Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider this bill. Last year Ted Dawe’s award-winning novel Into the River was banned in New Zealand. The reason it was banned was a strange anomaly in our censorship laws, and it is that anomaly that this bill seeks to address. Let me start by briefly recounting the somewhat complicated factual matrix that is the background to this bill.

In New Zealand, publications are classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In September 2013 Into the River was classified as unrestricted—“M Suitable for Mature Audiences 16 Years and over”—by the classification office. Classification decisions can be appealed to a body called the Film and Literature Board of Review, and this decision was indeed appealed by Family First, a lobby group that sought a restricted classification for the book. So, in December 2013, the board of review classified the book R14. This is a unique classification that had never previously been assigned. Don Matheson QC, the board president, issued a dissenting view, which is very rare in these circumstances, and said he would have rated the book R18.

So that was where things lay until 2014, when there was growing dissatisfaction with the board’s decision, particularly amongst teachers and librarians, because it was cutting off access to a particular class of people—young people, obviously—and Auckland libraries requested that the board’s decision be reconsidered by the classification office. So, in August 2015, the classification was changed, again, to unrestricted, and this was the first time the classification office had ever reconsidered a decision of the board of review.

Following the reconsideration, Family First again appealed the classification decision through the board of review, and this time it decided to ask the president of the board of review to impose an interim restriction order—which is where we get to the bill—and that application was granted on 3 September 2015. What that restriction order did was make it illegal to supply the book to anyone or to display the book in, or within, view of a public place. It was the first time an interim restriction order had ever been imposed on a book in New Zealand. They have previously been imposed on films, and I will talk about those in a few moments. So there was a gap between 3 September and 14 October 2015 when the board of review could examine the book again, and for that 6-week period the book was illegal to be supplied or to be displayed within view of a public place. So, essentially, the book was banned in New Zealand for that 6-week period. After that time, the board of review examined the book again, and this time the majority decision was to classify the book as unrestricted, and the interim restriction order was rescinded.

Interim restriction orders can be issued pursuant to section 49 of the Act by the president of the board of review after an initial classification is made but before a review hearing is held by the board of review, and that power is essentially replicated in section 67 when it comes to the High Court. The problem with the regime is that in the case of Into the River, the president had only two options. He could either allow the decision of the censor—that Into the River should be unrestricted—to stand while the board made its decision on the appeal, or ban the book entirely until the board had made its decision. What was not available to him, under the existing law, was the power to reinstate either of the two original classifications—i.e., unrestricted M, or R14.

The end result, I believe, was clearly a nonsense. You had a book banned for 6 weeks, even though three previous censorship decisions across the Office of Film and Literature and the board of review had ruled it should be legally available, albeit with some restrictions. Even the president of the board of review, in his dissent in the initial hearing, would have made the book R18. So what this bill does is propose a simple amendment to section 49 and section 67 of the Act to expand the toolbox of the president, giving the president the same powers available to the classification office and the board of review, which means the ability to restrict a publication based on age or specified classes.

What this means in practice is that in the case of Into the River, it would have meant the president could have reverted the book back to its R14 status rather than banning it outright. The president was unable to keep the book available, even with a restricted rating on it, such as R14 or unrestricted M, because that power is not available to the president in the interim restriction regime currently. What this bill will do is it will give the president the power to do that. It will eradicate the binary nature of the president’s decision-making options, which are basically: restrict the book completely—ban a publication—or leave it under its existing restriction.

I want to make a couple of comments, in the time I have got left, about interim restrictions more generally, because I believe there is a strong case for abolishing them completely, for three reasons. The first is that I believe they interfere unjustifiably with freedom of expression. Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 is an affirmation of the importance of freedom of expression in New Zealand. As Justice Anderson put it, in Hosking v Runting, it “is the first and last trench in the protection of liberty.” Clearly it is of vital importance in our liberal democratic society.

The problem with interim restrictions is that they give the power to the president of the board of review to ban a publication outright, even after that publication has already been assessed and classified by the classification office. New Zealand courts, like those in cognate jurisdictions in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, have traditionally viewed with distaste the prospect of judicial restrictions on speech—this is known as prior restraint—in advance of a substantive hearing. Courts have emphasised that even in cases involving defamation, breach of confidence, and breach of privacy, freedom of expression values will ordinarily prevail at the interlocutory stage. Given the importance of freedom of expression, even at that stage, I believe it should definitely prevail once an actual hearing has already been held on a publication.

In the highly unlikely event that a publication is unrestricted by the classification office, only to be banned later by the board of review, then any harm suffered by society in the interim is surely, I believe, at the margins. There is no magical reason to privilege the decision-making power of the president of the board of review over the classification office.

The second reason is that the extraordinary power enjoyed by the president to ban a publication in the interim is arguably unnecessary. I got the Parliamentary Library to dig up some cases, and between 2005 and 2012 the board of review altered only seven classifications made by the classification office, out of 101 reviews. Moreover, none of these decisions reclassified a publication as objectionable—i.e., banned.

Thirdly, interim restriction orders can be abused, and this point is neatly illustrated by the Bully and Visitor Q cases. In 2002 these two controversial films were classified R18 by the censorship office, with their screening restricted to film festivals or for tertiary study. Not long before Beck’s Incredible Film Festival, which the films had been imported to be shown at, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards appealed their classification to the board of review, arguing that the films should be banned entirely, and the then president of the board of review imposed interim restriction orders on the films.

By the time the board of review met to consider the classification, the festival had been and gone. It had finished. So the films were banned for a few weeks, effectively, including when they were actually due to be shown. So the Society for Promotion of Community Standards achieved its aims. It, effectively, banned the films at the only outlet that they were due to be shown at in the first place, and, of course, by the time the actual decision had been made and they had been classified or reclassified by the board of review, the time for them to be actually shown had gone. Actually, the board of review in the case of the film Bully maintained its R18 film festival / tertiary study only classification. Visitor Q, for which an interim restriction was argued, was actually rated R18 without any special conditions. So what that shows is that power to issue interim restriction orders, albeit not recently in the case of films, can be abused.

Those were just a few closing remarks about the nature of interim restrictions. It is a little-known part of the law. Probably most members of the House, I suspect, did not know much about them until the case of Into the River happened last year, but I think Into the River demonstrates that we need to fix up this anomaly—that there is an anomaly in the law. I decided to do something about it, and that is what the bill before the House does. It is a simple bill, but, I think, an important one for freedom of expression, and I commend it to the House.

Labour supports this bill and agrees with Chris Bishop that this is a small but quite significant bill and that there is a definite anomaly in the legislation that exists. Of course, often we do not know about these anomalies until they hit us in the face. When a book such as Into the River by an author such as Ted Dawe ends up being temporarily banned—and I know that it was not an actual ban but it was temporarily taken out of the community—it raises issues that are bigger than one would think. These are issues that relate to civil liberties, freedom of speech, community standards, and where we are as a society, and it causes us to do quite a bit of reflection. So I commend the member on this bill, genuinely. I think that this is a small but significant piece of legislation that we should take to a select committee and scrutinise: not just this individual instance but the wider issues that surround it and what they mean, where we sit as a society in terms of our community standards, our children’s access to information, the information that is important for growing up, and the processes around how a book like this can end up in the situation that it ended up in.

I asked the Parliamentary Library to give me a list of the books in New Zealand that have been banned, and, curiously, a long list has come back today. It is much longer than I actually would have thought it would be: I think I have counted up 180 books that were banned between 1963 and 1994. I am not quite sure why I only got to 1994. I do not really want to read out the titles of many of them—these were banned by the Indecent Publications Tribunal. I guess the question I was asking myself was: what does it take to actually ban a book in this country? I will read out the title of a couple: Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture: Including Recipes for MDA, Ecstasy and Other Psychedelic Ampthetamines—that is a good one to read out—and Kitchen Improvised Plastic Explosives was another one. I am not going to go any further than that, and please do not do this at home—and I mean that most seriously.

The situation is that there are reasons—and good reasons—why some things get banned. New Zealand is a liberal country; New Zealand is a country where freedom of expression is highly valued, and I hope it stays that way. I hope that we maintain the vigilance of politicians across Parliament around the importance of freedom of expression. But there are times when things are produced that need to be taken out, or not allowed into the country; there are good reasons for that. But the issue that brought this bill to Parliament tonight is not one of them. It is a clear anomaly that needs to be corrected. I hope that when it gets to select committee there will be a wider discussion.

If there was to be a criticism of the author of this bill, it would be that before you bring a bill like this—or any member’s bill—to the House I think it is always important to do some exploration in the community, and, particularly, to talk to the organisations that will have views. We certainly know that there were authors in New Zealand who had views around the temporary “banning”—and I am using that word knowing that it was not an actual ban, but there was a taking of this book out of circulation. There were authors who had views. There is a Society of Authors. There are civil liberties groups. There is the Law Society. There is the Library and Information Association of New Zealand that no doubt could have provided—and hopefully will at select committee—views on this issue and the wider issues. I think that it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians, when we are putting in a member’s bill before the House, to seek some of those views before we actually craft the wording of the legislation—not that we have to take on board all of their views, but we should go out and seek their views. That would be the only criticism that I have.

The other point that I would like to make in the time that I have got remaining is to talk about the further reform. The member is putting a reform into the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. There has been, in this country, under the Minister for Communications, a review—called the convergence review—that has been going on for several years now, which has still not ended up with any action—

💬 Jacqui Dean: It’s “converging”.

—around the classification of content generally.

💬 Tracey Martin: It’s “converging”—“converging”.

“Convergence”.

💬 Tracey Martin: Sorry—Jacqui Dean says it’s “converging” now.

It is “convergence”, Jacqui Dean—and if she does not know what the word means, then she can look it up. There has not been any reform by this Government in this area, and this is really basic. There is a proposal being put forward, supposedly by the Government, that we still have not seen on the Order Paper around the difference between online classification and TV. So we have the same content coming in through Netflix, or Lightbox, or whatever online mechanism, and we have got it on Sky TV, or on TVNZ, or MediaWorks—and they are being classified under different regimes, whether it is the Broadcasting Act or the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. Which is it to be, and where is the reform that this Government is talking about?

Clearly, we are not going to get that legislation through before the end of this parliamentary term. What that shows is a paucity of ideas and vision and action coming from the Minister for Communications and the Minister of Broadcasting, who clearly has not been able to bring together any convergence—any real actions—in the convergence space since she has been the Minister. I think that is very telling. She gets a lot of plaudits for her work in the justice sphere—and I am not dissing that—but what I would say is that there is no action in the area that is glaringly obvious in the convergence between the online world and the other world of broadcasting.

Thankfully, we have a small but significant piece of legislation before us today, which is likely to go to select committee. Labour supports this bill to select committee. We would like there to be a wider discussion being held around convergence, which may be able to be sparked at select committee on this piece of legislation. Ted Dawe’s book is a book that is aimed at 14-year-olds or young people, which deals with some real issues affecting young people, and which has sparked a bigger conversation. What better for the convergence discussion than for this to be the spark that might light a bigger fire? I commend this bill to the House.

This is the first reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill in the name of Chris Bishop. First of all, congratulations to the member on having his second bill drawn from the ballot, and, like the first bill that Chris Bishop brought to the House, this is good one. I am very pleased that this one is coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

As has already been noted in the House this evening, this bill has its genesis in the classification fiasco of Ted Dawes’ book Into the River—an award-winning book. I thought I would just go through the time line of what occurred with Into the River, perhaps to give a little bit of context. In September 2013 the book was classified as being unrestricted M, which means that it is suitable for mature audiences of 16 years and over, and that was done by the classification office. Family First, as it is entitled to do, applied to the Film and Literature Board of Review seeking a restricted classification for the book. In December 2013 the board of review classified the book R14, which, as it turns out, was a unique classification that had never previously be used or assigned. Don Mathieson QC, who is the board’s president, issued a dissenting view and would have rated the book—he held the view of it being R18.

In 2015, following growing dissatisfaction with the board’s decision—particularly amongst teachers and librarians, Auckland libraries requested that the board’s decision be reconsidered by the classification office. So in August 2015 the classification was changed again all the way back to unrestricted. This was the first time that the classification office had ever reconsidered a decision by the board of review. Following the reconsideration, Family First again appealed to the classification office’s decision to the board of review.

So it came round again. This time it also asked the president to impose an interim restriction order. The application was granted and it was granted on 3 September 2015—so we are 2 years down the track. The interim restriction order made it illegal to supply the book to anyone or to display the book in or within the view of a public place.

Members and any members of the public who are tuning in to this will possibly recall the furore that surrounded this classification uncertainty. To go from R14 to R18 to a total prohibition or restriction just did seem a little inconsistent, and it highlighted some deficiencies within the legislation. It is notable, also, that this was the first time that an interim restriction order had ever been imposed on a book. On 14 October 2015—that same year—the board of review examined the book again, and this time the majority decision was to classify the book as unrestricted. The interim restriction was rescinded. It was a bit of a dog’s breakfast, and so in came Chris Bishop and his bill, which will help avoid a repeat of what some would argue is a fiasco—the banning of Ted Dawe’s award-winning Into the River book.

Into the River was the first time an interim restriction had been ordered on a book. It meant that there was a complete lack of certainty, a complete lack of clarity, a complete lack of consistency, and a complete lack of options. This bill of Chris Bishop, which is coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee, seeks to remedy that. I think it is a good bill. I think the committee will have an interesting time considering all the issues around it, and I commend it to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to support the bill. I would like to congratulate the member Chris Bishop on having another bill pulled from the ballot. Look, we will be supporting it. It is a minor bill. It is dealing with an issue, a problem, that has happened all of one time in history! It is quite phenomenal, when you think that there are 70,000 young New Zealanders out of work and out of training, 40,000 people sleeping in cars and garages, unswimmable rivers, pollution going through the roof, and systemic economic problems, that the issue to deal with is an issue that has happened once.

Look, it is a real issue. It is a minor issue. We will be supporting it because it is a real issue, but let us focus on the real, important issues to New Zealand.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Let us focus on this bill.

On this bill, which you have got to say is better than an airport luggage bill—this bill deals with this minor quirk that happened. I was one of many New Zealanders who were outraged at the decision that resulted in Ted Dawe’s book, the award-winning Into the River, seeing a temporary ban. I remember standing outside Unity Books in Wellington with a whole bunch of noted authors and publishers. We all had books covered in brown paper bags to symbolise how ridiculous it was in 2015 to see a book literally taken out of public circulation. Kids and libraries could not access it. The amazing foot-in-mouth, Barbra Streisand - effect result of all this negative publicity is more people bought the book. More people read the book. I think it is great to see that freedom of expression—to see that Kiwis wanted to get some of the forbidden fruit that the office had decided they could not access through their libraries, etc. So, look, it was a real issue, a minor issue, and we support the intent of the member to address it.

It does, though, raise some bigger issues. This gives the office a greater sense of flexibility, which the Green Party supports wholeheartedly. It will be interesting to hear the arguments and the experts in the select committee. But I have noted quite particularly in the last couple of years that we are seeing a much more proactive and publicity-seeking chief censor in New Zealand. This is someone whom traditionally you do not hear a great deal of, but we have seen a lot of the chief censor over the last couple of years.

One of the issues the chief censor has really picked up on, which is not contained in this bill, is how we treat books, literature, and games. One thing the chief censor wants to do to New Zealand is require all the video games—and, look, we consume $162 million worth of computer games in New Zealand, according to the last data in 2013. The chief censor wants to apply a classification regime across those thousands of video games that are consumed in New Zealand. The irony, of course, is that because of the creaking, old-fashioned approach we have, this would be an incredibly expensive proposition—in the order of $1,400 to $2,000 a game. At a time when we have got hundreds of Kiwis coming up with great ideas and selling them on platforms like Steam or the iTunes App Store, often this would mean the difference between that game being available in New Zealand or not, if the chief censor got his way.

When I was recently in Australia at the largest Southern Hemisphere video game exhibition, supporting about 10 New Zealand companies that are exporting into the Australian and the global market, doing great work as part of the $92 million in exports our video game and interactive media industry earns New Zealand each year, what they told me is that in Australia they have got a system called the International Age Rating Coalition. This is a voluntary body where game developers can submit their game to a voluntary self-classification body. It uses the power of the cloud and participants to give it a rating. The costs are almost minuscule. What they have seen in Australia is hundreds of thousands of games now getting a classification, instead of the 200 or 300 a year that previously got a classification. I have got a message to the member. If he wants to focus on some of the bigger issues facing the sector and the chief censor, maybe this is an area where New Zealand should be looking as well.

I want to touch on the sentiment of Clare Curran. What we have seen from the broadcasting and communications Minister is this process, the broadcasting convergence review. Years and years have gone into it, screeds and screeds and papers and papers have gone into it. What did we get out of it? A potential release of the advertising ban on Sundays. That is the result. We are seeing giant media corporations merging in New Zealand, and real threats to net neutrality if the Sky-Vodafone merger goes ahead, in my opinion. There are ginormous issues coming from new technology, but if the Government wants to focus on these minor technical issues, so be it. We are going to focus on the big issues facing New Zealand.

It is my pleasure to stand in support of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill tonight in its first reading in the House. This bill seeks to amend the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act of 1993 by providing the High Court and the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review with some flexibility around making interim restriction orders. The situation arose, as we have heard already tonight, when the book Into the River found itself banned completely for 6 weeks after going around the circus of review and restriction, review and restriction.

This is a very simple amendment. The current system, unfortunately, is extremely black and white, like a good old movie, and coming to the rescue, like a great hero in a black and white movie, is Chris Bishop. He has recognised the simple amendment that is needed just to bring some common sense into the system. He has ridden in on his white steed and he has got the solution for us all. The only interim option currently available is to completely ban a publication or to leave it unrestricted. There is no discretion available. This bill provides for applying classifications that could restrict the publication based on age or a particular class of people, such as M, which is suitable for mature audiences, or perhaps R14, which, of course, is restricted to those aged 14 and over. This simple amendment gives the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review a couple of practical tools in the available tool kit so that common sense can prevail, thereby avoiding the situation that found the book Into the River completely banned for a 6-week period. I look forward to this bill making its way through to the Justice and Electoral Committee. That will be ably overseen by its chair, Jacqui Dean. I congratulate my colleague Mr Chris Bishop on his initiative in recognising the need for this bill to come to this House.

I will just mention very briefly the sections that will be inserted. Clause 4 will insert a new section 49A. That will allow the president of the board to restrict availability to a particular age or class of person or for a particular purpose. Clause 5 will insert a new section 67A, to allow the High Court, when making an interim restriction order on appeal, to restrict availability to a particular age or class of person, or for a particular purpose. Sometimes, as we have seen in this House, it just takes a little bit of common sense to bring around some very workable legislation. It is very easy for us, sometimes, to put it in the too-hard basket, but my friend and colleague the able Chris Bishop has used this opportunity to bring this legislation into the House. I have great pleasure in supporting him, and in commending this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill—long title, small bill. New Zealand First will support this bill to select committee only, at this stage.

I want to pick up on a couple of things that have been said, apart from the visual image of Chris Bishop riding in on a horse and saving the day, and so on and so forth, which nobody really needed. Let us get real—the National Government did not need to talk about a hero riding in right now either.

Many of the contributors this evening have talked about the book Into the River being an award-winning book, and it was. But let us talk about where this conversation started. It is a winner of the children’s book award—the children’s book award. Because it won that award, schools and school libraries bought it in large numbers. I remember this, as the chairman of the board of Mahurangi College. This book was then placed on the shelves for the students to actually access. At the same time, the librarians began to read the book, as they do in all things.

There are things that are inside this book—there are phrases inside this book—that I cannot say because of the time of night. There are descriptions of actions inside this book that I cannot repeat to you inside this House because it is unparliamentary language. I cannot say them on mainstream television because of the hour of the day. Let us be clear: the first mistake with regard to this book was the category in which it won its award. I am not making any statement on its literary value. It perhaps should have been the teenage award. It could have won the young adults award, but it did not; it won the children’s book award, and it was placed into libraries and into schools—primary schools and secondary schools—for full access.

Then, Family First quite rightly—now Mr Bishop made a comment where he described Family First as a lobby group, and it is. I would have thought that Mr Bishop was the last person to talk about lobby groups in any sort of detrimental manner. However, Family First has absolutely, as Ms Dean said, used its democratic right to ask for this decision around classification to be reviewed. What we had here was a 6-week ban from the shelves. So the error in the first instance, I believe, was actually being given the wrong award for this particular book, and when it had a classification of R14 it went on to the shelves. I do not know how many members over there have read any part of this book. Hands up—anybody ready it? No. Right.

💬 Jono Naylor: “Is anybody listening?” is more to the point.

Ha, ha! But you have not read the book. So you are going to make a decision—that member is going to make a decision in ignorance, and I find that very interesting. But it is pretty much standard for that particular member. That particular member is in ignorance, and the man behind him continues on that pathway. What we are talking about here is—and what we in New Zealand First want to make sure happens at select committee is—that we want to hear the voice of all of the community around what this might do. All that happened here was that one book, for one time in history, had a 6-week ban while it was reassessed. That is what happened here. Is it necessary to change the whole law because of that?

💬 Jono Naylor: You’re going to vote for it.

Was it a single one-off incident—Mr Naylor, I know you are going, but please try to concentrate—that we do not need to change the whole legislation for? That is what New Zealand First will be looking for.

With regard to Mr Bishop’s comment about abolishing interim restrictions completely, that is a wider conversation. Let us hope that that is outside the scope of the bill, because that is another whole conversation that should be wider than just this particular select committee, with regard to how the country sees censorship and protection—because that is what it comes down to—of certain age groups and certain demographics. And we heard from Clare Curran the reason why certain things end up getting banned.

What we are talking about here—and, as I say, New Zealand First will support this bill at first reading, to select committee only at this stage, and I have explained that to the member whose name is on this bill. I am hoping that I will sub in on that select committee, just to liven it up a bit, so that I can hear all the submissions that should take place. I hope that Family First comes forward, and I hope the chief censor himself comes forward to actually contribute. Kia ora.

Firstly, can I say that if my good friend and colleague Mr Bishop is around next time the Lotto Powerball jackpots to $44 million, I think I will go down to the shop with him and let him choose the numbers, because for a member of Parliament in their first term, within 2 years, to get two bills drawn out of the ballot is very, very lucky. They say luck comes in threes, so, as I say, next time Powerball jackpots to $44 million I will be with Mr Bishop. We will be down at the local Lotto shop, and I will certainly be lining up with him and letting him choose the numbers.

That said, the things that he has actually put in have been very worthy. Last week we had the third reading of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill—a great bill, and I just want to congratulate my colleague Mr Chris Bishop on actually getting that one through—and no sooner has that been dealt with, out comes this second bill, which is another very good bill that I am happy to support. Many of the speeches tonight have been focused—and the last speech in particular was very, very focused—on one particular publication. It seemed to be very focused on whether or not one particular book was going to be in Mahurangi College’s library, but this bill is about far more than one book. It is actually about what actually goes on beyond that.

The Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill—which is definitely a mouthful, and certainly, when we get to the Committee of the whole House we may want to debate a little and see whether we can shorten that down a little bit so that perhaps it is not so much of a mouthful for us to say every time we refer to it—I think addresses a very important aspect. Yes, there are some publications that do need to be dealt with in the way that the publication Into the River, which has been talked about, needs to be dealt with, but there is potential for this kind of thing to happen again. This is not just about that book; it is about ensuring that we actually have processes in the future available to the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review and to the High Court to empower them to make better decisions that will actually address issues in an appropriate way.

For example, if I was to have made a film that I wanted to release, and the initial classification on that film was deemed as, perhaps, M—suitable for mature audiences—and my good friend Mr Bennett behind me then came out and said “You know what—this is terrible. Clearly it should have been an R18 movie.”, then the only opportunity that the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review would have, while they were undertaking that, would be to simply take that film right out of circulation. As someone who, perhaps, had made that film, and had not necessarily decided for myself what audience it was intended for and was leaving that up to the censors, I would be financially impaired in terms of making some money off that. Even if that person was against it being classified as M, and wished it to be R18, it would seem stupid and pointless for that film to actually then be taken completely off the market.

The mechanism that is proposed by this bill would then allow the powers that be to, in fact, actually put in an interim classification of, perhaps, an R18, or an R20, or whatever it is that they might choose to do. At that point it allows for a certain level of revenue to flow into the film maker. It will, in fact, appease the person who is appealing the decision and is not happy with the way that it is being administered. It is appeasing them in the first instance. So everybody ultimately is a winner at this stage.

I am happily going to support this bill, and not just at the first reading. I am sure we will get some interesting submissions through the select committee process. I look forward to hearing those submissions as they come through the Justice and Electoral Committee. I am pretty confident that at the second and third readings I will be voting for this bill as well because it is eminently sensible and it is practical. It is about getting good measures in place for good legislation going forward. I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, ki a tātou katoa i tēnei pō, tēnei te mihi ake ki a tātou.

[Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but at the same time to us all this evening, I commend us.]

We have heard about heroes on horses and winning Lotto; I was wondering for a moment what bill we were actually debating. So how about a bit of kaupapa Māori, just for the mix? I want to congratulate Chris Bishop on having a second bill drawn from the biscuit tin. I think there is some real merit to this particular bill, and I want to commend him for bringing it here, although I do note the contribution of others as well. I want to support my colleague Clare Curran in this respect.

We live in quite a different world. The 14-year-olds of today live in a different world from the one we all grew up in, I can assure everyone in the House. I think the challenges for young people around what they read are highly influenced by what happens overseas, particularly on television and on the internet. In a way, despite this particular bill addressing one instance that we are aware of, something that has gone wrong, do we honestly believe, in this House, that 14-year-olds are not accessing information and quite a lot of other things through the internet and through television?

Even on mainstream television—and for those teenagers who have access to pay TV, they get to see adverts from overseas on those particular channels that do not comply with the restrictions within New Zealand television. So they get to see things that they might not otherwise get to see on New Zealand broadcast television. I agree with Tracey Martin; I think we do need to have a wider conversation around all of these things.

As I said, I commend the member for bringing this bill to the House because I think it has sparked that new conversation that has to happen. I look forward to seeing the submissions that come in on this bill. I think there are potentially quite a number of sector groups and organisations, individuals, who will put in submissions on this bill, and quite rightly so.

I will not carry on for too much longer. I did start by saying that I would make a contribution around what would be a Māori world view of this issue. I kind of reflect and put this position, that on these issues information is power—information, and correct information—and it is really important that we make certain that all of the information around this particular bill is discussed openly and transparently. I support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on my parliamentary colleague Chris Bishop’s excellent Film, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill. I echo my other colleagues who have congratulated him. I have had a member’s bill in the ballot for—God knows how long; ever since I came into Parliament in 2008. I have not been that lucky, and Chris has been very lucky to have had two bills drawn from the ballot. So I congratulate him.

I used to make G-rated television programmes; that is, family viewing, on a Sunday morning. The G-rating means no violence, no anything, and it has to be viewable by all the family. I was just thinking about classification and what could have gone wrong. I remember an incident when one of my reporters had done a story about wrestling. It was obviously wrestling—it is not really real; it is just make believe. One of them used a foil plate to make it look like he was bashing somebody over the head with it. It was foil, but the classification office thought it was a little too violent, and I remember having to re-edit that particular scene because it was seen as too violent. So I do know one or two things about classification and ratings.

I totally understand what Tracey Martin was talking about, in terms of the content of a book that should be relooked at. As a parent raising a young teenager I used to constantly worry about what was in a book. I had to trust that the classification on the book or the video game or the video was correct. You cannot always monitor what the content is. As a parent, you cannot always read the book before you give it to your child. You have to trust that it is, in fact, the correct classification.

However, I do believe that the 6-week ban might have been an overreaction, perhaps. There were other, milder, classifications that they could have gone to, but the law did not actually allow that. Mr Bishop put forward this bill due to the situation that happened last year, as other members have said. The situation in law is not acceptable, in that it limits creativity and the potential of our creative communities, when they know that the professional censors may overclassify their work and they may be unable to sell or publish while they challenge the decision.

Talking about the concerns of parents over certain ratings and whatever, I think Adrian was talking about how children who are now 14 live a very different life from when we were 14. I was thinking back to when I was a child and going to the movies with my parents, and my parents’ restrictions on certain aspects of the movies. My parents were big fans of 007 and went to see Roger Moore. There were lots of romantic scenes, and scenes that were a little bit more amorous. My parents’ way of restricting our viewing was to call out: “Children.” We understood what that meant. My brother and I had to hide our eyes, and my mother would close our ears with her fingers, and that was our way of having our viewing restricted. That is how we grew up.

I think different cultures have different ways of dealing with these things. I grew up in Korea, where there are no overt romantic or sex scenes on television. Usually it was about family things, so we did not have to worry about that. But having grown up in that society and then coming to New Zealand and now seeing a whole lot of different varieties of movies and texts from around the world, I think the censors and the classification office have major work to do.

In summary, I believe that Mr Bishop’s bill is an excellent piece of legislation, and I am sure you will find that out. I am sure that the select committee process will bring out that maybe there are other things that you might have to work on. Perhaps you could improve the bill. Maybe there are other areas, apart from texts; maybe it is videos as well that you could extend it to. I would like to once again congratulate Mr Bishop on the excellent job of being very lucky in getting his bill drawn. I wish him good luck through the select committee process. I am very jealous that I am not on the Justice and Electoral Committee to sit through this. I commend this bill.

Mr Deputy Speaker, tēnā koe. I rise to address this bill, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill. One of the pleasures that I am finding as a new parliamentarian is the need to go out and do a little bit of research on the bills that come before us, and I have learnt a lot about censorship in New Zealand in understanding the context for this particular bill. It is timely for this bill to be introduced. Censorship is 100 years old in New Zealand. It was introduced in 1916 in response to churches, local boards, education boards, and social action organisations, which were concerned, in those days, about the advent of film as well as books.

There is a recent exhibition by Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision called Censored: 100 Years of Film Censorship in New Zealand, and that traced the history of censorship in New Zealand back to Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 film and one of the greatest films rated of all time, which was censored; followed by All Quiet on the Western Front, which was regarded as anti-war propaganda; followed by films such as The Wild One in 1953, starring Marlon Brando—some of us may remember that—and up to Mad Max in 1979. These are all films that were, for varying periods of time, censored.

Our censorship laws and practices have evolved significantly since then. It has not only been films that have been censored; there have been publications that have a political nature, as well. During the 1951 waterfront dispute, for example, it was illegal to publish material in support of the waterside strikers. So we are seeing, now, censorship having evolved into its current form, and we have talked about the controversy around Ted Dawe’s book Into the River.

I will join my Green Party colleague in welcoming this bill, and congratulations to Chris Bishop on having it drawn. However, it feels a little bit like we are fiddling while Rome burns, given that, actually, technology has taken over the broadcasting and consumption of images and words in a way that is very hard for us to keep up with. The changes in technology have been quite profound. These days, kids can access material from around the world in real time, across an amazing variety of media, and we need to be aware of what dangers there are for children, for adults, in exposure to some of this information on the internet. I think that we have been focusing excessively on films, videos, books, and now, perhaps, games, without actually understanding that this is a moving picture and, in fact, the landscape is shifting very quickly.

So the question is whether our censorship processes and laws are able to deal adequately with the modern technologies. I think that is the relevant question for us in looking at censorship issues. We need to update our legislation and we need to update our practices. I fear that this bill will not take us far in that direction. As a minor tweaking of the current law we are happy to support it, but it seems like rather a shame to be spending a significant amount of parliamentary time when, in fact, the real challenges are elsewhere. Thank you.

I want to thank all members of the House for their, well, reasonably positive comments in support of the bill. It is good to have, I think, my second member’s bill in the last year—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ha, ha! My colleague next to me is “yeah, yeah, yeah”-ing me, but it is good to have a member’s bill supported unanimously—certainly, at least, at first reading. I take the comments from Tracey Martin that they will want to have a good look at the bill at the Justice and Electoral Committee.

I thought it was a strange speech from Gareth Hughes in response to the bill, essentially running the argument that there are much bigger things that Parliament should focus on. I have made this point before in this House that not everything we consider in Parliament is a matter of momentous significance to the country. Actually, the business of lawmaking in New Zealand is about changing laws that are sometimes technical, sometimes boring, but really important, and sometimes really important for particular subsets of people.

This bill deals with one of the most fundamental rights in our constitution, and that is the freedom of expression. So yes, it is technical; yes, it is small; and yes, it arises out of a peculiar set of circumstances, but it actually touches, in quite a real way, upon a fundamental right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the broader New Zealand constitution.

What we saw with the case of Into the River was the revealing of a strange anomaly in the law that needs fixing, and this bill sets out to do it. What we had with Into the River was a strange situation where a book, which was an award-winning children’s book, was published and was, essentially, taken off the shelves and made illegal to possess or to display for 6 weeks because of a strange quirk of the interface between the appeal functions of the Film and Literature Board of Review and the classification office. Actually, it is incumbent upon Parliament to do something about that, and that is what this bill sets out to do.

The other point I made during my speech, which I think rebuts some of the points that Gareth Hughes and, latterly, Barry Coates made, is that it is not just one case. Gareth Hughes talked about the Into the River case. That was the genesis for this bill, that is the origin of it, because it is the first time an interim restriction order has been imposed on a book, but as I said in my first speech on this bill, interim restriction orders have been applied to films.

Actually, generalising slightly, the Green Party should be the most in favour of at least reforming the power of interim restrictions, because it is things like the incredible film festival, which I strongly suspect a lot of Green Party supporters in Aro Valley go to in Wellington, to watch the weird and wacky films that often get brought over—and it is the weird and wacky films that groups like the Society for Promotion of Community Standards and Family First try to stop being shown in New Zealand. So it is all very well for Gareth Hughes and Barry Coates to say “Oh, well, this bill’s a waste of time.”, but, actually, it deals with a very real concern for their core constituency, which is the wealthy urban liberals in Wellington Central.

I talked in my first reading speech about the case of Bully and Visitor Q, which had interim restriction orders applied to them by the Film and Literature Board of Review—but were applied for by the Society for Promotion of Community Standards—and that were, basically, banned for the period before which the appeal was heard. Of course, the film festival happened for a couple of weeks, and by the time the appeal was heard, the film festival was over. So the Society for Promotion of Community Standards got its way, essentially, by using this law. I said in my first reading speech that we need to have a look at that.

There are real free speech problems with interim restrictions generally. They can be abused. Actually, the board of review very rarely alters the classification office’s decisions in the first place, which makes you wonder why we need this power. Third of all, they interfere unjustifiably, I believe—or, at least, there is a case to be made—with freedom of expression.

New Zealand courts have viewed with distaste the idea of prior restraint on speech—the idea that the courts should, before anything is even allowed into the public domain, restrain speech from being made. In this case, we are not just talking about speech even being restrained in an a priori way; we are talking about restraint on speech after it is made. We are talking about a restraint on a publication after it is actually available in the public domain. So we should be even more wary, I believe—or society should be even more wary—about placing wholesale restrictions on speech through interim restriction orders.

So those are the things that the select committee is going to examine, but the bill deals with a specific set of circumstances arising out of the Into the River case. It was wrong that Into the River was not available for 6 weeks because of the misuse of the interim restriction power. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

The question is that the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice and Electoral Committee. Those of that opinion will say Aye; to the contrary No—no one voted. [Interruption] Did you? Very quietly? The Ayes have it.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.