Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on the third reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. The Minister was quite correct in that this has been quite a mouthful of a title of a bill for quite some time. I was just reflecting on the time that Tangi Utikere and I, as chair and deputy chair of the Governance and Administration Committee, were charged with making a video when submissions were opened. I think we got to about three takes before we got it right. So it’s been a pretty long name and it takes up quite some time in terms of making the speeches.

But I would like to thank Minister Tinetti, and I know it’s been acknowledged that the Governance and Administration Committee did some good work around this. I would like to acknowledge Melissa Lee also, who is in Auckland at this time and isn’t in the House, who was part of that process. Just to say that it was much easier working with a piece of legislation when a Minister is willing to work with a committee to make things better.

We all came to the House at various times in our careers, but we all came with the intention of making good legislation. This is a largely improved bill because of the way that the Minister dealt with the committee and acknowledged that there was a problem around the filter. It needs to be acknowledged that in the first reading of this bill, there was really only the Labour Party who were in support of it, and now we’ve actually got to the stage where we’ve made a lot of progress across the House and it’s good to be able to go out there and say that we support this because we’ve worked to a space where the legislation is much, much better. Now, I’m not a technical person, as Melissa Lee is, and I know that Melissa will say that there are some parts of this bill that technically could be improved, and I know there’s still some questions around how we interrelate globally in this space, but what I would like to say is it is very much improved.

I also note that in this process the Department of Internal Affairs were fantastic as we went through this bill. There was such an openness to provide us with information as we needed it. I also would like to acknowledge the people who do the work in censoring some of this awful stuff that people choose to put online—for goodness knows what reason they do it. We have some dedicated people in our society who spend their time having to watch some of this stuff or see it to protect the rest of us and particularly our children from it. It’s really important that we give credit to those people, because at night when they go home, they need to switch off, and sometimes it must be quite hard seeing what they actually see.

The other group I would like to acknowledge in this is the Christchurch community, and particularly the Muslim community where the genesis of this bill started, in terms of what they went through; no one should ever have to experience what they went through. But the fact that not only did they experience it, but they had this awful live streaming that went alongside of it. That is just something that, you know, most of us, while we can sympathise with them, would actually not have any idea what their families are still going through and will continue to go through for ever.

Just also, while I’m mentioning Christchurch at the moment, I sort of note the time and it’s heading up towards 5 minutes to 1. I know that we’ve got a couple of COVID cases down in Christchurch and just thinking about announcements for this afternoon, it does seem to be that the Auckland community’s doing it tough at the moment, taking the lion’s share. The Waikato communities are also doing their share through COVID, and if I think about the Christchurch community and everything that they’ve been through, it’s been quite a tough time. So I wish them well and I hope that the South Island’s state comes quickly into control around COVID and that we can get on top of this and, hopefully, that it doesn’t lead to anything much bigger.

Thank you, Minister, for removing the filter. We’re a party over here who does believe in free speech, and I know that that really concerned a lot of people in the process of this bill. That was a biggie, and that was the deal that got us over the line in this bill. And the other thing I will mention just before I close on this one is that we were also concerned about the word “objectionable”, but it is defined in law, because in this day and age people are offended by different things and it would be a shame to get into a society where “objectionable” is too loose. But we’re satisfied that it’s set in the law and it is an extremely high bar and it’s not something that’s just going to be used at a whim. It’s going to only be used for extremely objectionable, abhorrent, terrible material such as, you know, what happened with Christchurch.

So thank you again, Minister. I’m not going to labour the name of the bill one more time. I’m just going to say at this point in time—

💬 Hon Jan Tinetti: Say it again.

Say it again. OK, I’ll say it one more time for good measure, because once it’s passed, the name actually will—well, it’s an amendment so we’re never going to have to say it again. So I commend the Films, Videos, and Publications (Urgent Interim Classification and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Members, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.55 p.m. (Thursday)