Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill

I move, That the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill. This bill addresses an appalling issue that confronts not only New Zealand society but all areas of the globe. Offenders can now possess and distribute millions of images of sexually exploited children. In 2009 the United Nations estimated that internationally 200 new images were put into circulation every day. The internet allows offenders to access and share these publications with ease.

One of the central features of the internet is its ability to simultaneously connect thousands of people and allow the continuous exchange of information, including text, audio, and video. This connectivity can facilitate the possession and sharing of offensive material such as child sexual abuse online. Advances in technology enable the transmission, retrieval, and storage of an almost infinite quantity of data at speeds and costs unimaginable only a decade ago. These advances mean that distribution is significantly easier. Those who possess objectionable publications can, at the click of a button, further distribute the material to a large number of peers.

There is also evidence that the content of the publications is getting worse and that the children being sexually abused are getting younger. In 2007 the United Kingdom’s Internet Watch Foundation identified a rise in the number of websites depicting the most extreme and brutal forms of abuse. This trend is supported by observations made by the New Zealand Chief Censor of Film and Literature, the Deputy Chief Censor of Film and Literature, and New Zealand’s enforcement agencies. In addition, these images are often replicated and further distributed across the internet. These images can endure for the lifetime of the victim and beyond. Victims can feel revictimised by the knowledge that an image of them remains available to be viewed and shared.

I say that to keep pace with this hideous crime, the law needs to change too. Increasing penalties sends a clear message that the possession of, and trade in, child sexual abuse online is an abhorrent act. The bill increases the penalty for possession of an objectionable publication from 5 years to 10 years’ imprisonment; for importing or exporting an objectionable publication from 5 years to 10 years’ imprisonment; and for the supply, distribution, and making of an objectionable publication from 10 years to 14 years’ imprisonment. An increase of this magnitude will mean New Zealand has a high penalty regime for this type of offending compared with some other countries.

The bill also ensures that the law adequately addresses this horrendous offending by making four further changes. First, the bill will make it clear that possession of objectionable material includes intentionally viewing electronic material without consciously downloading or saving it. This amendment will remove any risk that offenders with particular technical expertise would be able to view objectionable publications without downloading or saving them. This will also futureproof the offences against unforeseeable advances in technology.

Secondly, the bill provides a presumption of imprisonment for repeat child sexual abuse offenders. This presumption will apply unless the court is satisfied that the repeat offender should not be sentenced to prison because of a particular circumstance relating either to the offender or the offence.

Thirdly, the bill removes the requirement to attain the Attorney-General’s leave to prosecute objectionable publication offences. This was historically a safeguard against inappropriate prosecutions. The Department of Internal Affairs, the Customs Service, and New Zealand Police now have significant experience and internal processes for checking the appropriateness of a proposed prosecution. Accordingly, the requirement to seek leave from the Attorney-General is no longer serving any useful purpose.

Lastly, the bill creates a new offence of indecent communication with a young person, who is anyone under the age of 16. There is currently a gap in the law between objectionable publication offences, which apply only if the offender makes a record of communication with a young person, and the sexual grooming offence. The sexual grooming offence applies only if the offender intentionally meets or travels with the intention of meeting the young person or arranges for, or persuades, the young person to travel with the intention of meeting him or her. Offences such as indecent exposure and an indecent act in a public place cover acts done in a public place. However, they do not cover indecent acts performed in a private place but streamed over the internet.

Indecent communication by an adult with a child can occur in a variety of ways, including via text or picture messaging, internet chat, or telephone. Such communications are damaging to the child, regardless of the medium. A specific offence is therefore needed to ensure that this damaging behaviour is criminalised, regardless of whether the offender makes a record of the communication or whether the offender has taken steps to physically meet with a young person. To address that gap in the law, clause 13 of the bill creates a new offence in the Crimes Act of indecent communication with a child, or a person an offender thinks is a child. The new offence will be punishable by a maximum of 3 years’ imprisonment.

The measures in this bill will improve the safety of young people by increasing the severity of sentences and deterring those offenders who would seek to exploit children for their own perverse ends. I commend this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Andrew Little.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker—I am glad my name is not shortened, because you would probably give me the longer version. That aside, this is a serious matter. We, of course, naturally will support any measure that is going to assist, yet again, to tame the more anarchic and wilder elements of the internet and the world of digital communication, and more so where it is used to offend against children and young people. We do not challenge the reason and the underlying purpose of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, and we will support it because we think it is worthy of examination by the Justice and Electoral Committee.

As the Minister of Justice has said, the bill does a number of things. It removes, for example, the requirement for the Attorney-General to approve the commencement of a prosecution in relation to an objectionable publication. We understand that, because those prosecutions have been rising, and we would expect that they will become even more prolific simply because of the volume of material that is now being broadcast and communicated through electronic means—smartphones, and through the internet, and on social media. So that change is worthwhile.

We note the increase in penalties and draw the House’s attention—and we will draw the select committee’s attention—to the disparity that now seems to be emerging between these objectionable publication - type offences and lifting the penalties for them, and the physical offences against children and young people, particularly when they are sexual offences. Whereas the maximum penalty now for, for example, an indecent act on a young person under 16 or meeting a young person following grooming is 7 years in prison, a person who imparts an objectionable publication through, for example, an image on a cellphone may well be liable to a maximum penalty of 10 years. I would have thought that a physical act would arguably be more harmful and more risky to the young person. So let us examine this legislation to see whether or not there are some basic sentencing and criminal justice principles that are applying.

The other thing the bill does is create a presumption, at least in relation to repeat offences, that the sentence will be one of imprisonment. Indeed, it goes as far as to expressly override the Sentencing Act in that regard for the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment where there is a repeat offence under this particular provision. The bill creates the new offence in relation to indecent communication with a young person under 16. We agree, and as I indicated in my earlier comments, this is yet another time or another occasion when this House is having to catch up with the speed with which communication happens in the modern world and the extent to which young people are connected to it.

You do not have to be particularly old now to have a cellphone as your primary means of communication—and not just your cellphone, of course; your iPod touch can be used to communicate through the internet. You do not have to have a phone number. So this legislation has to keep up with that mode of communication. I know that my own son is a regular—some would say frequent; I would say continual—user of this technology, and we want to make sure, and the legislation should make sure, that there are some rules around it, at least for the benefit of, and the protection of, young people. So we think this bill is well worth looking at and supporting in order to have that examination.

I would, however, make the same plea I made in respect of the Parole Amendment Bill, and that is: can we please have a criminal justice strategy that is coherent, that is coordinated, and makes overarching sense? I look at the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill and I wonder whether the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, which was 6 months in the creation and had its first reading last week, and I do not see why aspects of that bill could not be incorporated into this bill or the other way round—bits of this bill incorporated into that bill. But can we please not have little bits of legislation after little bits of legislation responding to little bits of problems—or, actually, quite significant problems—that in the overarching, overall scheme of things are just one problem amongst many.

Can we have an overarching strategy and can we have a Minister of Justice focused on a justice strategy, or even a justice strategy for particular parts of the world in which we live? If it is about the internet, social media, and the risk of broadcasting objectionable publications, can we have a strategy to deal with that and deal with all those issues? If it is about making sure that all of the penal provisions in our criminal justice legislation are up to date and reflect the mores of the day, can we have something that deals with that, as opposed to this haphazard, ad hoc sort of approach that the current Minister is taking? That aside, this legislation is well worth the time of this House and examination by the select committee. We will support it, and we look forward to the debate.

I rise to take a short call on the first reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, which I am pleased to hear has the support of the Labour Opposition for its referral to the Justice and Electoral Committee. It is very appropriate that as a Government we are taking actions to increase the maximum penalties around sexual abuse of children that occurs online.

These days people can access all manner of objectionable material in all manner of ways. Many of those avenues were never previously imagined by existing legislation, and technology is moving at a very rapid pace indeed. One of the great challenges for legislators all over the world is how to ensure that legislation remains relevant and current in the face of fast-moving technology. I guess the real challenge here for us in New Zealand is to ensure not only that we address current issues of the day of this sort but that we futureproof our legislation to ensure that technology does not continue to outpace our legislation. I am looking forward to having the bill at the select committee for consideration, and I commend it to the House.

I rise to take a call to support the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. The main purpose of this bill is to increase the penalties for producing, trading, or possessing child pornography by amending three pieces of legislation: the Crimes Act 1961, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, and the Customs and Excise Act 1996.

The bill introduces new measures to achieve the key purpose and improve the legislation in respect of objectionable publications and indecency. As outlined in the speech of my colleague Mr Andrew Little, the bill includes the new measures of increasing the maximum penalty for possession, import, or export of an objectionable publication from 5 years’ to 10 years’ imprisonment, and increasing the maximum penalty for distributing or making an objectionable publication from 10 years’ to 14 years’ imprisonment.

The new measures include creating a presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders. So any person convicted of a child sexual exploitation offence for a second time will be sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

What is worth noting is that the bill’s amendments to the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 make it clear that the possession of objectionable material includes intentionally viewing electronic material without consciously downloading or saving it. So intentional viewing without downloading or saving amounts to possession as far as the law is concerned.

Times have changed, and we are living in a very different world now, thanks to modern technology and the lifestyle that is closely related to it. The creation of the new offence of indecent communication with a person under 16 is intended to reflect the ways in which offenders can use social networking sites, online chat programmes, and communication tools such as text messaging in order to communicate with children, with abusive intentions. In Victoria, Australia a parliamentary inquiry earlier this year called for the introduction of a “sexting” offence. However, it also called for a new defence for child pornography offences to ensure that “sexting” teens are not treated like paedophiles.

Times have changed. I recall that it was in 2002, also in Victoria, Australia, that the High Court of Australia delivered the most influential and probably the most controversial judgment involving the internet. The Dow Jones and Company Inc v Gutnick case has so far remained the leading authority in defamation case law involving the internet and has led to significant legislative changes in the common law jurisdiction in respect of forum competence, jurisdictional limitation period, and single publication rule.

The UK, for example, earlier this year passed the Defamation Act 2013 and codified common law in the area of single publication rules. Earlier this year Twitter was sued in Australia for defamation. But the role Twitter played was only as an intermediary providing a platform for relevant parties. That issue aside, the case involves a question as to whether a disclaimer published by Twitter would provide a certain kind of legal immunity for Twitter.

I go back to the bill. Social media has become a very important part of our lives. Our Crimes Act and other legislation in the area of torts, banking law, company law, etc., will need to be updated to address new media, or practices or norms that are novel to us. This bill is heading towards that direction.

Child pornography offenders have particular characteristics that set them apart from other offenders. Legislation therefore needs to be developed that addresses these characteristics. The recent Roast Busters incident exposes holes in our justice system. We need to have a robust regime to protect children from sexual exploitation. This bill needs to work in conjunction with the Harmful Digital Communications Bill so that we will have clear and consistent internet legislation.

Labour supports this bill because it has a significant purpose: to try to stop the threat and use of indecent material and child pornography, which is a worthy cause. But National needs to develop a coherent justice strategy, not just come up with legislation on a limb to solve issues as they arise. Thank you.

The Green Party will be supporting the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill going to the Justice and Electoral Committee, and we thank the Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, for bringing it to the House. This bill increases penalties for producing, trading, or possessing child pornography by increasing the maximum penalties for the possession, import, export, supply, distribution, and making of objectionable publications. It also clarifies that a person can have possession of an objectionable electronic publication without saving it or downloading it. It provides for the presumption of imprisonment for repeat child pornography. This bill also creates the new criminal offence of indecent communication with a young person under 16 years of age.

It is very clear that the online environment can be a dangerous place, particularly for children. It is important that this House considers the changes in technology, the proliferation of abuse, and the proliferation of the distribution of offensive images and child pornography online. This bill is furthering that conversation, and we thank the Minister of Justice for doing that. It is shocking that the evidence is that the content online is getting more severe and that the age of the children involved in the offensive material is getting younger. Clearly, we need to be having a public conversation about that and actually working to change the culture that is producing this material.

It is not a given that we have a culture that supports rape. We can actually create a society that understands consent and embraces consent, where enthusiastically consensual sexual activity among adults is the norm and what is approved of, and where anything separate from that is shunned. We can, if the will is there, create that society, and I for one am looking forward to the day when we can make that happen and make that a reality.

We agree that advances in technology mean that offending is becoming easier and more damaging, though I do need to put a caveat around our response to this bill and recognise that we have not seen any evidence that extending prison sentences is a deterrent or that offending or reoffending are affected by a change in sentencing. In fact, I would caution the House that in the case of rape and sexual abuse legislation we have seen the reverse to be true.

When we increased the penalty to 20 years, it created a reluctance in the police force and in sentencing, and reluctance is part of the problem we have in people coming forward and laying complaints when the consequence is so severe. We have also seen in this area that judges have not yet sentenced any offender to more than 5 years’ imprisonment despite the maximum penalty for some offences currently being 10 years’ imprisonment.

So it is not going to solve the problem. We have to do the social and cultural work. We need to consider quite seriously the role that sentencing plays in this picture, understanding the evidence and the impacts properly rather than that instinct. And it is an instinct that I completely understand—to want to lock them up and throw away the key—because the harm is so great and so significant. But if it is going to actually have the opposite effect of what we want, then we need to be open to consider that and make sure we make the best decisions possible. Our children and victims of sexual violence deserve that.

I do acknowledge that there is a gap in the present legislation that means it is not necessarily an offence to view indecent acts performed in a private place yet streamed over the internet. That, clearly, we need to fix, and that has been done in this bill with the creation of the new criminal offence of indecent communication. We are very pleased to have that presented to us and to be able to support it.

On the whole, again, I offer thanks to the Minister of Justice for bringing this bill to the House, but I also echo Labour colleague Andrew Little’s request for a coherent vision and a plan for the legislative agenda that is based on the best evidence. We would see this ideally being fitted into the context of the Law Commission’s work, which, again, I cannot help but bring up as being tragically taken off the agenda for the Law Commission. So I would hope that others in the House will join us in requesting the Minister to get that put back on the agenda so that we can actually have a more strategic response that is based on the best evidence to protect victims and ensure that justice is available to them. Thank you.

I rise to take a brief call on the first reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. I speak in support of this bill. Those of us who have had a secure and loving average New Zealand upbringing can only struggle to imagine how horrific situations of child abuse must be. I think that those situations are made even worse by those depraved people who would seek to record, distribute, and view those sorts of materials online. So I think it is absolutely appropriate that the sentences for those very worst kinds of offending are being tightened and that the legislation is being updated to include technological changes such as the fact that these days materials can be viewed online without pressing a download button or committing it to a hard drive or a disk.

I think this is very welcome legislation. The Minister of Justice should be congratulated on introducing it. I would like to thank other parties in the House for offering their support as well. I commend this bill to the House and to the Justice and Electoral Committee for consideration.

It is always a pleasure to support good Government legislation, and the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill is one of a few such examples. We in New Zealand First welcome the increase in penalties that are signalled by this bill. We agree that there is a need for a clear and significant signal—strong deterrents—so I say beware to the Roast Busters and the others who are developing a culture of using the internet and other publications for illegal and indecent purposes. I welcome the provisions in the bill that clarify some of those offences and widen the net to catch a greater range of the people who are involved. New Zealand First welcomes the increases in penalties and the new offences that are specified in the bill.

I will mention some of the most significant clauses. Clause 4 provides for an increase from 10 years’ imprisonment to 14 years’ imprisonment, which is a very significant deterrent, for supplying or distributing objectionable material whether doing so knowingly or having reasonable cause to believe that the material is objectionable. This needs especially strong deterrents. The social effects of such materials are significant. They encourage sex with under-age people, street prostitution, and a culture of sexual abuse generally, and target under-age victims.

Clause 5(3) inserts into the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 new subsection (2A), which states: “A person can have an electronic publication in that person’s possession for the purposes of subsection (1) even though that person’s actual or potential physical custody or control of the publication is not, or does not include, that person intentionally or knowingly using a computer or other electronic device to save the publication (or a copy of it).” This solves some evidential problems and, as I have said, widens the net to catch more of the people involved. It especially means that proof of possession where electronic means are used will not be needed, and it will not be necessary for an offender to be proved to have saved an electronic document, and there will be no need to prove the intention to do so. This is appropriate and necessary. Otherwise, I think the evidential burden would be too severe. Possession per se should be enough, because electronic material clearly has to be searched or at least knowingly accepted—otherwise the offender could not have obtained it.

Clause 6 amends section 131A of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. Section 131A deals with offences relating to possession of objectionable publications, and knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the publications are objectionable. The maximum available penalty now is imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding $50,000. The amendment increases that maximum from 5 years to 10 years, but I think it should also say “both” so that both penalties can by imposed. I think the fine should be increased to at least $100,000, because some people do actually make quite a lot of money out of some of these activities.

Clause 7 inserts new section 132B into the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. New section 132B contains a presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders. It applies only to a repeat offender who “(a) has been convicted of … a specified publications offence committed after the commencement of this section …” and “(b) before the conviction for the repeat offence was entered, had been convicted of 1 or more specified publications offences committed before or after that commencement.” In deciding whether such a publication is objectionable, the court must have had regard to the reasons in relevant classification office or board decisions. The offender must be sentenced for the repeat offence to a sentence of imprisonment unless the court considers the offender should not be sentenced, having regard to the circumstances of the repeat offence and/or the circumstances of the offender, including, especially, the age if he or she is under 20 years. That is a very important provision. These new provisions are appropriate and necessary. They are needed to provide the tools required by which it will be possible to break the cycle of offending in these ways by people for whom such offending often becomes addictive or for whom the financial rewards are too seductive.

Concerning the amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996, clause 10(1) relates to being knowingly concerned in the importation, exportation, or other unlawful transfer of an objectionable publication covering films, videos, and other such documents. The amendment increases the maximum term of imprisonment from 5 years to 10 years. This is also supported by New Zealand First because we think that a strong deterrent is needed for that. Again, some people make significant amounts of money out of these offences, so a strong deterrence is required.

Concerning the amendments relating to indecency in Part 2 of the bill, clause 13 creates a new offence, punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years. Clause 13 inserts into the Crimes Act new section 124A, “Indecent communication with young person under 16”. New section 124A(1) states: “A person of or over the age of 16 is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years if he or she intentionally exposes a young person under the age of 16 years (the young person) to indecent material (whether written, spoken visual, or otherwise, alone or in combination) in communicating in any manner, directly or indirectly, with the young person.”

In a prosecution it is not necessary under the new provision to prove that the intentional exposure was for an identified purpose, such as to obtain sexual gratification, or to alarm, distress, or humiliate the victim, the “young person”. But any identified purpose of that exposure may be considered in determining whether the material is indecent. New Zealand First welcomes this new offence, and 3 years’ imprisonment will certainly cause an adjustment in attitudes. But New Zealand First does have some reservations about new section 124A(2), which ensures that “A reference in subsection (1) to a person under the age of 16 years, or to the young person, includes a reference to a constable … who pretends to be a person under the age of 16 years (the “fictitious young person”) if the person charged with an offence against subsection (1), when communicating with the fictitious young person and exposing the fictitious young person to indecent material, believed that the fictitious young person was a person under the age of 16 years.”

The problem here is that it raises rather too much of a risk of genuine cases of entrapment. This is a matter that I will be looking very closely at and discussing with my colleagues on the Justice and Electoral Committee, because there does need to be a balance between good legislation, as I have said, and some of the safeguards to personal rights, which we all must be vigilant to protect. So we need to have a good look at that provision to see whether the balance is achieved. But overall this is a good bill, and its referral to the select committee does deserve support. New Zealand First will be happy to vote for it.

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill tonight. First of all, I would like to congratulate the Minister of Justice on bringing this bill to the House. I also congratulate the rest of the parties in the House on supporting this bill. It is good to see that every party in the House is behind it today.

Unfortunately, our children are vulnerable, and they are especially vulnerable when they are on the internet with the new technology that they have in front of them and available to them. Unfortunately, there are predators out there who will prey on our children and abuse them. So this bill is very, very important in that area in particular. I am not going to go into any detail on this bill. Denis O’Rourke just went through the bill clause by clause, so I do not think I need to give you that detail straight after his speech.

But what I do want to say to everyone listening out there is that you have the opportunity to come to the Justice and Electoral Committee next year to give your opinion on whether you think we have this balance right or wrong and on how we can change the legislation to make it even stronger than it is now. It is an opportunity for us to hear your voice. It is your opportunity to tell us about an issue that is really important to many people and impacts on their children.

I encourage everybody to look at this legislation, have the debate with family and your friends over Christmas, and actually get the discussion going in New Zealand about how we can protect our children, especially in this area. I commend this bill to the House.

It does give me some pleasure to rise to speak to the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill, and I too congratulate the Minister of Justice on bringing it forward. I think there is a malaise abroad that the incident on Facebook with the young men and their behaviour has brought to everybody’s consciousness in New Zealand recently. The malaise can be addressed by law, but only in part. There are a lot of other things that need to happen. The way we bring up our children, the way we train people to be parents, the kind of alertness there is in the classroom to abuse and violence, and all of the kinds of social exchanges where children are present are moments that we should protect with more effort than we currently do, in my view. We need to train our children to think differently and behave differently. This is especially difficult when the role models they have are no role models at all. But as far as are concerned in this House, there is something we can do, and it is in legislation. As I said, it is only one part of the fix but I am pleased to support it. This is what we do here; we pass laws. This is one that deserves support and closer investigation.

I have been reading the regulatory impact statement on this bill, and one of the things that the officials have said in the regulatory impact statement is that “Child pornography offenders have particular characteristics that set them apart from other offenders. Child pornography offenders are almost universally male and their occupations vary widely. Offenders often distribute child pornography in order to access the collections of other offenders. … Due to the diverse nature of child pornography offenders it is not always possible to make useful comparisons. However, the majority of offenders have no criminal history. Further, most child pornography offenders plead guilty and readily acknowledge their involvement with this material. These mitigating factors can result in a reduced sentence.” All of those things need to be taken into account when we are determining either the increase of punishment or the level of punishment that should apply.

I worry all the time that every time Parliament tries to pass a piece of legislation that deals with modern technology, the horse has bolted. In fact, there is another horse that we have not even thought about that is just about ready to bolt. I hope that in the course of the debate in the Justice and Electoral Committee, which I look forward to participating in, we can canvass some of the issues and make this both as broad and as specific as it needs to be in order to address the harm that is trying to be addressed through the bill.

One other point I wish to make is the business of the change in the Attorney-General’s function, and seeking the Attorney-General’s permission to prosecute. Clearly, that has been done in the past. In fact, the Department of Internal Affairs, the New Zealand Customs Service, and the New Zealand Police, who are accustomed to bringing prosecutions in this area, have had to, with the exception of the Customs Service, seek the Attorney-General’s permission. What I understand from my first look at this legislation is that that is being altered to apply only to private prosecutions, and if that is the case, that is fine. Certainly, there are safeguards that needed to be protected where there are private prosecutions being brought, so that nobody can bring a vexatious, frivolous, or damaging prosecution without reason. But where agents of the State are bringing a prosecution, then I think they have now developed enough expertise over time to be able to do that without the Attorney-General’s explicit permission. They have some internal checks and balances, I think, that allow them to make sure that they are not overreaching themselves in that respect either.

I look forward, as I have said, to good, thoughtful submissions on this bill. I am sure we will get others as well, but I look forward to the good, thoughtful ones. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise to take a short call on the first reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. Labour is supporting the referral of this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. We are supporting its referral to the select committee because it has an important purpose, because we need to know what the submissions are, and because we need to have a good discussion around this issue, which is to do with attempting to stop the spread and use of indecent material and child pornography. I do not think that anybody could ever argue against that, or ever would.

The bigger question—and there are a number of bigger questions that I know my colleagues have posed tonight—is where this fits not only within a wider and coherent justice strategy but also within a wider strategy around harmful behaviours and harmful behaviours in the digital environment. The big question that I want to put to the House tonight with regard to this bill is the absolute importance—and I do hope that members on the other side are listening—of the meshing of those things and ensuring that there is consistency. One of the big issues that has been raised around this piece of legislation, which has just been dropped upon us, is its reactiveness and the potential for it to be a knee-jerk response made in isolation from a wider strategic response. [Interruption]

Well, you know, Minister Tolley, there are plenty of other things that could be being done at the same time that actually give the sense to the community that the Government is actually providing a wide, coherent, thoughtful, consultative response around some of the behaviour that has been so concerning in our community. Those behaviours are concerning in the online environment and in the physical environment, but the important thing is that the legislative responses have consistency across both those environments and are well-thought-through and that they are not reactive and are not knee-jerk. That is why the discussion around that is so important.

The conversations that I have had—and which may be of interest to those who are shaking their heads and muttering on the other side of the House—with reputable organisations that have been doing ongoing thinking in this area, and which have not necessarily felt listened to, are very important. Certainly, my big message to the Government on this issue is that it listen; that it does not just react in a way that appears to be because the problem is the latest thing and therefore it has to be seen to be doing something; that it does take a longer-term consultative approach to any moves in this area; and that it does widely consult and actively listen. Unfortunately, the Government is not known for doing any of those things.

There are big questions in this space about enforcement, because there are not enough enforcement resources in this space to do anything like a thorough job. It is true of New Zealand, and it is also true of other countries. That should be acknowledged. If we are talking about the internet as the environment, it should be acknowledged that it is a very difficult place to police using traditional enforcement techniques. So one of the big questions that needs to be looked at in the discussion at the select committee on this legislation is whether agencies like the police and the Department of Internal Affairs really have the resources to enforce these regulations online. I would like to end with that question, because certainly the appearance of being seen to do something and the actuality of doing something and then backing it up with enough resources is critical in this whole debate. I look forward to that discussion in the select committee.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

The House adjourned at 5.43 p.m. (Thursday)