Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

At its heart, this bill is about protecting our children from online harm. In any given week, New Zealand children and young people will spend more time online than they may well do with their mum, dad, or primary caregiver. So as the internet and its many, many platforms have become more prevalent in our lives, so have the dangers that are associated directly with it. Labour are committed to child wellbeing, and this includes protecting our children from harm. Online spaces are increasingly becoming an area where this harm can occur, and the law sometimes struggles to keep up with rapidly evolving technology and different platforms.

As online platforms become more popular with young people and it becomes harder for us as parents to monitor everything our kids are doing online, the opportunity for people to cause harm to our kids through the internet increases. The days of being taught about “stranger danger” and being careful when walking home from school have now changed to include the internet and the need to keep our children as safe as possible when they are online.

Netsafe and the Ministry for Women conducted a survey recently. In particular—they did this in partnership—they looked into the experiences of New Zealand teenagers, with online risk and harm in mind. The survey found that seven—seven—in 10 New Zealand teenagers have experienced at least one type of unwanted digital communication within the past year. It also found that nearly 19 percent of those teenagers surveyed experienced an unwanted digital communication that had a negative impact upon their daily activities. That 19 percent surveyed had been also asked for a nude or nearly nude image of themselves to be shared.

When we heard the submissions on Louisa Wall’s bill on stopping harmful digital communications, it really struck me the number of frank and fearless accounts we heard from young people whose lives had been really torn apart by the unwitting sharing of images of themselves where they were nude or nearly nude, and how that had played out not only to affect their own mental health but also their own confidence and even potential of securing a place of employment in the future.

This increasing trend is something that, as parents, we should take notice of, and, as lawmakers, these issues are something that we can respond to as well. This bill is designed to help to ensure that our justice system can respond appropriately to protect our young people from those who engage in acts online to harm people, and to harm young people in particular. It is based upon similar legislation that has been passed in Australia. The law in Australia was known as Carly’s Law; it was named after Carly as the result of the efforts of her mum—whose name is Sonya Ryan, an Adelaide mother—who campaigned for over a decade after her 15-year-old daughter was murdered after an online predator posed as a teenage boy.

The creation and enactment of Carly’s Law enabled enforcement agencies to take action against online predators before they have the opportunity to act. Making this addition to New Zealand’s law builds upon the existing offence of online grooming that was introduced by Labour back in 2005. When this law was passed it was noted, when I looked back on the speeches at the time, that those who offend against children are often habitual repeat offenders. This bill enables police to intervene earlier.

A recent case that we’ve seen in New Zealand, in a Hamilton instance, saw a school teacher who had messaged a student approximately 1,600 times, but, due to the difficulty in prosecuting or proving, it was difficult. Even in the judgment, it’s interesting to see comments around police’s actions. There is a requirement in that 2005 offence to have an element of sexual nature to the comments, and so, without that there, prosecution is made more difficult, even when proving intent may be able to be done. So the bill proposes to make a change to the Crimes Act 1961, and it adds two new offences designed to protect young people from online harm, and to increase the penalty for meeting a young person following sexual grooming.

The first offence inserted by the bill is digital communication for a person under 16 with intent to mislead, and it means that someone who is 18 years or older or who digitally communicates with someone who is under 16 with the intent to mislead them about their age or identity and then meets or arranges to meet with this young person, can now be imprisoned. Existing law provides that there is a requirement for sexual reference in communication, as previously mentioned, and this has made prosecution difficult in the past. This change sends a clear message that an adult impersonating a child with the intention of meeting someone is unacceptable in New Zealand.

The second offence inserted by the bill is “Digital communication with young person under 16 with intent to cause harm.” This new offence means that someone who is 18 years or older can be imprisoned if they digitally communicate with someone under the age of 16 while deliberately intending to cause harm to the young person or are reckless as to whether the young person is harmed. This change, as stated, will help police protect young people from others who set out via the internet to communicate with them in order to cause harm.

In both of these new offences, the change is specifically designed to assist police in doing their jobs. So the two new offences are both applicable in cases where the young person in question is, in fact, a police officer in an undercover or sting operation.

Finally, the bill increases the potential maximum sentence for an offence under section 131B of the Crimes Act, “Meeting a young person following sexual grooming, etc”. There is debate around penalties, and that is a debate that goes on. Look, I have some reservations, to be frank, regarding just outrightly increasing penalties, and I think that while offences against children and young people are serious and should carry serious penalties, I would like to hear comments—particularly from members of the public—at the next stage, at select committee, and also the advice from officials in relation to the proposals that have been made at this first reading stage.

Specifically criminalising this activity is part of the response to the problem, but I do want to note, for the record, that equally important is education to ensure that parents and caregivers, as well as children, are aware of the risks and aware of the steps that they can take to keep safe. That is why this bill builds upon the good work that this Government has been doing in this space, including great initiatives like funding the hugely popular Keep it Real Online campaign. The honourable Minister Jan Tinetti has done a fantastic job at championing that campaign so that not only young people but also their parents and caregivers are aware of those risks, and our legislative change that was debated just last night, in terms of films, videos, publications—these changes are helping to keep New Zealanders safe.

To sum up, I know that many parents are concerned about who their children are talking to online. This bill provides further protection for our kids under New Zealand law and sends a very clear message that an adult impersonating a child, with the intention of meeting someone, is unacceptable in New Zealand. I know that this is something that parents have called for, and I am pleased that this bill has the opportunity to be considered by the House and also by the Justice Committee. I commend the bill to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

As a parent of young children, I really worry about the online world, and I’m sure that I’m far from alone. I’m sure that the kind of concerns that I have will be ones that, actually, the vast majority of parents in the modern world—with computers and all manner of devices—also have. We in our household, look, we try and limit screen time, but boy oh boy do the boys love their iPads and YouTube, and various other things they can access online. There’s a couple of issues, aren’t there? There’s the time they spend online and how much is appropriate and right for them there, and then there’s also the content that they’re accessing. The reality is that, in terms of that time, the evidence about what a lot of time online does for children and young people isn’t necessarily decisive—you’ll find that there’s multiple studies. I note Sir Peter Gluckman and his organisation connected to the University of Auckland has recently done a report on this. But I feel, personally, as a parent, that it can’t be entirely unproblematic. There has to be problems associated with a long time on devices, and it can’t be an unalloyed good in terms of what it’s doing to young brains, what it means for their attention span, their ability to concentrate on difficult, complex things at school and the like.

Then, of course, there’s also the issues not just in the time online, even if it’s nice, worthy stuff that kids and young people are looking at, there’s also the issue of the content that is being accessed. I would just note, in that regard, look there’s all manner of examples around the world, The Wall Street Journal in the last month or so has run an investigative series on Facebook and the work Facebook is doing to have an Instagram for kids. And, somehow, my recollection is The Wall Street Journal came across secret documents, or not public documents, and they made it quite clear that the research of Facebook itself shows all the mental health problems and various other issues—depression and esteem issues and harming and the like—that go along with social media, and the peer pressure that’s around that. People are saying that social media is the new tobacco, and if we could cast forward a few years, that may be so.

Then there’s, of course, when we think about content, the issues around clearly inappropriate, harmful content for our young—and I’m thinking, of course, of pornography, I’m thinking about extreme violence that can be accessed and, as the member in charge of this bill, Ginny Andersen, has said, “Look, we’re not monitoring our children and our teenagers 24/7.” So this is a real issue, and it doesn’t take much for a young one to—left unmonitored—find innocently enough they are on to harmful sites and the like that scare them and potentially scar them. So there are real worries about this whole area of online generally. And I, for one, want to protect my kids. I’m sure other parents want to protect theirs as long as we possibly can.

That brings me to this bill, which addresses the issues of unwanted digital communications and child exploitation. Sadly—in fact I’d probably use a stronger word than “sadly” and say “tragically”—it’s not uncommon for adults to try and contact children and young people online for bad purposes; and the purposes can include the procurement of graphic pictures through to the sexual grooming for actual sexual conduct that, again, the member has spoken of—whose bill this is in the name of. I’m sure the entire House stands as one in condemning such behaviour. This bill, if passed—it seems to me—would assist with adding criminal offences and criminal penalties for such terrible behaviour. I note what the member has said, “It’s based on Australian law”—that’s not always a bad thing and I’m sure, actually, to some extent copying what they’ve done is a good thing. I’ll be interested to see, at select committee, the experience a little way in—of Australia—given they have a similar law.

All of that means that National supports the intent of this bill. More than that, I think we support the substance of this bill. We’re going to be interested to hear submissions on it and go through those. I would simply make this constructive—I hope—point at this very early stage and without having gone through it and thought about it deeply and how this bill would relate, if passed, to the various other criminal laws that are already on Parliament’s books. I think, from a cursory glance at the offences that are created by this bill and the increased penalty in relation to offences against section 131B of, I think it’s the Crimes Act 1961, is it? It could be, actually, that what’s being done here should even go further. That the scope of what is in the bill isn’t actually enough to cover the various forms of practices, purposes that adults may try and have and do and effect against children, young people. So I certainly record, actually, it may be this bill could—within scope and without trying to do more than a member’s bill appropriately should—go further.

So I think this is an area where all New Zealanders—certainly parents—will be worried about what happens online, and I’ve tried to demonstrate there’s a raft of things that can go wrong in this department. This area of it: adults seeking out children, our young ones, for harm purposes is one such. And a very important area, as the survey results from Netsafe and the Ministry for Women that the member in charge of the bill has laid out, made clear: this is not some marginal thing on the sidelines. Actually, it’s a very real everyday issue, sadly, in New Zealand and around the West.

Given that, therefore National supports it at first reading. I’m sure we’ll actually support it all the way through, albeit we’ll be interested in the submissions, interested in ways we can improve it and potentially actually increase the range of this bill to make sure that actually more harm is prevented against our children.

Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. Good to hear that we seem to have some consensus on this bill. Just a few points I’d like to make in sending it off to select committee, really. The first is it’s increasingly the case that there is an online world, and I mean that in a real sense, in the sense that there are young people in particular who live a life in the virtual world and have virtual relationships. That’s something which people who, when they were born, the internet didn’t exist and tapes were a pretty cool thing—that’s something which can be a little hard for us to comprehend. So I guess it’s a real challenge for us to wrestle with the fact that what goes on in that virtual world, whatever it might be, whether it’s across digital messaging or whether it’s on a gaming platform or wherever it might be, is as real to those people as what happens in what we would call day-to-day life. It’s against that background that we have to look at this bill, because relationships formed in that environment are extremely important and can be as rewarding or as damaging as any other relationship.

I do think it’s worth recognising that whilst we paint the picture of a total stranger in some darkened room with a keyboard grooming these young people, it’s equally as likely to be someone they’ve actually met. The member Ginny Andersen mentioned the schoolteacher who already has an existing relationship and therefore has a degree of trust. So we have to be extremely cautious there that we don’t simply presume that it’s someone who’s entirely unknown—in fact, statistics would suggest that’s not the case.

I guess there’s a couple of points I would invite the select committee to look at. We absolutely accept that an adult grooming a child, communicating with a child, and arranging to meet a child is wrong, and we also accept that there’s a role for the police to play in early intervention, in finding out who those people are. Given that they spend a lot of time and resources on intelligence, they often know who they should be looking for. My word of caution is this: that we want to be careful that we don’t create behaviours in people that they wouldn’t otherwise engage in—what in, kind of, common parlance would be called “entrapment”—that whilst a constable is entitled to engage in a conversation online with someone they think is engaging in risky and possibly illegal behaviour, we do not want them to initiate any inappropriate conduct or contact or in any way encourage it; it’s for them to be a recipient. So I would ask the select committee to just have a look at that section, reflect on the problem of entrapment, of enticing behaviour that wouldn’t otherwise occur, and make sure that there’s no place for that, that the law properly controls that activity—albeit, I’m sure, when a police officer might engage in it, it’s with good intent, but it’s creating an offence where one wouldn’t have existed but for the conduct, in fact, of the constable.

The other point is just the reasonable steps to find out whether a young person—there’s a defence section, subsection (3) of new section 126A: taking reasonable steps to determine whether the other person was over the age of 16 years, and having reasonable grounds. Now, I just want to recognise that what is reasonable can be a shifting standard in some ways, and I’d encourage that to be explored. That the behaviour we would expect of a 25-year-old or a 35-year-old is quite different from that we might expect of an 18-year-old. So that’s something I would hope the select committee would look at.

Of course, the member has referred to the sentencing question. Again, I’m always cautious of heavy sentences, and I see there’s an increased sentence here from seven to 10 years. I think that’s done on the basis of, kind of, equivalences or relativities within the different sections, trying to make sure that the most serious offence has the most serious penalty. Certainly, that’s something that is worth looking at, but good to see this is going to select committee. An excellent improvement to our law—I commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill in the name of Ginny Andersen. I want to congratulate her for bringing another, I would say, very valuable piece of legislation to this House, and I say that with a little bit of envy in terms of your luck of getting these bills pulled.

But this is a really important conversation. It’s about the safety of our children at the heart of it. I’m very pleased that this Parliament is getting to spend time on that conversation. We know that Governments have previously been pretty slow to respond to digital harm, in particular, including online identity theft, revenge porn, online hate speech, racism, or extremism. We’re slow to catch up. The legislation feels as if there are many moving parts, in terms of protections. So this piece of legislation is discrete, it is fixing a small part of it, and I look forward to the conversation in the select committee looking at how that fits in the whole picture and exploring the detail of it.

So at the heart of this, it’s about addressing online grooming. There’s been a bit of discussion and a great speech from Ginny Andersen in introducing it. But I think it bears repeating that grooming really is when an adult tries to build a relationship with a young person so that they can sexually exploit them in some way. Doesn’t always have to be physical, sometimes it is actually just that act of trying to get the nude or almost-nude photo or provocative position from a child that can be used, in terms of images or videos, in ways that there cannot be consent because of the age of the young person, who I will call, for the purposes of this discussion, a child, because legally, that is what we’re talking about.

Quite often when we picture the idea of grooming, I know I have a certain image that comes into my head of a person that’s kind of got—no disrespect to anybody in this House, but the image that comes to my head is, kind of, sparse grey hair, a certain type—

💬 Hon Member: Oh, Stuart! She singled you out!

No disrespect. It’s just like, there’s an image, but the problem—and my point is, that that’s not the reality of people who engage in grooming. In actual fact, quite often the people who are engaging in grooming behaviour are not that much older than the children that they are targeting, yet, they are still taking advantage of a younger person. Netsafe gets a lot of complaints from young people seeking help for this issue—and I’ve just seen a member of the House put his hand over his hair and I just want to apologise for what my comments may have provoked. For any member in this House who feels that that was a description of them, it was not meant to be.

The current law criminalises grooming at the point where an offender arranges to meet a child with the intention of having sexual activity, whether or not the intended abuse occurs. This bill will update these offences to cover digital harm and grooming at the point where the offender arranges or meets up with the young person following online communications. There’s specific details in the bill that I won’t go into, but at the select committee, we’re pleased to be able to interrogate.

I do want to raise the concern around the increased penalties that do come with the bill, around imprisonment from seven to 10 years, because, actually, our system at the moment, at the heart we want people who cause sexual harm—we want early intervention before harm occurs and we want rehabilitation. There’s only a very, very tiny number of people who are not able to be rehabilitated. If we talk to the experts, they tell us it’s a tiny group, and we want to make sure that they’re held and protected; the rest we want to get help, and sadly our criminal justice system doesn’t really provide that rehabilitation at the moment, and actually, it can cause more harm by isolating and marginalising people, actually undermining their positive attachments. So I really do think that that is a part of the bill that we would like to look at, to ensure that it’s as strength-based as possible in protecting our kids.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. I too would like to thank the member, Ginny Andersen, for bringing this important bill to the House, because it’s an issue that needs attention and debate, and needs to be addressed. It is important because it’s about children. Because, due to their age, vulnerability, and the fact that they can’t defend themselves, that makes this bill very important—and the fact that they can’t tell right from wrong. Because of that, we all agree on this. No one can argue today: children spend more time online than anywhere else, more than the time that they spend with their families, and their parents, their siblings. Because of that, we often hear stories of predators grooming young children with the intention to harm them. The danger is real. Online spaces are where it’s, increasingly, becoming an area where these harms occur.

This bill is an amendment to the Crimes Act 1961. It inserts two offences that are designed to protect young people from online harm and also increase the penalty for meeting young people for following sexual grooming. These two inserted offences are: new section 126A, “Digital communication with young person under 16 with intent to mislead”, and new section 126B, “Digital communication with young person under 16 with intent to cause harm”. This bill will help address some of the issues in this space and to protect children from online harm.

As the popularity of online platforms increases, the incidence of harm, particularly towards young people, also increases. The study showed that about 19 percent of teens experience unwanted or unwarranted digital communication that had a negative impact on their lives. This is the most common. Also, 19 percent of young people surveyed said that they have been asked to share their nude photo or nude image of themselves. These are sobering numbers, and really, in fact, it’s scary.

All the changes that we are discussing today are designed to help ensure that our justice system can protect our young people from those who engage in acts online to harm them. This bill increases the potential sentence that a judge might give, at their discretion, for an offence against section 131B of the Crimes Act—that meeting young people with intent to harm or with intent to sexually groom is an offence.

Labour is committed to protecting children from these harms. I look forward to listening to what the public has to say in select committee. I’m not a member of the Justice Committee, but I’m looking forward to reading what the members or the public have to say. It’s also heart-warming to see that we are all coming together in support of this bill, because it’s such an important issue. An important issue because some of us don’t even have any children, but we strongly feel about this. Like they said before, it’s about our young people who can’t defend themselves, who can’t differentiate right from wrong. The Hon Simon Bridges, before me, made a comment that this is a national issue, it’s also an issue in the West. In fact, this is a global issue. It’s not exclusive to the West; it’s everywhere. And, sadly, people who go around with the intention to harm young people are everywhere. They’re just evil, and the evil is everywhere. Again, I’d like to affirm that Labour is committed 100 percent to protecting our children. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT and in support of the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. I acknowledge the member for introducing this bill—a bill that is well overdue. It’s a bill that is necessary, as previous speakers have mentioned, and based on Australian legislation, brought about by the tragic case of Carly Ryan, a 15-year-old Australian girl. It is legislation New Zealand needs. Children as young as eight here are being groomed online, and young people not even in their teens pressured through social media and other avenues to provide inappropriate photos. They’re often too naive or too young to understand that these photos just don’t go away, and once sent can become viral on the international market. New ways are evolving with online games, smartphones, and websites designed just to appeal to children. New Zealand media indicates that during lockdowns these incidents rose, with more people preying online.

I’ve been contacted by teachers and parents concerned about this scourge. It’s become increasingly difficult for parents and schools to monitor online behaviour. The online safety tips, they are great advice, but if we look at a couple of them: number one, become friends with your child in any social network environment they create. And another one: ensure that you can always have access to your child’s phone to help them stay safe. Very sensible recommendations but, as any parent would know, very difficult. And schools throughout the country are constantly battling with students and their devices. Technology is changing quickly and legislation must keep up. Police need the tools if they’re going to prosecute. As a police youth aid officer, I dealt with too many of these cases—that was a few years ago, and it’s getting worse.

There are some questions that need clarifying in the bill, which I’m sure will be dealt with at select committee. Why we’re not using similar wording used in section 131B of the Crimes Act 1961, which outlines more clearly the acts which are actually criminal. We’d like it to be more specific as to the ingredients required for the crime. Intent is the main ingredient and it must be specific when new section 126A has a 10-year jail term for intent to mislead. As Duncan Webb said earlier on, that should be a huge deterrent for any potential unintended consequences, which need to be examined with a real high degree of scrutiny. We support the increase in penalty and note that this offence could fit into the three strikes regime, another deterrent for repetitive abuse. The current definition of a serious, violent offence in the Crimes Act would fit inside this bill. I am interested in where 17-year-olds fit into this legislation, and I’m sure this will be fully explained throughout the select committee process as well.

So the bill is necessary. Things are getting worse. Statistics are really awful—quite shameful. Police need the tools to prosecute and we must protect our most vulnerable kids. Well done to the member and ACT supports this bill at first reading. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. A real pleasure to stand and talk to this Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. I, firstly, want to acknowledge the member Ginny Andersen for another important bill being drawn out of the ballot again—also feeling a little bit like, “Hey, my turn next.” Nevertheless, I’m delighted that this bill has been pulled out of the ballot. This is a really thoughtful bill, I think, and as the member Ginny Andersen has said, there is some work to do in regards to this bill to firm up and perhaps look at the penalties etc. and comments that have been made from all members in this House have been very thoughtful and, I think, very useful.

One of the things that I particularly like about this piece of legislation is the carve-out, I guess we could call it, in regards to police being able to perform a duty in order to capture, perhaps, this grooming behaviour online. The member Dr Duncan Webb spoke about this and I certainly think that his points were particularly useful in this area. I think we also need to be very careful when we talk about these kinds of circumstances that we are very clear that this is harmful activity and getting away with it is something that has often occurred. So these sting operations that the police operate under are often as a result of many months of work and clear evidence.

I would just like to talk a little bit about the service in my community Tautoko Mai, which is a really great service that looks after the people who are victims, survivors of sexual violence etc. Now, the reason I want to raise this is to acknowledge a recent—well, somewhat recent—conference that I attended in Hamilton that Tautoko Mai put on. At this conference there was a speaker there that talked to us about digital harm and children and young people. Now, my children are older and so technology was probably not as available—they’re in their late 20s now. So I was flabbergasted to discover that there are all sorts of things that groom children and basically trick children into being harmed online; for example, something called porn parody, which is pornography which looks like—the example that we were given that was quite shocking to me was The Lego Movie. There’s a little statement on this item that you can click on that says, “This is porn parody.”, but actually if you were a child, you were just going into look at The Lego Movie, you’d click on that and you would see pornography—quite insidious, quite worrisome that these are the kinds of things that are happening in our online situation.

I’d also like to acknowledge this Netsafe report done alongside the Ministry for Women. I was quite dismayed to look at some of the statistics that they talk about. And I do recommend, if people have a chance, going to this NZ Teens and Digital Harm Report and having a good read of it. One of the things that I thought was particularly interesting was how young people dealt with the abuse, and I want to just acknowledge and perhaps ask the member, when the select committee is looking at this bill, to look at the responses for young people and to make sure that they don’t become responsible for dealing with these situations. A lot of these young people blocked the information, changed their username etc. I commend the bill.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a pleasure it is to talk to a bill, the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill, from a person who I’ve known for many years, and that’s the member for Hutt South, Ginny Andersen. I worked with her in the New Zealand Police, when we were there, and can I just say that she has an outstanding understanding of the justice sector, and the role she has in the chair is well deserved.

I’m thinking, as people speak and talk about this piece of work, that they reflect on the importance of children. Many of us have children, and no doubt all of us are thinking, “Aha! What does this mean?” I know, when I see my little six-year-old and his command of the iPad, it does make me worry. At the moment, I can see this game called Minecraft. I think it looks safe; I’m not too sure.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It’s awesome.

The member for Christchurch Central says, “Awesome.” So it must be safe and good! But I’m not too sure, and I guess that’s the point: as a six-year-old like that can take such a command. These things just weren’t invented in our young age. And I heard someone talk about their perception of what someone looks like, and I was thinking, “Jeepers, it’s more and more looking like me!” But can I reassure you it’s not! I think that was the Green member. But what the Green member was saying was that it could really be anyone, and that’s the point here: that we’ve got children who have now a much better command of these things, probably better than their parents, but it’s an everyday part of their life. And even just going through this latest COVID response, our online learning and their further command and understanding of all things digital just increases. And I guess there’s a responsibility—I always think there’s a responsibility there to take the time to understand these things.

And I was talking to the electorate office secretary, or whatever they’re called now, Brian Dawson there in Newtown, and I was saying to him, “Look, I’m going to be speaking on this. What issues have we had?” And we were recounting a person in Hataitai, someone locally, who was quite astonished that there was this exchange of photos, just done on an iPhone, back and forward, and the worst thing is that their son and the parent of the daughter who came to the house and had this conversation didn’t think there was anything wrong at that time. But, actually, when they started working through it and then talking about the wider consequences, they realised that a whole lot could go wrong. I believe this bill, an important member’s bill, will certainly help in those conversations. And we have had quite some.

I know, when I talk to the principals—I’ve got seven secondary schools in the electorate. It’s a small electorate, geography wise, I do get out and talk to them, and I will talk about this. So, the member for Hutt South, when it goes back to the select committee, I will encourage them to make submissions, to talk to their leaders and to their technical and digital people on campus and say, “Look, here’s an opportunity to get this right.” And I believe there’s a lot more out there than what is being said. I think it brings deep shame on people when they find out something is going on, or they don’t quite know how to manage it. I think it’s a lot deeper, and some of my colleagues have actually hinted at that, saying, “Look, we just don’t know.” And there’s a survey there that’s been indicated, between Netsafe and the Ministry for Women, for example, that talks about the experiences of teenagers, and, in fact, seven out of 10 experience some sort of unwanted digital communication.

So that’s what the survey tells us. I believe it’s a lot more, and, I think, once this has the opportunity to get some air and for people to unpick it, the select committee will do a good job. And they will be busy because this will expose some of the things that I believe are hidden there, and this will do a good, decent job. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to support the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill through to select committee. I’ll start by congratulating Ginny Andersen on having this bill drawn and debated tonight in the House. It looks like consensus, at least supporting it through to select committee, from all parties, so well done.

This bill amends the Crimes Act, as we’ve heard, to provide for new offences relating to persons 18 years or older using electronic communications, such as social media platforms—which are increasingly used by people of all ages—to harm persons under 16, and it increases penalties for all those offences relating to sexual grooming of children online. Certainly, this is a growing issue, as most of the world now spends a lot of their time online, and certainly children spend a huge amount of time online these days, in various formats, and certainly their parents don’t always know what they’re up to online either. But there is an important issue here in that there are people who seek to contact young people with ill intent, and there needs to be some protection for those young people, and to send a clear message to those who have nefarious purposes in mind that there will be very serious consequences for them if they try to groom young people.

So this is a good step in sending that clear message to people who have the wrong intention. There are, of course, some issues that will no doubt need to be addressed. There’s always unforeseen consequences with every piece of legislation, and if there are any of those, I’m sure we’ll hear about those in the select committee. But on first reading, this looks like a well-thought-out piece of law.

I note that Crown Law, via the Attorney-General, has had a look at this. The first concern for anyone when there’s a potential restriction on communications is whether it will be consistent or inconsistent with the section 14 right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act for freedom of expression. I note that the Attorney-General has said that any “enactment that criminalises communication will cause a prima facie inconsistency with s 14 of the [New Zealand] Bill of Rights … However, restricting the use of a digital communication in the manner proposed is a demonstrably justified limit on that freedom. [And] The purpose … is to ensure that vulnerable minors are not misled in their digital communications as to a person’s age or identity, such that it may lead to meeting with or a plan to meet with that person.” That certainly will be of concern to all right-thinking members of the community, that there are people who wish to communicate with a young person with an intention to meet with them. If someone who is an adult is intending to meet with a person under the age of 16, that is something that needs to be very strongly discouraged, which this bill certainly does.

I note that the Attorney-General has gone on to say that the “proposed restrictions on the right to freedom of expression are rationally connected with the broad objective expressed in the Explanatory note to the Bill, which is to address the incidences of harm experienced by young people in online platforms and to protect young people from harm online.” It’s to stop young people from receiving unwanted digital communications, and young people can be harmed by receiving unwanted digital communications, which causes a negative impact on their real-time activities, such as being contacted online by a stranger or being asked to share a nude or nearly nude image of themselves. This is something that—and Parliament wants to send a very clear signal to the community—will not be tolerated and will result in very serious consequences for anyone who inappropriately engages online.

This is a good bill on first reading. Look forward to seeing its progression through to select committee, and I commend it to the House.

Mr Speaker, it’s such a pleasure to stand and support this bill and to congratulate my colleague Ginny Andersen on bringing an elegant, simple, and perfectly formed bill before the House—one that actually addresses something quite significant. You know, our teens—and I’m the mum of four and auntie to a further 14 kids between the ages of two and 21 and the entire range of 19 grandchildren—they are so skilled. They outpace us so fast when it comes to digital technology. Who would have realised that such a range of lovely images of healthful fruit and vegetables apparently are not innocent in their expression. Who would have realised that Netflix, and that Minecraft with its zombies and killing of chickens, is out there. It masquerades as such a simple thing. Our children tell us that, no, no, they’re definitely not using the “kill” function on Minecraft, but they are because children are children—I’m just warning Mr Eagle here. I’m warning them because kids are the way they always have been: they outpace us on the technology, they wrap us round their little fingers, and they run in circles around our aged legs.

This bill addresses a really important aspect of that because while they are so darn clever, they are also just as naive and helpless and trusting as we were when we were kids. The romanticism and the hope in a young person, that they’ve met that special someone online or that they’ve struck up a deep and meaningful friendship or even just a nice chat with a nice person of their own age—they are so vulnerable. For all that they are clever and slick with the killing of the chickens and the goat murdering that goes on in that terrible Minecraft server, they are also still the naive young kids that we were when we were their age and they need that protection that this bill will give them.

Grooming is no joke. As a prosecutor and as a lawyer in the old days before I got this job a year ago, the reality of grooming of children for abuse is something that I had to deal with on a reasonably regular basis and it is very, very hard to recognise for the child concerned because it hits all those bases. It seems like friendship, it seems like affection, and it crosses those boundaries so carefully, and it is so blooming effective. Once it sets in, once the kid realises what’s really going on, the shame and the pain that it brings to them is so difficult to treat. This is just another medium whereby the unfortunate predators that we do have in our society can target our kids—kids who unfortunately are smarter than their parents when it comes to the Minecraft and all those other things—there’s something called Reddit, I understand, as well. They are smarter than us, they are better at these things than us, but we cannot as adults forget that, inside, they’re still the little wee people that we actually do understand as much as we do not understand the internet.

So I am delighted to see this bill. One of the interesting things that’s been quoted by some of our colleagues tonight is the studies that point to the incidence of targeting of our young people. It is really useful to have that data and to have that hard empirical evidence of the importance of this bill. That seven in 10 young teens are getting unwanted advances over the internet is something that should really worry us all. In the course of working on the harmful digital communications legislation, which can be seen as a kind of sister bill to this in some ways, we also heard about the prevalence of revenge porn when these things go wrong. Our kids are so vulnerable. I am so delighted that my colleague Ginny Andersen has seen fit to bring this bill forward because it is going to put a really important tool in our hands.

So in my final words on this matter—to my children, I know you’re watching, I know you’re using Minecraft on the killer mode. I am wise to you. Occasionally, mother really does know best and Auntie Ginny on this occasion has really got it nailed. I commend this bill to the House.

Ginny Andersen in reply.

How can I outdo that fantastic speech from the wonderful Dr Emily Henderson? Look, to wrap things up tonight, I’d like to give thanks to all members for their well-thought-through and well-delivered speeches tonight. It’s really heartening to have support from all the different parties represented in this House to take my bill to select committee. No members’ bill is ever perfect—well, some might be, but I acknowledge that there are parts of this that will need further work, potentially from advice that we receive through the submissions process, and also from advice that we may well receive from officials. I welcome that to strengthen the bill where it needs to be and to make sure it accurately reflects and works well with other elements of existing law and other policies in place that work towards protecting New Zealand’s children.

As a mum, I think of my children, and nothing strikes fear into my heart more than the thought of them coming to harm. I guess that’s the motivating factor, really, for me bringing this bill to the House, it is as a parent who wants my children to have full access to the knowledge and the availability of information and the wonderful opportunities for learning that the internet and this world hold, but at the same time I want to protect them from those who set out to do them harm by masquerading on the internet. So I look forward to taking this bill to the next stage and hearing the expert advice from those who come before us.

I’d like to close by acknowledging, first of all, New Zealand Police, who continue to do a fantastic job in this space, which is an incredibly difficult one to work at, whether you’re working with families who have been impacted from instances of online grooming or grooming in general, to those who have to work towards putting the case together and prosecuting, which can take hours upon hours that result in an unsuccessful outcome sometimes. A lot of hard work goes into making New Zealand as safe as possible.

I’d like to acknowledge all the parents. We’ve heard tonight so many accounts of the ongoing struggles that parents have on a daily basis with monitoring how much online activity children do, and how we make sure that they continue to keep themselves safe while learning and engaging on online platforms. Acknowledging that that is a heavy weight to bear as a parent and that continuing to communicate with our children and understanding what they’re doing each day is a good step in the right direction.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge young people in New Zealand—those young people that are growing up in an ever-changing world, whether that be through COVID19 or the internet and its way of expressing ourselves online. Unfortunately, one of the outcomes from COVID-19 has meant that, more than ever, we rely upon the internet for communication, and therefore we should remain as vigilant as ever to make sure we protect how our young people are engaging with each other and others within the community, and even in other countries. This bill provides further protection for our children in New Zealand, and it does it under New Zealand law. It sends a very clear message that an adult impersonating a child with the intent of meeting someone is not acceptable, and I look forward to taking this bill further to see that we can make it into law. I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.