Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill

I move, That the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill be now read a second time. Can I take this opportunity to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its work on the bill. I understand that the committee received eight submissions on the bill, and has recommended that it proceed without amendment. This bill addresses a repugnant issue faced by societies around the globe. Advances in technology mean that the public can now access, store, and distribute information in ways and with speeds that were unimaginable even a decade ago.

Although for the most part this connectivity is a positive thing, it can also facilitate the offending of those who seek to exploit our children for their own perverse ends. Offenders can now possess frightening numbers of images depicting child sexual abuse with ease, and at the click of button distribute these to a wide audience. The images can be replicated and distributed further again, often enduring for the lifetime of the victim and beyond. The knowledge that an image remains available to be viewed and shared can create ongoing feelings of re-victimisation.

A 2009 study estimated that internationally 200 new images depicting sexual abuse of children were put into circulation every day. There is also evidence that the content of the publications is getting worse and the children are getting younger. Law enforcement agencies have indicated that those who reoffend in this area tend to do so with a high level of premeditation and go to great lengths to avoid detection.

I have great confidence in New Zealand’s law enforcement agencies, which have a history of successful prosecutions against those who trade, make, or possess child exploitation material. However, the law in this area is outdated and the sentencing regime for objectionable publication offences no longer reflects the seriousness of this offending and the ease with which offenders can obtain and share these images. This bill seeks to address this issue by modernising the law and sending a clear message that the possession of, and trade in, child exploitation material are abhorrent acts that encourage the abuse of children.

To achieve that purpose the bill makes several key changes. Firstly, the bill increases maximum penalties for possession, import, and export of an objectionable publication from 5 years to 10 years. The maximum penalty for supply, distribution, and the making of an objectionable publication increases from 10 years’ to 14 years’ imprisonment.

Secondly, the bill also provides for a presumption of imprisonment for persons convicted of offences involving child exploitation material for a second or later time. This presumption will apply unless the court is satisfied that the offender should not be so sentenced, having regard to the particular circumstances of the offender or the offence. Both the increased penalties and the presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders will ensure that the sentencing regime for objectionable publications offences better reflects the vast range of offending in this area.

Thirdly, the bill clarifies that the possession of an objectionable electronic publication includes intentionally viewing electronic material without consciously downloading or saving it. This amendment is for the avoidance of doubt and ensures that offenders with particular technical expertise are not able to escape liability by viewing electronic objectionable publications without also saving them.

A further key change is the removal of the requirement for law enforcement agencies to obtain the Attorney-General’s consent to prosecute objectionable publications and indecency offences. Historically this requirement provided a safeguard against inappropriate public prosecutions. However, the New Zealand Police, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the New Zealand Customs Service now have significant experience in determining inadequate internal processes to assess the appropriateness of a proposed prosecution. The requirement for consent for public prosecutions thus no longer serves a useful purpose.

Lastly, the bill creates a new Crimes Act offence of indecent communication with a young person, and that means anyone under the age of 16. The new offence also applies where the person charged communicates indecently with a police constable believing that constable to be a young person. The new offence will be punishable by a maximum of 3 years’ imprisonment. This offence aims to address a gap in the law that exists between objectionable publications offences, which apply only where an offender records a communication, and the sexual grooming offence, which is only made out where the offender takes steps to meet that young person.

Indecent communication with a young person can occur in a variety of old and new media, including text or picture messaging, internet chat, and, of course, the 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 a communication is recorded or whether the offender takes steps to physically meet with the young person.

I propose to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper to the bill in the Committee stage that will ensure that ACC cover is provided for mental injury caused by this new offence and the existing sexual grooming offence in the Crimes Act. In addition, the Supplementary Order Paper will amend the Vulnerable Children Act to ensure that anyone convicted of indecent communication with a young person will have restrictions placed on their employment in core children’s workforce roles.

The measures in this bill make it clear that the law prohibits indecent communication with children, and will ensure that those who possess and trade in this objectionable child exploitation material receive a sentence that properly reflects the grave nature of the offence. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak at the second reading of the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. At the outset I would like to thank colleagues within Labour, the Hon Maryan Street and Raymond Huo, who were both members of the Justice and Electoral Committee on Labour’s behalf and were fantastic members of the Labour caucus. We hope we can carry on their work in our scrutiny of this bill.

I say up front that Labour is supporting this legislation, although I believe that in other readings of this bill we have expressed some concern that we have seen just a slightly ad hoc approach to some of the justice legislation that has been coming through the House, and that perhaps there is room for a more systemic, coherent justice strategy on issues like this. Because although this bill addresses some of the concerns with indecency and child pornography, we wondered whether or not further justice legislation needs to be created to get at the—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—societal issues that really go to the heart of this issue. Child pornography offenders, for instance, have particular characteristics that do set them apart from other offenders, and legislation could perhaps be worked out that addresses that concern.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: That’ll learn him.

The member did not give me the royal wave as he entered the Chamber, which I think was what was missing.

We have had a history of increasing penalties in this area over time, as recognition of the severity of these issues has come to the fore. In 2002 I worked in the Hon Phil Goff’s office when he was Minister of Justice. As I recall—

💬 Grant Robertson: Did you get counselling?

—no counselling required; it gave me a very good political start—organisations like End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT New Zealand), an international group with an excellent advocacy chapter here in New Zealand, would frequently visit Phil as Minister of Justice. They raised the issue of the inadequacy of the laws that we had in New Zealand, which had been based around censorship legislation. In 2003 Phil specifically raised that the penalties were “clearly inadequate and fail to reflect the fact that the production of child pornography involves the actual abuse of children”. I do think that the changes that we are making today reflect that that is a sad reality indeed. So it led to the current penalty regime. I believe that 2005 was the last time we saw an increase in the penalty regime, and we are now reviewing it again. In fact, ECPAT New Zealand always argued that the penalty regime should be in line with our child abuse penalties and regime.

As the Minister of Justice has already outlined, we have got an increase in the maximum penalties for possession, importing, and exporting of objectionable publications from 5 to 10 years—keeping in mind that of course we have judicial discretion as to where on the severity of that scale any offender will sit—and in the maximum penalty for the supply, distribution, or making of an objectionable publication from 10 to 14 years. Again, as has been said, given the abuse of a child that takes place in the making of some of this material, that seems absolutely appropriate. There was, however, a concern heard, as I understand, by the select committee, made by some submitters, that increasing penalties for objectionable publications was a very general way to approach the issue, because it was not so specific as to say that it should solely be for objectionable publications that involve children. There was concern about whether or not that could actually be specified.

Actually, this was an issue, as I understand it, that was raised back in 2005, because the framework legislation that we are working from is still a subset of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, which does not hold, as I understand it, a separate offence around child exploitation material. So I would be interested to hear from a member of the committee as to why it was considered. Obviously, in 2005 they said it would be too complex to create a subset. I would be interested to hear from a member of the committee as to the nature of that discussion. I understand that there was some talk about whether or not you would need to create separate subsets, then, for women who were objectified in an exploitative way in material as well; whether or not you would then have to individually codify everything if we went down this track. It was a concern raised by, I believe, the Law Society, so it certainly merits some discussion and analysis. So I look forward to any member who was a member of the committee expanding on that.

There was also some discussion around the way that multiple offences should be treated. It is something that we debate frequently in this House: should we tell the judiciary that if it has someone who comes before the courts more than once, it should then be required to impose certain penalties? Of course I mean the three-strikes legislation. On this side of the House we always had trouble and issue with legislation such as that. But what this bill does instead is say that for the very specific offence of the publication of exploitative material that involves children, if an offender presents for a second time, there should be a presumption of jail. That is very different, for instance, from the three-strikes legislation, which is not specific to an offence.

In particular, and, again, I would be interested to hear if there was evidence of this, if there have been multiple offences in this area, or a second offence—and, as the Minister said, offenders are often calculating in this area and particularly manipulative in the way they operate to continue their offending—if we know that the evidence suggests that this will continue and there will be an escalation, then it would make sense that if someone was found guilty of a second offence, we should give a suggestion to the judiciary of what our expectation is for that offender. We do not have things like the Sentencing Council, which might be able to give guidelines to the judiciary on issues like this, so perhaps Parliament unfortunately does need to be much more explicit in that regard and express a presumption of imprisonment. But, again, judicial discretion always, always does remain in that regard.

We then move to the Attorney-General’s consent for prosecution, which was an issue raised by the Minister. I think this is a piece of legislation that demonstrates that often when we put in place legislation in a new area, where we have not been able to test the way that Government departments will utilise the provisions that are given, checks and balances are a wise thing to do. But it is questionable whether or not we still need to have, for instance, a requirement for law enforcement agencies to obtain the Attorney-General’s consent to prosecute for objectionable publications and indecency offences. Indeed, when it is the police, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the New Zealand Customs Service that are predominantly involved in those prosecutions, I think the common sense of the House would say that after this period of time when they have been tested in this area, we can have faith in removing that provision. But of course it still remains for private prosecutions, and that makes absolute sense, on my reading.

Finally, I refer to indecent communication with a young person. It has been an issue for some time as to whether or not a prosecution should still be able to proceed under the realm of grooming, for instance, or indecent communication with a young person under the age of 16, for which we are now creating a new offence in the Crimes Act. But should, for instance, a law enforcement agency be able to purport to be that under-16-year-old in an interaction and have that offence still hold? Again, this is something there has been enough experience with in the departments that I think they have made a fair case that it would be on reasonable grounds. Someone purporting to be a 16-year-old but is in fact a law enforcement agent—we can be assured that there are enough protections in the law to ensure that is only being used in an appropriate way. Otherwise, we are putting children at risk if we are not enabling checks and balances to exist in some form around allowing law enforcement agencies to go on and gather the evidence that may be required for a successful prosecution, but in such a way that we are not using entrapment, for instance.

I think that covers the main provisions. The select committee, in my view, has done excellent work. Labour, of course, supports the continued progress in that area to make sure that we are up to date with the current challenges that we face.

I also want to commend the previous Justice and Electoral Committee in the Parliament before this one—the 50th Parliament, I think it was—for its work on this bill, the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. I am not surprised to see that Labour is supporting this bill, and I want to congratulate the Labour members of the select committee. As the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, did mention, there were several Labour members—the Hon Maryan Street in particular, who I know made great contributions to this kind of legislation during her time in Parliament.

This Government, as all Governments of course do, takes child abuse very seriously, and is working hard to do everything we can across a number of spheres to combat child abuse. Members will recall the Vulnerable Children Act, which was passed in the last Parliament, sponsored by the Hon Paula Bennett, and which put children at the front and centre of the consideration of the Government agencies of police, justice, social development, education, and health. It provided for better communication and more joined-up services by those Government agencies, and provided a stronger focus on protecting young children from harm. Of course, that Act, and a lot of the work this Government does, is around child abuse. In this bill we are talking largely about online abuse and cyber-abuse of children and indecent and objectionable publications. But I think in the wider context it would be fair to say that this Government has done a lot of work, supported by parties around the House. I do acknowledge that this is an issue that does cross party boundaries.

It is interesting to know, and gratifying, that the number of children abused in the year ending in June of last year fell by 12 percent from the previous year. OK, that is just 1 year of figures, and these things do vary, but it is gratifying to know that the work that is being done by Government agencies on behalf of us all, and on behalf of the Crown, is making a material impact on the level of child abuse in New Zealand. Long may that continue. That is why it is important that we keep our attention on this issue and keep bringing decent pieces of legislation to the House so that we can attack, if you like, this issue across a number of fronts.

There are just a couple of other things I want to mention, because they are really assisting in making a material difference to children, and that is the Social Workers in Schools programme. That covers all decile 1 to 3 schools now. That is affecting and contributing to the safety and the well-being of around 140-odd thousand children in New Zealand, and I think that is—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I think the member has now had about 4 minutes. It would be good if she could come to the bill that we are debating.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. Am I dressed OK, too? Thank you. Good. Good. As is the Social Workers in Hospitals initiative—I am going to move on very quickly, but I always think it is important to provide a bit of context—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): You are not commenting on my ruling, are you?

—and having done that I will now move specifically to mention the purpose of the bill, which, quite simply, is to increase penalties for the production, trading, and possession of objectionable publications. That includes images depicting the sexual abuse of the children. Maybe, Mr Assistant Speaker, it is that I simply did not want to come to the matter in hand, because it is a hard matter to speak about, but speak about it we must.

The bill does amend a number of Acts, those being the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, the Customs and Excise Act, of course, and the Crimes Act. There will be a Supplementary Order Paper breaking the bill into five separate bills, amending legislation on films, videos and publications; customs and excise; crimes; accident compensation—that covers off cover for mental injury through indecent offences, so that is why the Accident Compensation Act is being amended; and, of course, there is the Vulnerable Children (Children’s Worker Safety Checking—Indecency Offence) Amendment Bill. If I might say so, speaking to relevance, my words around Social Workers in Schools really do relate directly to the amendment contained within the Vulnerable Children Act, so I am just tying it in, I hope, for the Assistant Speaker’s satisfaction.

The main provisions in this bill include increasing the maximum penalty—those penalties have been considerably increased—for the importation or exportation of an objectionable publication, which currently sits at 5 years’ maximum penalty. That is doubled, and the penalty for that will be 10 years of imprisonment. The bill is increasing the maximum penalty for distributing or making an objectionable publication. The penalty for that currently sits at 10 years, and that has increased to 14 years’ imprisonment. If you think about that term of imprisonment, it is a menu from which a judge can choose to protect children from an offender by incarcerating the offender in prison, but it also, on the upside, gives the opportunity for our corrections system to provide some rehabilitation and corrective training to those offenders whilst they are in prison. It is notable that rather than just incarcerating people for however long—up to 14 years but maybe 11 or 12 years—that it is a good period of time for a prisoner to undergo a number of programmes to address his or her offending, as the case may be.

That is the other half of the equation. We know that that prisoner is ultimately going to be returned to society under parole conditions and maybe under court orders—none the less, it is one thing to lock them up, and increasing the penalties is a good move—but, of course, ultimately these offenders are going to go back into society. When one has a look at the work of the Parole Board, perhaps, you see that offenders who have been released come back in front of the Parole Board because yet again they are hanging around a city mall, yet again they have got hold of a cell phone and are beginning to contact young children and beginning that whole ghastly process of grooming young children yet again.

We need to take the issue of reoffending very seriously indeed. There will be under this bill the presumption of imprisonment for repeat offenders. Those repeat offenders include any person convicted of a child exploitation material offence for a second or later time. So that is for repeat offenders. From what I have come to learn around this area, there is a strong incidence of offenders planning to reoffend, giving a good deal of their time, when they can, to grooming and planning to reoffend. That is why the multi-pronged approach that this Government is taking to these offenders by increasing the penalties, and also at the same time providing for rehabilitation, is making a difference and will continue to make a difference.

The bill makes it clear in the Films, Videos, and Publications Classifications Act that possession of objectionable material includes intentionally viewing material over the internet without consciously downloading or saving it. So the internet seemed like a good idea at the time, I am sure, but, as we all know, a large percentage of internet use is not googling for our speech notes. The bill is also creating a new offence of indecent communication with a young person—that is, a person under the age of 16 years. So indecent communication with a young person can occur in a variety of old media and new media, and of course nowadays there is text messaging, picture messaging, Instagram—

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: Snapchat.

—Snapchat, all the new technologies that are so very attractive to increasingly younger and younger and younger children, internet chatting, and, of course, the telephone. This we have in this legislation. We are futureproofing child protection by recognising that the technology is changing and the use of technology is changing very rapidly. Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for your indulgence; I know I have strayed a little. Thank you for your indulgence, but this is an important bill. I commend it to the House.

I would also like to add my acknowledgment of the work done by my Labour colleagues the Hon Maryan Street and Raymond Huo on this bill as the representatives for the Labour Party during the select committee discussion on this bill. I spoke on this bill briefly in the first reading and I have been back and had a bit of a read about what I said and why I said it. I would like to confine my remarks on the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill to the issues that concerned me back in the first reading and that still concern me following the return of this bill to the House. There is no doubt—and we will put it on the record that Labour is supporting this bill—that the behaviours that it is seeking to address or to provide penalties for are absolutely critical. The abuse of children—and not just the abuse of children but the actions of child pornographers and people who use and disseminate and produce objectionable publications and distribute them—should be condemned. There is no doubt about that. Nobody is going to deny that.

My particular issue with this piece of legislation and another one that I am going to mention shortly is the absolutely important nature for this Parliament in 2015 to be thinking very seriously about how the legislation that impacts on the physical environment meshes with legislation that we bring before the House that impacts on the online environment. The internet is not a sentient being, despite the point I think the previous speaker, Jacqui Dean, was making. It is a means of transmission. It is a means of connecting and communicating. It is not a thing in itself. There have to be people creating the actions and doing the communications. The behaviours in the physical world and the behaviours in the online world and the penalties and laws that we put around them have to have some consistency. It is my real concern that what is starting to emerge is a discrepancy between those things. I know we are going to see further debate and angst around the implications of that. So I am putting on the record that I remain concerned about this legislation and whether all of those issues have been thought through.

One of the reasons that I make that comment is that when looking at the list of submitters on this legislation—of which there are eight, I think, and all extremely worthy submitters, there is no doubt about that—it did not include the organisations and the people who are doing a lot of thinking and mulling over these implications. This raises a further point, and that is how we as a Parliament and, in particular, the Government, which is putting the laws on the Table for debate, are actually communicating with the wider public around legislation that is being put before the House. I think we have to ask ourselves whether our process of communicating and inviting submissions, ensuring that there is good consultation and engagement before we pass these laws, is sufficient. Personally, I do not think it is and I think that we are not doing enough work to get the draft legislation out there to the community to have those discussions. We expect everyone to come to us and we expect everyone to just know that these laws are out there. In legislation such as this I think there could have been, perhaps, a more extensive engagement process.

There is another piece of legislation coming back to Parliament, no doubt soon, called the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, which also attempts to create a new set of penalties that impact on the electronic digital environment, which is different and separate to the physical environment. I think that this raises some significant issues for us as to whether we are getting it right. I think it is less controversial with this bill before the House at the moment; much more controversial with the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. I would like to signal that there is going to be—and there does need to be—a wider discussion in the community around that particular bill, which introduces a new civil enforcement regime and a new criminal penalty that applies only in the online environment. Nothing like this has been done anywhere in the world—creating a new penalty, which could mean prison, that applies only in the online environment. So that is significant and it is very important that we are not having piecemeal discussions about these things.

The point that my colleague Jacinda Ardern made at the beginning is about the importance of having a coherent strategy around a justice strategy and not coming up with pieces of legislation in a knee-jerk reaction. I am not meaning that in an extremely pejorative way, but I am saying that any legislation such as this should fit within a wider strategy and we should be very careful not only to mesh it with other pieces of legislation but also, especially if it is talking about the online, electronic environment, to make sure that there has been a lot of careful thinking about that. I just do not think it has happened. I do not think that that thinking is going on. I think we have got this “We have a problem, therefore we must do something about it, and here’s the thing to do something about it.” response, and I am concerned that the unintended consequences of some of our approaches to this will have impacts down the track.

One remedy is to ensure that we have done the right consultation with the right groups, and with the right people who are doing the good thinking around this. That has not happened as far as I am concerned in this piece of legislation. One of the issues that has been raised—and I think it was raised in a regulatory impact statement—was around the difficulty in predicting the effect an increase in maximum penalty will have on reducing the offence. I think there has been a little bit of discussion about that already. One of the submitters on this legislation was the Dunedin Community Law Centre. I must say that the Dunedin Community Law Centre is a pretty awesome organisation. It submits on almost every piece of legislation—can I say—and I am pretty proud of it, just giving it a bit of a shout out here tonight.

💬 Grant Robertson: Started by David Parker.

Oh, it was started by David Parker—our own David Parker—but the centre is a very assiduous organisation, which really gets out there and puts the work in to submitting. Another submitter was the Salvation Army, which pointed out that increasing the penalties for objectionable publications offences could distort relativity with other offences by treating some physical offending as being less serious than the depiction of that same offending. The Salvation Army submitted that this created an anomaly, as physical crimes should be punished more severely than objectionable publications offences, and the Dunedin Community Law Centre suggested that this may send the wrong message to those physically abusing children. Well, I rest my case. This is the physical environment versus the online environment. Are we doing enough thinking about the impact of the new laws that we are bringing into this environment, and what are the implications for that? I do not have all the answers to that, but I just do not think we are really thinking it through.

Can I seek a split call with my colleague Brett Hudson and a bell at the 4-minute mark?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): You may and you are granted.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I take no particular pleasure in speaking on the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill in this second reading debate. I can see, looking around this chamber at members’ faces, that everyone regards this as a distasteful matter, and it is actually a bit of an indictment on our society that we need this sort of legislation and that there are people out there with a sickness, obviously, and a tendency to exploit children through the viewing of indecent images.

I will address some of the things that previous speakers have brought up. Firstly, actually, in responding to the previous speaker from the Opposition, it is a little bit ironic to hear about piecemeal discussions and a non-systemic approach to the justice system, as that member sat next to a many-hundred-page Judicature Modernisation Bill that systemically reforms the entire justice and court system. I think this is a Government that takes these matters very seriously. Clare Curran is right about one thing, and that is that there is a problem. These images are being created, they are being disseminated, they are being viewed, and they are a form of abuse in and of themselves. So when we hear about the difference between the depictions of abuse and the abuse itself, in a way they are one and the same thing. In fact, the depictions amplify, they distribute, they disseminate, and they record over a long period of time images that I am sure the victims of those crimes would rather forget than be reminded of whenever those images are circulated.

There were a few other issues that were raised. Jacinda Ardern asked about the views, I suppose, of those on the Justice and Electoral Committee about a particular issue, and that was the definition of “indecency” and why, if we are trying to achieve a focus on preventing the dissemination of child abuse images, there is not a prevention of the wider issues coming into play. Well, there are a number of other kinds of objectionable material—and I am sure our New Zealand First colleagues will raise this because it was discussed by them in the committee—but I actually have no problem with images of bestiality being treated in the same way as images of child abuse. They are equally objectionable in my view, and I think we should increase the prison sentences to up to 10 years for the possession and up to 14 years for the importation and distribution of such images. I do not actually have a problem with that kind of approach.

Secondly, in terms of the Attorney-General’s role in this, we have moved into a new era in which we do not need the Attorney-General to be the arbiter of whether a prosecution could be reasonable or not. The police, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Customs Service have significant experience in this area. In my view, we are not going to see, as a result of this legislation, material that we could consider to be of an artistic nature being pursued by overly enthusiastic enforcement officers. I think we are going to see our law enforcement agencies, which provide us with a safe and secure society to live in, take a pragmatic and sensible approach on these issues, and that is the driver behind the removal of that traditional Attorney-General consent requirement—except for cases of international and private prosecutions. So it is important legislation. It protects children in New Zealand and abroad.

The bill does give more opportunity for rehabilitation. As my colleague Jacqui Dean mentioned, it gives a longer period of time in which multiple rehabilitation programmes can be undertaken by offenders so that when they inevitably are released—because we do not keep people in prison for ever—it is absolutely incumbent upon us to make sure that all that is reasonable has been done to reform, to remediate, to rehabilitate, and to lead to a situation where those people are not going to reoffend in the way that they have been.

One last point to touch on is the wider definition of “indecency” in general. Members are right: in this legislation there is no one definition of indecency, but there is considerable case law in this area. We are bringing this in to modernise the technical aspects as well as to increase the penalties. For those who have suffered from the IT problems in Parliament today, it goes to show how reliant we are in the modern world on the cloud. This is to keep the legislation up to date with the technology that we have in the world today. Thank you.

I think it is fair to say that we all enter this House to achieve very important things. Some of us may have entered here with views around economic development, education, health, or other areas of social justice. What we have the opportunity to do here is to do some really important—very great, in fact—work around helping to protect our children and helping to keep them safe. I think it is very much part of the idea of what brings us all together into this House.

I would like to follow on from what my colleague has said, with particular emphasis on making sure that our laws are keeping up with modern society and the tools that we are using today. Firstly, this bill is about implementing an action plan to increase penalties for producing, trading, or possessing objectionable publications. New Zealanders deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their communities, and this Government is definitely building a safer New Zealand. At the moment, crime in New Zealand is at a 35-year low, but that did not happen by accident and it will not continue by chance. It is only through vigilance and ensuring that our legislation is keeping up to date with modern methods and modes of communication, in particular, that we can ensure that.

The part I wanted to really focus on was around the information age. The provisions in this bill make it clear that in the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act the possession of objectionable material includes intentionally viewing material over the internet—including viewing material without consciously downloading it or saving it. One of the great things, of course, about the internet is that it has given most of the population incredible access to information that some years ago, certainly a decade or more ago, was much harder to source. That gives people a lot more power in their day-to-day business when they trade or buy things, whether they do so over the internet or in shops, but what it also does is proliferate a lot of material that many people find quite objectionable, and the areas of pornography, and in particular child pornography, are held to be very prevalent. So it is extremely good that what we are doing with this bill is ensuring that our law enforcement agencies and our judicial system can adjust and adapt to the fact that the way people are viewing this sort of material today is perhaps a great deal different from when this sort of legislation was first enacted and last amended.

Just before I go on to some part of that, it was not without some irony that I noted before, with the Judicature Modernisation Bill, that members had about half a tree sitting on their benches. It seemed a bit odd, when we are talking about modernising something, that we would be killing trees to be able to display it. I would have thought that tablets would be better, and not tablets of stone either, but tablets connected to the internet.

So today, as has been canvassed, offenders can access objectionable material in any sort of form and at any speeds over the internet. In fact, the problem here is that possessing that material actually creates a market for further production and proliferation. This House has heard, in debates on other matters, about peer-to-peer networking and file-sharing technologies and services. So once an individual has sourced this material from the internet, possessing it actually makes it a lot easier to share it and spread it around, which is, of course, something we do not want to be seeing.

So it is very, very good that we are making sure that we are capturing not only people who download material but also people who consciously view it but take some measures to ensure they do not save it on to their local machine—where, of course, it can be more readily detected. It is also very important that we are including tools such as social networking sites, texting, and other forms of technology that make it easier, particularly, for adults to communicate with children in order to exploit them. So I would just like to finish by saying this is a wonderful bill and I commend it to the House.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.