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

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the second reading of this bill, I talked about Facebook and the internal research that they produce, which I want to remind us of again. It’s said that it’s easier to inspire people to anger than to other emotions and our social media platforms understand this and know that using anger, using rage, using offensive material is a way to get clicks and engage our communities. That’s why this piece of legislation is really, really important—and it’s amending legislation from 1993. Now, back in 1993, I’m sure few of us here had internet in our homes, let alone the internet in our pockets, where publishing videos or film was a far harder process than just clicking the live button on your phone. So that’s hence why we need this legislation and we need it quickly. The tragic events of March 15 and what was able to be done and achieved there is why we have to talk about this and pass this legislation today.

I want to thank the Hon Jan Tinetti for making sure this comes into law; also, we’re remembering the Hon Tracey Martin in terms of bringing this to the House originally. I have nothing more to say, really, other than to actually read out the title, which I haven’t done yet because it takes a little while. So I want to commend this to the House: the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It took me two hours to get a call from you this morning—two minutes this afternoon! Ha, ha! This bill—

💬 Greg O’Connor: It’ll take you two days next time.

Ha, ha! Well, there shouldn’t be interjections from the opposite side of the House, Madam Speaker, because this morning I was walking across the pedestrian crossing in the half dark, and, in the mirage of the half dark, I saw what I thought was an offensive item for a start, but it wasn’t at all. It was Greg O’Connor. Ha, ha! But to be quite serious—

💬 Greg O’Connor: I thought you were having a heart attack.

Ha, ha! Close to it—close to it. I’ve been wearing this mask all day. Back to the bill, Madam Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, good.

—and I have 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, which fortunately will morph into, I think, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act in due course. But this bill, we opposed at first reading and we oppose it for a number of reasons: one, that there were some quite significant concerns, and, actually, we weren’t the only party in the House to oppose it, about the way it was put together and, I guess, the security of people’s information and how exactly we would go about securing people’s integrity or the ability of them to preserve their integrity and, at the same time, being able to access and stop instantly, a little bit like the film censor, things that we didn’t like.

It wasn’t until the Minister—and I wasn’t part of the select committee on this—clarified in the committee stage exactly what this bill is aiming to stop in the form of objectionable material that it became very clear that this bill—and there will be more bills to follow this because this is a very challenging area for us. And I think Glen Bennett said a minute ago that what was around in 1993 when this bill was first passed, when the forerunner of this bill was first passed, we didn’t even have a cellphone in our pocket. We probably didn’t even have a cellphone, actually. So life’s just changed so dramatically in the time since that was introduced, and it’s continued to change and it’s changing so rapidly that this Parliament is going to have to keep a very close watch in the future on what goes on with the use of technology, the publication of offensive material, and the way it’s used either to attract attention, good or bad. I think it’s a very serious issue that in the future, as I said, we’re going to have to look at much more seriously.

So the bill, effectively, gives what, I guess, might have been called the censor the ability to cancel this sort of publication of offensive material instantly and make a pretty reasonable judgment on what that is. And I think that having gone through the select committee stage and through the committee stage, we’ve got to a point with this bill where I think it preserves the integrity of the original idea, and it also preserves people’s ability to keep their privacy and maintain some form of personal security, I suppose. So that was the very challenging part of the bill, to ensure that we don’t incriminate people that shouldn’t be incriminated for whatever offence we perceive they might have committed.

I think the worry of this is that objectionable material and the definition of it changes from time to time. Certainly, in my lifetime, if you think about what we might have termed objectionable material 50 years ago, we couldn’t imagine what might become objectionable material now and most of the stuff that’s used as objectionable material now. In fact, the forerunner of this bill, you wouldn’t have even imagined it 50 years ago, so it’s very difficult to imagine what might come in the future.

So our position on this bill changed a lot from the first reading through the committee stage and now to the third reading, and Melissa Lee would have to take a lot of the credit for that. She worked very hard on this bill from a National Party perspective, as did the select committee, and, in fact, the Minister also instigated some changes to the bill, which I think enabled the bulk of the Parliament to support it. One of the things about supporting or not supporting stuff in this place is that it’s very easy to not support things for a pedantic reason. Usually that pedantic reason doesn’t stand up in the long term. Sometimes it does, of course. So the very difficult part of that judgment is to actually judge what a good reason to oppose a bill is and what’s not, and we, certainly in the National Party, in the end couldn’t find a good reason to oppose this bill. I’m sure it will do what it set out to do. It’ll enable the removal of objectionable material by the chief censor where it’s necessary, and it will also, I think, preserve people’s integrity as it goes along.

So, I think, having said that, I’m happy to commend the bill to the House, and I’m sure that when it gets to be instigated, it will actually do more good than harm in our community. As I said before, these topics are very difficult to deal with and they’re going to continue to be difficult to deal with and they will be challenging for this House. They will be challenging for Ministers going forward, and I think that that it’s just how it’s going to be. So I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I consider it a real privilege to be standing here and taking a call in the third reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. I do so as parent of a then 15-year-old young boy who happened to see the horrific footage that went around the internet after the terrible events of March 15 a couple of years ago.

I’d really like to acknowledge the select committee that worked on this piece of legislation, and also acknowledge Minister Tinetti who has shepherded this bill through the House, and, as she did earlier, I think it’s important to also acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin, who worked on this bill and brought this bill about.

I think what we’ve seen here has been a really good collaboration between parties around the House, and the Minister has been extremely good at interacting with the select committee and hearing concerns of all those parties involved, and she has worked very collaboratively with them all. I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I was hoping that the bill had gotten its short name by now. I think during the committee of the whole House, the Minister said it was going to end up being called the “classifications bill”. But, yeah, the Greens will be supporting the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill—it’s Thursday afternoon; I may as well read it all out—and I think we’ve landed in a good place with this bill. For us, the main reason why we were not supportive in the first reading was those concerns around the internet filter—but just sort of acknowledging that and also congratulating the Minister and the select committee for dragging this legislation out from 1993 and making it workable in 2021.

This legislation when it was originally put together was during the time of VHS video cassettes, I guess, and then these new things came along, which were called DVDs, and when I talk to my children about those things, they find it really, really hard to believe. They always kind of sort of think that videos have always shown up on our phones and on computers, and so on and so forth, because they’re digital natives and that is the world that they are living in. But we still have objectionable content—and I did appreciate the speeches made in the first reading as well and also the discussions during the committee of the whole House, because I wasn’t on the select committee. But just to hear that it was about trying to empower the censor to use the tools that are available in terms of the horrific events that happened with the live streaming of the killing of our Muslim whānau down in Christchurch and being able to give them those tools to actually act efficiently and quickly—and in that sort of case we support the censor to be able to do that.

The objectives are to ensure that the Government and internet service providers and online content hosts can swiftly and consistently take action against objectionable material—and that’s the role of the chief censor. Just to acknowledge that the bar for determining objectionable content is already really, really high and it is a job of the chief censor to apply the test, and in that legal test the chief censor already takes into account freedom of expression and so that once a publication or, in this case, a potentially live streamed video is considered objectionable, it will give them the power to actually take it down and that’s a good thing.

There were some discussions around some “safe harbour” clauses as well, and I understand that the select committee came to a good place with those as well—for me, acknowledging the other speeches around the House, that when we can sort of see the greater good in the work that we do around the Parliament, we can arrive at some near consensus positions, if not strong majority positions, on these really, really important issues.

I was just reflecting on the discussions we had during the committee of the whole House, because even though the internet filter has now been removed—because how could that be set up anyway to actually do the job that we actually want it to do and then, of course, looking at how those rights could be balanced properly and appropriately. For me, it actually opened up a whole space, and that’s something I think—when the original intent was around what the internet filter could do or should be doing, which was about, of course, minimising harm, we’ve moved into a particular place where algorithms are actually running our lives now in really insidious ways from people that topple down rabbit holes because of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and the fact that different social media, in particular at Facebook—there was a whistleblower just recently who, with internal papers, showed that actually keeping us on those social media platforms and making us continually engage in negative behaviour often, that’s the motive for them because that’s how they get their money as well.

So we have moved this Act from 1993 and made it usable and workable in terms of the very real potential harm that is out there as well. I just acknowledge what the speaker before me talked about when her son had actually seen that live stream as well, and I know with all the parents around the House that is something I worry about and I am sure that we all worry about—that we will also need to, I think, eventually step into that space and sort of really take a look about what the algorithm is because that is something that I feel, in terms of the discussions that we’ve had around the House about this particular bill, will need more attention.

So for me, it’s a reminder that freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach. I think that there is no right to algorithmic amplification: with the algorithm there’s thousands and thousands of bits of content on there but about a hundred of them will only show up on your newsfeed as well. Who determines what that is? Who determines the prioritisation? You can find whatever you want to on the internet but who prioritises the way that we access our media? Of course, those of us around the House in many ways have to dance to the tunes of their algorithm, so do the journalists as well, and so those engagements kind of lock us into particular behaviours as well. Some of those behaviours, I think, kind of keep us in really circular arguments here in Parliament as well and by keeping us within those circular arguments that actually distracts from the real mahi that we need to actually be doing as well.

So those are some of my reflections. I commend the Minister and the select committee for dragging this legislation into the 21st century, but by dragging it into the 21st century, opening up the consideration that there are a whole lot of other issues that we need to be focusing on and really investigating and really interrogating because the intention of the amendment, of course, is to minimise harm—minimise harm particularly to our children but also to vulnerable communities and allowing social media giants and techno-megalomaniacs to profit on negative engagement online is something that we should be really, really mindful of as this bill passages through the House. On that, we support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m not going to start off by saying the full name of this bill, because I did that already in the second reading, so I’ve done my bit there. But I would like to begin my speech first of all by acknowledging the victims of the 15 March 2019 mosque terror attack, and also those people that were affected by the live streaming of that event. I’d also like to acknowledge the work of the select committee and the way that they interacted with the other parties, especially in getting rid of the filter from this Act, because that was one of the things that the ACT Party were very conscious of. Again, I’d just like to appreciate the work of the National Party and Melissa Lee in getting that through. But, nevertheless, the ACT Party still opposes this bill, and the reason why is because it comes down to our freedoms. It’s not just about freedom to reach; it’s also about freedom to speak. It’s about freedom of thought and it’s about freedom to be able to share some of the things that happen.

Now, while I realise that some of this is objectionable, I think that when we start using or utilising bits of legislation to, in a way, filter what we do see anyway, then it becomes an issue, and we start to remove some of those freedoms from our democratic society. ACT think that this is important. We are worried about that, and that’s part of the reason why we oppose this bill. My good friend—my good relative next to me—Mr Ian McKelvie said that the National Party found no reason to oppose this, but we have found a few.

I’d like to start off by talking about restrictions that we’ve already seen in publication, and actually specifically go back to the 15 March terror attack. The terrorist at that stage had released a manifesto. I actually read that manifesto before it became a censored item. And what was revealing for those within the firearms community is how the terrorist had actually detailed what he expected to happen as a result of his terror attack. And, as it is, everything that he expected to happen in regard to firearm owners actually played out. I think it’s important that people should have been given the opportunity to actually see that and be able to react to that as well, because that’s one tick for him. That was one win for him, and he did not deserve any wins at all. But the rest of New Zealand are left to say, “Well, actually, we don’t know what he wanted because we’re not allowed to read it.”

So I think it’s really important that people are given the freedom to choose. But, again, we have to balance this on being mindful about what is objectionable. And so in that respect, I understand exactly what the Government and the Opposition party are trying to do. That balance, of course, is quite fine. But when we start eroding our freedoms in that way, then I think it’s a slippery slope.

In the committee of the whole House stage, I raised questions regarding new section 132C(1)(b), and that was about the sharing of live streaming events. So while the ACT Party can say if there’s an objectionable live streaming taking place, we understand the ability to charge and possibly convict a person who is live streaming, but subparagraph (b) there actually talks about the crime of live streaming and then sharing that live stream. And when I looked up what is “objectionable”, for the purposes of this particular Act, it is a publication that if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good, then we understand exactly what “objectionable” is.

But the scenario that I have for you is: think of a situation where perhaps, say, there was an illegal car rally that was taking place, and somebody was live streaming it and people were sharing off that live stream. And during that car rally, which ended up being criminal because it occurred during lockdown, a poor person gets crushed between two cars, and the police end up getting their car bottled. Now, at that stage the person sharing, perhaps the person live streaming, may not actually realise that the event that they are sharing or live streaming has become an objectionable event. Now, the law itself and the Minister had expressed and read out to me that the person is committing an offence if they are “knowing or have reasonable cause to believe that the content is objectionable;”—well, they may not know that at the time—but, more importantly, the Minister said “and”, as opposed to section 132C(1)(b)(ii) “with the intent of promoting or encouraging criminal acts or acts of terrorism.” So, when we have an objectionable event, such as a crime taking place, the intent of promoting or encouraging criminal acts could be easily obtained in the scenario that I just gave you, because if we’re doing loss of traction burnouts or something like that, that is a criminal event, and therefore it becomes a criminal act. So it actually meets the criteria. And the select committee themselves have made the point that the intent is really hard to ascertain and describe. So I think that there’s a flaw there, and I think that it actually opens up an area for innocent people to be prosecuted. So we do have these major concerns about what this means.

So, to wind this up, the ACT Party think it’s really important that we continue to allow people their freedom of speech, their freedom of thought, their freedom to share, and that it should not be compromised by the thought police. There is concern about whether or not people will know something is objectionable—whether they may know it when they see it. We just don’t think that this sort of thing is clear enough for the citizens of New Zealand to be able to successfully abide by. We think there needed to be a better balance, and we also believe that peoples’ rights to a democratic way of life is essential, so the ACT Party will be opposing this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise, not to be outdone by my Green Party colleague, to speak in favour of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill—did it!

Levity aside, I can’t describe the horror that I felt during the dreadful unfolding of the Christchurch terror attacks on March 15th, and to imagine that at the time people were watching that event unfolding in front of them on their devices is almost beyond comprehension. And it’s because of that that we stand here today.

I’d like to acknowledge that it wasn’t simply bystanders, those of us that were in lockdown, not knowing what was happening, with sirens all around. Knowing that something terrible was occurring but not knowing what it was was actually better than knowing what it was, because those images were coming through to our smartphones.

I don’t know whether we’re able to ever comprehend what it must have been like for Sara Qasem, who actually saw that footage of her father being brutally murdered. It’s understandable that this live streaming event wasn’t captured by the legislation in place at the time. It’s understandable because technology moves so quickly; technology overtook legislation. But it obviously became clear that we needed to do something, and we needed to do something swiftly and effectively in order for that material to be taken down quickly, and for it to be permanently removed. I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, I’m afraid; I think that we can be really clear at some points when objectionable material is present. I don’t think there’s an argument. I think we’re not stupid, and I don’t think that people who are prosecuting these offences are stupid either.

This legislation will allow the chief censor to make interim classification assessments, and also for inspectors to issue take-down notices. I’d like to just actually acknowledge my colleague across the way here, Barbara Kuriger, who thanked the censors for their work. It must be appallingly difficult and trying and distressing work at times. But it’s them that sometimes have to make these decisions, and they have to watch this content and they have to be exposed, day after day, time after time, to the endless tide of offensive and objectionable material that this legislation is being put in place to deal with.

And so it’s not with pleasure but great contentment that this bill will achieve something that we urgently need to achieve that I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Joseph Mooney—five-minute call.

I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. It’s quite a mouthful but it’s quite simple in what it’s trying to achieve. The events of 15 March 2019 shocked the country, and, in particular, one of the things that folks wanted to try and do something about was to make sure no one could inadvertently watch horrific content like that online. All of us will have heard stories of young people being inadvertently exposed to watching those horrific events unfold. So this bill endeavours to do something about that.

National did not support the first reading of this bill, as it overreached. It had an internet filter in it which all parties, apart from Labour, were very concerned about, but we’re pleased to see that that has now been taken out of this bill, and, as a consequence, National, although we still have concerns that it doesn’t necessarily quite strike the right balance, feels that it does more good than harm, as my colleague Ian McKelvie said. As a result we are in support of it.

The main ways in which this bill changes things is it will criminalise the act of knowingly live streaming objectionable content. It allows the chief censor to make interim classification amendments. That will enable the chief censor to make an interim classification in an urgent situation for content that is likely to be objectionable, and it’s obvious where that concept has been drawn from in respect of those fast-moving events back on 15 March 2019. It allows take-down notices to be issued requiring the removal of objectionable online content. So it allows authorised inspectors to be able to issue take-down notices for online content hosts to remove objectionable material on their sites, and it comes with a potential civil pecuniary penalty of up to $200,000 if the online content host does not comply with an issued take-down notice.

The final key provision is that it clarifies that “safe harbour” provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 will not apply to objectionable online content. So that will close a loophole by ensuring that “safe harbour” provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act will not apply to objectionable material online. We are pleased that the internet filter that we spoke about before has been removed. That was a massive deal for the National Party and something that we could never have supported. It was also the key concern of many objectors to the bill, including human rights groups and tech experts. There is a fundamental issue that this bill deals with, and I acknowledge my colleague Ms McKee’s points about free speech. This is a fundamental issue that we’re dealing with at the moment with technology running far ahead of policy makers in terms of designing new platforms, and policy makers are trying to figure out how to get the balance right in terms of managing the different interests in the community.

So we have free speech. We have the tech companies who are focused on user engagement, but user engagement often involves echo chambers and it often involves the promotion or the support of quite negative content. People are entitled to be negative if they wish, but the question is where that line is drawn, and we feel that this bill has largely got that right in this respect, although there will be ongoing issues that we’re going to have to deal with. There has a been a storm developing around the globe over the Facebook papers recently, and the papers have indicated that the social media giant has been privately and meticulously tracking real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms and ignoring warnings from its employees about the risk of its own decisions, and allegations that it’s exposing vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.

This is a huge challenge that we need to try and balance, and we have so many of our young people and middle-aged and elderly people on sites including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, and I can certainly say there’s a lot of negative people who like to attack people from either side of the divide in politics.

In summation, National does support this bill.

It is a real privilege to be able to stand and speak to this really important bill, particularly for the people of my electorate, Taieri, and people in Dunedin who were directly impacted by the events of March 15 2019. There were people in my electorate who found out during the court case that the killer in that attack had been watching their children actually go to the mosque school over the road. There were people who knew that other people around New Zealand and, in fact, around the world, had viewed the events in Christchurch on the internet. I have to say that when we are talking about freedom of speech, any reasonable person would say that that is a really objectionable thing to have witnessed either in real life or on the media platforms. So terrorists live streaming those actions is one such heinous action that we don’t want to see, and there are others like that that are available to people who like to peddle evil, who have bad intentions, now that the technology is available to them.

So this is a good day for my community, for particularly the former refugees in my community who have been impacted in a way where they want to know they can go out into the community and feel safe. So this legislation doesn’t just have the impact of stopping the broadcast; it actually has the further impact of allowing people from groups who have felt insecure to have greater security as they go about their business as residents and citizens of our beautiful country.

What this bill has also done is raise a global debate, and a long overdue one, as my colleague over on the other side of the House—Joseph Mooney—has raised really eloquently, about where the balance of freedoms lie now that the technologies have changed. It is one thing to say that we need freedom of speech, but what the democratisation of social media has allowed is for the impact of harm to be much greater than it was. So I think it is really important that this bill is now giving Internal Affairs the regulatory tools to combat the spread of material that promotes violent extremism. And, of course, live streaming wasn’t even considered when the current legislation was enacted.

Just an acknowledgment to the Minister for having the foresight to send the filtering provision to the select committee to enable further debate. I think that was a really good thing to do; to be able to test, if you like, the waters of where some of the thinking is overwhelming, where the submissions came back to say that the filtering provisions shouldn’t be there. However, that is not to rule out some kind of voluntary mechanism, and I hope that the debate and the thinking around that continues.

So it is a good day, as I say, for the people of Taieri, for Dunedin. We will all feel a lot more secure knowing that our communities and our children will not be exposed to the terrible, terrible things that members of our community endured in New Zealand, both at the time of the terror attack but also with the live streaming that occurred and made the impacts of that event even more devastating around New Zealand and around the world.

I rise with great satisfaction to take a call on the final reading of the—not to be outdone by any of my colleagues—Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, a title worthy of the great Margaret Mahy, that great Poet Laureate of Christchurch. The reference is apt: not only was she the great wordsmith of Christchurch but also she was a writer, and the point of this bill is to update the Act to take into account more than writing.

I well remember the moment I heard that the appalling news of the Christchurch massacre; I remember thinking that it must be some domestic murder gone wrong because I could not—no domestic murder goes right, of course—but I remember thinking it must be domestic-related because I could not take into account to my head that it could be a terrorist incident in New Zealand. How far we have all had to come since that day. But what I remember, driving home after school with my children in the car, was hearing that it was being live streamed, that the streaming was available freely, and wondering whether my teenagers were going to get hold of it or had already got hold of it. Luckily, they had not. But the fact remains that, with the law as it was at that stage, we had no ability to stop the live streaming of that atrocious event. This bill will give us the power to fill that hole in our powers, to control the spread of hate and the spread of horror.

I remember when I was entering a new job, and I’m not a lawyer any more, but at the time, I was a prosecutor, and I remember Mike Smith, the Whangārei Crown prosecutor, saying to me, “I’m going to ask you to do the porn cases, but my very strong suggestion is you never, ever, ever look at the images of child pornography because you will never, ever get them out of your head.” Luckily, I never had to take a porn case, but the trauma that we saw in the community after the Christchurch massacre as a result of people inadvertently or naively exposed to that appalling site is well known. So, again, it is an excellent move that we are making today to withdraw that licence from terrorists and those who support and facilitate terrorism.

For those who are concerned that this bill might go too far, for those who are concerned that it takes too much liberty, I would just point out the fact that, actually, all it does is change the range of mediums that we are able to control; it does not change the message. It does not change the nature of the definition of “objectionable”. And on that note, soberly and with great satisfaction, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. With the passage of this bill, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, we will be dragging an analogue law into the digital age. Many people have canvassed today the genesis of this bill and I think we Cantabrians, particularly those of us living in Christchurch at the time, are vastly in support of the intention of the bill. The 15th of March 2019 was a day that I think changed our innocent little city forever, and for the murderous actions of the terrorist to be live streamed on Facebook took a common murder beyond the realm of comprehension for most people, I think, and it was indeed rightly termed a terrorist atrocity.

This bill was viewed as a necessity borne out of that horrific day, and I see the ongoing ramifications in my own electorate, where a number of widows of people who were killed that day have actually moved. So I do see the ongoing impact of that. While I myself didn’t see the live streaming of the attack, I did actually see the live streaming of the police officers that took the terrorist down, and we did discuss this at length in the select committee as to the range, I suppose, of what might be deemed as objectionable material. There was murder on one stream and there was the shooting and the live stream take down of a terrorist in another stream. So that was discussed at length and, as the Minister made very clear in her second and third readings, “objectionable material” is very, very clearly defined in the law and I think that that is a very good thing.

So, with the passage of this bill, we are moving the law into a rapidly evolving area. It addresses a legislative and regulatory gap to the current online content regulations, as has been discussed by many. It does make the live streaming of objectionable content a specific criminal offence. We’ve talked a lot about terrorist attacks, but it does also include the live streaming of other objectionable materials like child sex exploitation instances. It will give the chief censor an ability to make very swift interim time-limited classification assessments that will last up to 20 days. Where we do have reservations as a party, however, is that it does put an extraordinary amount of power into the hands of the Classification Office. And while we, obviously, maintain that these are exemplary people doing an exemplary job, it does put a vast amount of responsibility on to them, because this law, effectively, lets the buck stop with them.

It will also authorise an Inspector of Publications, which is, effectively, the police, to issue take-down notices, and they’re aligned with the current powers of seizure of objectionable materials and publications. But we are concerned again with the very nature of this in how effective it may be, given we’re talking about live streaming, given we’re operating in an environment in a digital world where the use of VPNs—or virtual private networks—are widespread, mirror websites are widespread, and the very nature of trying to enforce a local digital-based law on to a global community.

It will also impose a penalty regime for convictions of up to 14 years’ imprisonment or $200,000 fines, and it will create future mechanisms for the Crown to potentially create web filters as and when the technology becomes available. I think it’s been widely canvassed today that we as a party opposed this at its first reading because of the internet filter provision. We did think it was too much of an overreach, and while we do, I think, live in an age where the cancel culture is rife, there is a very fine line to walk between reducing harm and protecting our freedoms of choice, our freedom of thought, and our freedom of speech. We did think that that web filtering tool was going to be extremely blunt and would have been a breach of many of those important democratic rights.

So I think the comments of my colleague in ACT Nicole McKee were very pertinent, very valid. My concern, as I’ve outlined, has not been so much with potential breaches of freedoms but actually the practical application of how this is going to work. It’s a well-intentioned bill, but it’s going to be really hard to enforce. The very nature of live streaming is that it is instant. And while the chief censor can issue an interim classification, while the police can issue a take-down notice, harm will be done by the very nature of the instantaneousness of a live stream. So Governments of the future are going to have to be very, very watchful of that.

The Government is granting—or we as a Parliament, I suppose, are granting the Government enormous powers here. The chief censor will have enormous powers. They must be treaded lightly. The ability for the issuing of take-down notices was an enormous concern for the submitters that came and spoke to us about this bill, and, obviously, we as a party at the time. But I do acknowledge the Minister for taking on those concerns and for removing the provision of a web filter, and I do acknowledge that she is prepared to look at how technologies will evolve in future. So we do then stand and commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to take the last call on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. It was also a privilege to sit on the select committee that considered this bill, and I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Minister, but also acknowledging my select committee colleagues, in particular the previous chair and deputy chair Barbara Kuriger and Tangi Utikere, who are no longer with us on that committee, and also, our colleague from across the House Melissa Lee, who between us we did ask many questions of officials. This was complex and technical legislation, and Melissa, in particular, made a very robust and useful contribution, and I just want to acknowledge her here, because it would have been wonderful to have her here to speak today; I know she would have liked to. I want to particularly thank officials, because we asked many, many technical questions of them, and they were very, very useful as we considered the bill and made some changes along the way.

The purpose of the bill has been well-canvassed; I think we can all remember where we were on March 15 and the impact of not only those terrible events that occurred that day but the live streaming and the impact of the live streaming on those who saw that live stream, and the impact of that that continues.

I do just want to respond to some comments made by the ACT Party today, because there were some questions around this in the committee of the whole House, as well, and I just wanted to make a few comments around the use of the term “objectionable”, because that was something that submitters did raise some concern around. But I think it’s actually important that the context of that definition is put in place so that we can understand it some more. The meaning of “objectionable” states that, “A publication is objectionable if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is like to be injurious to the public good.” When talking specifically about the sex component, the definition goes on to state that, “The publication is or contains one or more visual images of one or more children or young persons who are nude or partially nude.”

The point I want to make around “objectionable” is the threshold to meet that objectionable test is very, very high, and this definition is already, as others have pointed out, listed in statute. There’s no amendment to what objectionable means. There’s no addition to it. It’s already outlined in the law. It has a very, very high threshold, and as the Minister mentioned in her response last night, in section 132C(1)(b)(ii) of the—I could say the whole bill but I won’t—it requires an intent. It requires an intent of that party to know that what they are putting into the public domain is objectionable. So I do take some issue around the comments from the ACT Party that this is somehow impacting on democratic life. In my view, the objectionable incidents of March 15, they should be no part of our democratic life. So, on that note, I really want to just ensure that it’s made clear to the public that there’s no harm to us by having the use of the word “objectionable” in there.

In finishing, I want to acknowledge the victims of the March 15 mosque attack; remember those as we pass this law tonight. It is a historic night. Al salam alaikum. I commend this bill to the House.

Before I adjourn the House, I just want to commend members of this House for what has been a wonderful moment in this House, a wonderful debate. I commend you all for your contributions. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 November.

The House adjourned at 4.58 p.m.