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

I move, That the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This is a bill that has been widely canvassed at the first and second readings and at the select committee stage and the Committee of the whole House stage. There have been no amendments made to the bill since the select committee stage. As has been widely canvassed in the House on previous occasions, it makes a small but useful change to the regime around interim restrictions as part of our censorship law in order to avoid a situation like we had with Into the River, the book that was banned, temporarily at least, for 6 weeks in 2015.

I do not think I should take up any more of the House’s time. I commend the bill to the House.

It is interesting when a member gets up and gives a less-than-a-minute speech in the third reading when I think the members on the other side of the House spent quite a lot of time canvassing the issues in the Committee stage.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: That’s the point.

Ha, ha! I certainly think, from the Labour Party’s perspective, that this is a small bill. We agree with that. We agree that it has some use. We agree with that, and we support it, but I think it is also important to make a couple of points. One of the points is that given that this may be the member Chris Bishop’s last contribution to this House, I would say to him that if you are going to bring a member’s bill to the House, try to make it count.

He made some points in the first reading about the wider issues around censorship and around the role of the Film and Literature Board of Review and its processes. I think that it would be good for him to reflect on making a more substantial contribution around not just its role in making the interim restriction orders but its role in general, which he actually alluded to in the first reading, and also to the film and classification process in general, which is currently in a situation of being an anomaly in New Zealand, because we have films that are classified under one Act, television programmes that are classified under another, and digital programmes that have no classification regime.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am going to interrupt the member. While it might not be particularly easy for me to do it, I do want to make clear to the member that what she is asking cannot actually be part of the third reading debate. We are now debating the bill as it has emerged from the Committee of the whole House and the debate in the select committee stage that occurred previously. It is not a general debate on the bill or on the area.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Those points are still quite relevant, and there is still no legislation that applies to them. This is a bill that corrects an anomaly—a very small anomaly—in legislation. Small can sometimes be quite important, and I think that given the fact that it did result in a book that was written for teens, “out of the water”, being banned temporarily and unable to be taken out of the library, it does matter. That does matter.

I do want to acknowledge the fact that the member actually did attempt to address that anomaly. But in addressing that anomaly he did not look beyond, and I think that is—you know, if you are going to come to this House—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Just improve the tone slightly, please.

—it is important to actually think, a little bit, in a big-picture way, because, otherwise, what is the point of being a member of Parliament if you are not trying to make substantive changes? I would advise the member that, if he actually has any future in the Parliament, when he brings a member’s bill he actually seeks to address more than just a tiny little anomaly.

We do support your bill. There has been quite a lot of debate about the bill. There are much bigger issues in New Zealand than the bill that this member has put before the House tonight. It is almost 10 o’clock on a Wednesday evening, and if any members of the public are listening to this debate, they are probably asking: “What on earth?”. But we do support it. We do think that the interim restriction orders under the parent Act did need to be revised. We did support the change. We have questioned the wider issues around classification of content online. We do think that the contesting by Family First, which resulted in this book being banned, was an out-of-date and out-of—you know, in 2017 it is a method that should not be allowed to occur. The decision of the film classification board should have been able to revert back to some sort of existing or previous classification, and that is what this bill, essentially, does.

The upshot of this is that we do support this bill. We are sorry that the member could not have thought in a slightly bigger-picture way about the classification system generally, because the Government has not gone down that path in its 3 years. Looking at the convergence regime, there has been no legislation come from that Government—no legislation in this space at all—which shows that it is a backward-thinking Government, in terms of convergence and the convergence between all the digital platforms.

There is a huge gap in legislation in terms of the classification of content in New Zealand. It is negligence by this Government. At least this member, Chris Bishop, has tried to fill a tiny little gap in legislation. It is a bit sad, but we support it, and we hope that his legacy in this Parliament—well, his legacy in this Parliament is now before the House. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Orders) Amendment Bill. Up until this point, New Zealand First has opposed this bill, but we have taken the time, and we have been persuaded by Mr Bishop’s eloquent arguments about why the changes that have been made at the Justice and Electoral Committee have been needed.

New Zealand First, as the responsible, reasonable party that it is, had a wide and varied conversation at our select committee.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)