white on this. People may call me conservative, old-fashioned, or whatever they like, but I do not care. The bottom line is that it is absolutely black and white to me. There is a definite difference between pornographic material and art, and that is the end of the subject. Providing that the chief censor carries those values forward, I do not think we have any problem at all.

The issue of the gateway approach, as in the existing legislation and the amendments to it, was raised by a number of speakers. I say to them that the gateway structure, as it stands, takes account of the categories of sex, horror, crime, and hate. During the discussion in the committee, it was decided that hate would probably be the most difficult category to manage and to draw a black and white line on—as I have—in terms of pornography. That is the reason the committee decided to separate that category out and call an inquiry into hate speech.

To those members who may be a bit nervous about where we are heading with that, I say that they should hold their horses, make their submissions to the select committee, and be involved in the process. Clearly, we do not want to curtail people’s idea of what freedom of speech is, or rein in the media or, for that matter, politicians, over what they may or may not say. We pride ourselves on being an open, democratic society that holds open, democratic elections every 3 years. At the end of the day people need to be able to say what they think, regardless of how objectionable others may find that in a political sense.

That, obviously, will be an interesting process. Committee members will listen to and read with great interest all the submissions that come to that inquiry. I also say to a number of members that there has been discussion about what is happening in society in terms of where we are heading as a country, and about the general decline, I guess, of what could have been originally described as Victorian or Christian values. Child prostitution is an issue on which this Government should pause for a moment, take a look, and ask: “Did we get the balance right?”, because I would argue that it has not. I suggest—in fact, I will predict—that sometime within the next 5 years that issue will be revisited in this Parliament regardless of who the Government is, because the police will ultimately come back to the Government with overwhelming evidence that they are being constrained by the current law the way it stands.

I also point out that trading this material has become much more prevalent because of the massive growth in technology. The ability now for a person to buy a small cellphone that can fit in a pocket, to take covert photographs of people in various stages of undress, and then to trade that around the world via the Internet, or to exploit young children or young people by using that medium, is something that I do not think anybody would have contemplated even as recently as 1993. The way in which that ability has advanced and the way in which everybody has absolutely engaged in the use of that technology now could never have been predicted as recently as 1993. Again, I say well done to the Minister for recognising that growth and the need to do something about it.

At the end of the day the wider public, the democratic society we live in, will decide what is right and what is wrong. Parliament will make the best attempt it can to strike the right balance and, through its elected Ministers, choose a censor who reflects the view of society and bases his or her decisions on the weight of evidence that flows both ways. Ultimately, changes to this kind of legislation will be an ongoing, regular thing. As was the case in 1993, we cannot forecast the next wave of technology or forecast what will be the ability of people to trade in images in the future. I say to those people who are concerned about the fact this is happening that they should just have a look at what is going on in the Department of Internal Affairs, and what is going on internationally and in the jurisdictions of other Western, Christian-based nations similar to our own. Then they will come to the conclusion that something must be done on a regular basis.

First, I want to echo the views of both my colleagues Judith Collins and Shane Ardern, and to acknowledge the work of the Department of Internal Affairs. As indicated by Shane Ardern, Steve Chadwick, and other speakers, we have seen the work the department is doing in monitoring and tracking. It is using its facilities to enforce the law and provide information for other jurisdictions around the world. I think that that is a significant advance, especially in the area of child pornography, which has become a major issue for not only New Zealand but other countries. So I firstly acknowledge the work of the Department of Internal Affairs, which has a member in the Chamber tonight, and of its officials.

I also acknowledge the Customs Service, which is doing extremely good work at the coalface, at the borders, in being able to pick up this sort of material. I acknowledge the police who are involved, and also the work of the Chief Censor of Film and Literature. I have been to the censor’s office. The Government Administration Committee chairperson, Dianne Yates, led the committee to look at the Department of Internal Affairs and the censor’s office. I would not like to be working in that environment. The explicit sex scenes we saw are simply not for the faint-hearted; to my mind, they were quite disgusting and degrading. I certainly admire and acknowledge the work of those people, who are keeping New Zealand safe and protecting New Zealanders, young people in particular. I acknowledge their contribution.

We have had an interesting insight into this bill over a number of months, and prior to that we had the inquiry. The amendments that we are making to the 1993 legislation are significant, because they do make changes and certainly clarify the position on a number of issues that have been vague, and that the censor has had difficulty with. It has been mentioned that the 1993 Act took account of the situation at the time and of the material available then, which was mainly hard-copy publications. We have certainly moved on in that respect, and now we have the Internet and what it can provide in terms of child pornography. That has become the No. 1 issue, not only here but also internationally.

We do acknowledge the right to freedom of speech, and that is one of the reasons why the hate-speech provision is not in this bill. It was not an easy decision to make, but that issue needs to be separate. We want to ensure that the right to freedom of speech is maintained, but, on the other hand, we also believe it is necessary to accept appropriate boundaries in the context of criminal law and public policy.

Pornography has grown substantially over the years, and it is an area that is of major concern for us. It is a social issue for New Zealanders. It is interesting that if we look at what is happening in the United States we see it has put the pornography issue into the too-hard basket. Over the years the United States has acknowledged that it would be difficult to police legislation, and difficult to come up with laws that actually reflected what society was looking for. We see that difficulty in the changes in what is now available on free-to-air TV programmes. The content and language are examples of the difficulty in reaching a consensus on what is acceptable and what is objectionable. What may be objectionable to me in my watching of television programmes or videos, or in my reading of something, may be acceptable to my neighbour. So there is conflict about what is acceptable in one sense and what is objectionable in another.

But there is no doubt that society is very concerned about what people are seeing. At the end of the day, addressing that is really going to be up to the values that parents instil in their children and their ability to instil in children the values that they believe are important. It does not matter what laws we make, because there will always be those who will manage to get around them, especially with the technology now available. Shane Ardern mentioned the messages using cellphones, and there are chat rooms and Internet messaging services. That is what society faces today, and that is the challenge that the police raised in their submission to the select committee. They said that pornography was a major concern and that it would be difficult to remedy that.

However, in saying that, this bill takes some major steps. I want to highlight them, because they are major steps forward in the fight against pornography, in particular. The bill extends the scope of “trading or commercial” offences in the Act to include non-commercial distribution. It further extends the “trading or commercial” offences in the Act to include importing and exporting objectionable material for the purposes of supply or distribution, and aligns that with relevant provisions of the Customs and Excise Act of 1996. It increases the maximum penalties for making, trading, and distributing objectionable material, which includes child pornography, to 10 years’ imprisonment. It creates a new offence, punishable by 2 years’ imprisonment. The Minister intends to bring in a Supplementary Order Paper that will change that to 5 years, in order to bring the period into line with that in other jurisdictions, and we will be supporting that amendment. But the bill does create a new offence for a person to possess an objectionable publication, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that it is objectionable.

The legislation will require the courts, when sentencing someone for an offence involving an objectionable publication, to take into account, as an aggravating factor, the extent to which the publication is objectionable because it contains child pornography. It gives District Court judges the power to issue search warrants in connection with the suspected commission of a new “possession with knowledge” offence. It removes any doubt that nude or partially nude images of children that can reasonably be considered to be sexual in nature are publications that deal with “matters such as sex”, and it specifies that a publication that would otherwise be classified as unrestricted may be given an age restriction if the publication contains offensive language, exposure to which would be harmful to persons under that age.

We believe that the bill is a move in the right direction. The current Act has been in force since 1993, and is now out of date. We also acknowledge our commitment and obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. When we move on to the Committee stage of this bill, whenever that may be, there are specific areas of concern that I will be wanting to highlight. They relate particularly to the Court of Appeal decision in the case of Living Word Distributors Limited v Human Rights Action Group, because the word “objectionable” and the term “matters such as”, which are found in section 3(1) of the Act, are, as we will see later on, really of concern to the censor. The censor, in producing the publication I have in my hand and taking into account the Court of Appeal decision, would actually have to reassess a number of the publications and criteria that were accepted in the course of that Court of Appeal decision, regarding the term “matters such as”. That phrase is wide, and there needs to be a much narrower context when dealing with sex, horror, crime, cruelty, and violence that are actually included in a publication or video. Of course, in the case I have outlined the Court of Appeal deemed it not to be action, and that is why an issue now arises that the censor has to deal with. So there is much to debate during the Committee stage of this bill.

National supports the bill, as we have done right through its earlier stages. Some will say that the bill does not go far enough, and it is acknowledged that some people will want a much tougher stand than this bill provides for, but in our view it is a step in the right direction. It sends a very clear message that child pornography and objectionable material is not to be tolerated in society today. National will be supporting this bill.

Bill read a second time.

The House adjourned at 9.59 p.m.