Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

We’ve said from day one that victims are our priority; returning them to the heart of our justice system underpins all our work to restore law and order, which we know is working. Stalkers have been able to evade real consequences for their actions for far too long. This bill will create a modern, futureproofed, and truly enforceable stalking and harassment offence to ensure this insidious behaviour no longer goes unpunished.

Around 600 submitters to the Justice Committee added their voices to last year’s petitioners’ call for this offence. I thank all of them and the committee itself for their contributions to this bill. The full list of the committee’s changes is available in their report. The Government supports all of these changes. Today, I will speak to the prominent issues and recommendations raised in the report.

To be convicted of the new offence, the prosecution will need to prove the person engaged in a pattern of behaviour towards their victim. The committee recommended a broader definition for the pattern of behaviour. The offence will now require two specified acts within two years, rather than three specified acts within one year. This broadens the pattern of behaviour by capturing fewer acts across a longer time frame. I agree that this change will better address strategies such as anniversary-based stalking. It will also make it harder for stalkers to work around the law. I’m satisfied that it will keep the offence proportionate to the significant maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

A further recommendation made by the committee was to add doxing to the list of “specified act”. Doxing is the publication of personal information such as addresses or contact details, including whether a stalker claims to be their victim. It encourages third parties to contact, threaten, and intimidate the victim. Stalkers can now abuse the reach and anonymity of the internet, making this addition an essential part of a modern and futureproofed offence.

The committee also added two further important amendments to the bill: firstly, to allow the courts to order the destruction of intimate visual recordings—this will ensure that stalkers cannot continue to breach their victims’ privacy after being convicted of the new offence—secondly, to allow a court to make restraining firearm prohibition and Harmful Digital Communications Act orders, where a defendant is discharged without convictions. This will protect victims even if the perpetrator does not receive a conviction. The committee also made a small change to the bill to clarify the stalking aggravating factor. This will make it easier to understand and better reflect the cumulative nature of stalking and harassment harm.

Now, I’d like to speak about some common concerns raised by the submitters. Submitters were concerned that the bill may not capture some stalking and harassment behaviours. I want to assure the public that the offence captures a comprehensive set of behaviours; the language in this bill is carefully drafted to do so—for example, submitters suggested that making threats may not be captured as a “specified act”. This behaviour is captured by the broad specified act of contacting or communicating, including threats made over the internet.

Others were concerned that the bill may not capture leaving offensive material where the victim will find it. This will also be captured by the contacting or communicating part as the bill recognises that this may happen indirectly.

I want to clarify the mental element of the offence, the mens rea. The mental element will be satisfied if the stalker knows their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress to the victim. This is drafted to capture stalkers’ many motivations and reflect the offence’s significant penalty. Submitters were concerned that the mental element might only be met if the stalker or harasser admits to their knowledge. I’m pleased to assure the public that the bill does not require this. Knowledge is frequently proved in criminal cases based on other evidence.

For the new offence, this might simply be a stalker or harasser continuing their behaviour despite text messages from the victim telling them that they are scared or distressed. Similarly, the committee heard concerns that a police notice will be required to prove the mental element of the offence. Again, this is not the case. A notice is a tool to encourage the stalker to stop and assist the prosecution by creating a presumption of knowledge for further behaviour. However, it is not required to establish a mental element.

I’m proud to bring this bill to the House today. The bill establishes a modern offence to hold stalkers accountable and to protect communities. The bill creates powerful tools like the police notice system, to create a practical pathway for enforcement, unlike its predecessor. The offence is not an empty threat. In short, this bill will contribute to the Government’s commitment to ensure that there are 2,000 fewer victims of serious violent crime by 2030.

Again, I’d like to thank everybody who has contributed to this bill so far—the petitioners, the committee, and the submitters. I’ve got a special thankyou for those who shared their own experiences of stalking and harassment with the committee. Your courage is making New Zealand a safer place. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion will be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the ability to take a call on the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. First and foremost, it’s important that we acknowledge the reason this legislation came about, and it was the murder of Farzana Yaqubi, who lost her life at the end of 2022 as a result of being repetitively stalked, to the point where she lost her life. Farzana went to the New Zealand Police and, for a number of reasons, those complaints were not taken seriously. The Independent Police Conduct Authority ruled that more should have been done, and one of the considerations was that if there was a specific offence for stalking, then action may well have been taken in this instance.

As a result of that, when I was the Minister for Justice, I took policy to the 2023 election that would create a new and separate offence for stalking in New Zealand. Once in Opposition, that same legislation was taken and put into a member’s bill that was then put into the ballot.

At this point in time, it is important to note that National said that it was not a priority at that time. Paul Goldsmith himself stated that it was not a priority to progress legislation. He said that we have clear commitments that we’ve made and we’re working through and we can’t do everything all at once. But what changed his mind, and what changed this Government’s mind, to take action instead of not taking action, I believe, was the thousands of people who signed a petition and brought it here to the steps of Parliament, demanding that this Government took action and made stalking a criminal offence in New Zealand. It was on the steps of Parliament, when that petition was handed over, that Paul Goldsmith committed to introducing legislation as a priority and within a year. So I commend the Government for taking a change and actually doing the right thing. I also commend all of those people who signed that petition and who brought pressure upon this Government to make this law change that we are debating today.

I would also like to acknowledge all of the submitters who came to the Justice Committee and told quite harrowing personal stories of their own experiences of stalking, either immediately impacting them or people within their family. I’d like to acknowledge the Coalition for Safety of Women and Children and also Aotearoa Free From Stalking. Both those groups have been staunch and tireless advocates for getting this law change, and they have been so helpful to continue to push for the changes that we’re seeing today.

One of the most important changes that was made at select committee, I would like to highlight, was widening the definition of “criminal stalking”. What the Government initially brought in the first reading, under the definition, was a minimum of three stalking-type acts in a period of 12 months. This was quite different to the member’s bill that I had put forward, and members of those advocacy groups and those within the sector all thought that that would not be adequate to be able to meet the needs of those people who were being stalked, or to be able to bring a successful prosecution. There were real concerns that someone who had been to prison for a period of a year or more would be outside of that time frame and it wouldn’t capture those people, and particularly for premeditated crimes such as stalking, where there’s a lot of planning and consideration, that the stalker would potentially wait for just over one year to then do another act and evade being prosecuted.

The other point that was made through the select committee process was that quite often, stalkers celebrate anniversaries. Whether it’s a time when people were previously together, a birthday, or a special event, these are commonly times where there are either gifts or extra messages or things brought upon that date, so having that longer than 12 months was essential. So I was really heartened that towards the end of that period, the Government members agreed to making that change, and that change is a minimum of two acts, not three, and over a period of 24 months, so a longer period of time. This has been welcomed by advocates in the sector, and it shows that at select committee, when we work constructively, when we look at evidence, and when we hear from people in New Zealand, we can actually make constructive, well-meaning, and good law here in this Parliament. It’s quite heartening to see that. The comment that we’ve received from people in the sector is that after that change, “This version is a better, safer, and more victim-centred bill than the original.” So I’m really pleased to have pushed hard for those changes and to see them coming forward and being made law.

However, there are still some concerns in this version of the bill. It is around those elements that were discussed at the first reading, around the mens rea, or the intent—the mental element to prove this crime. Currently, it must be proven that the stalker acted knowingly, that their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress to their target, so it means that the stalker has to know that their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress. Proving that intent of someone who is lying or is genuinely deluded about how another person feels about them may well be extremely difficult to prove in a court of law, and this is concerning. We heard quite good evidence in the select committee that there are people who are engaged in stalking behaviour who genuinely believe that the victim wants their advances, that they want their attention, and they visualise that they are reciprocating those actions. So trying to prove that someone acted knowingly, that their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress, when that person themselves is deluded as to the other person’s affections may well prove to be very difficult for prosecution in a court of law. We believe it would be better if the bill stated that the stalker knows or ought to know that their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress.

I would like to outline that I intend to bring some amendments that propose to make those changes, which I will speak to at the committee stage. The Government to date has been constructive and very willing to engage on making this law as good as it possibly can be, and I look forward to potentially seeing some additional changes at the committee stage. That would mean that those advocates in the sector who understand, at the coalface, the difficulty of this area, who have given that very clear advice right through the select committee stage, and all of those submitters who support this change—if the Government was able to make that change at the committee of the whole House stage, that would make this bill work even better.

I would like to conclude by stating that stalking affects far more lives than we ever see. It’s an invisible crime to so many people going about their daily lives, but it is actually a living hell for, particularly, women who get repeatedly put into a position where they live in fear. Those tactics that are repeatedly taken out are designed to intimidate and designed to make people’s lives an absolute misery. They’re an extension of family violence or control over others. That is completely unacceptable. Women deserve to live in New Zealand free from fear, free from violence, and to go about their daily lives without having someone else stalking every moment of their day and using every medium possible to make them feel that fear.

This bill is an excellent start at not only introducing a framework in our legal system, where people can be prosecuted and held to account in a court of law, but also sending a strong message out there to act as a deterrent. It is one area where I believe that this actually can work—that we will not tolerate people who intimidate others, that we will not tolerate this type of behaviour in our community, and we’ll stand together to make sure that our families are safe and that we can hold our heads up in New Zealand and feel proud that we live in a violence-free and a threat-free community. This bill is only a small step, but I hope it will go a long way in changing the culture, which causes so much harm in our communities. I commend it to the House.

I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak in support at the second reading of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill, because, right now, in Aotearoa, stalking is not a criminal offence. We are working together across the House to change this, because stalking is horrific, it ruins lives, it is dangerous, and we must have protections in place for women in Aotearoa.

Of course, I first have to acknowledge the survivors who both pushed for this legislation and who came forward during the select committee process, especially those who shared their lived experience with us at select committee. In June last year, a petition to make stalking illegal was presented on the stairs of this Parliament. A sign that I remember said, “Stalking is terrifying and dangerous”, and that is something that has stayed with me throughout this process. I do also want to acknowledge the Hon Ginny Andersen for listening to our communities and for pushing to bring this legislation to the House. The bravery of speaking out about truly traumatic experiences has shaped this bill for the better, and the Green Party supports the intent of this bill.

Strengthening our laws to better respond to stalking is long overdue. For too long, our legal system has failed to capture the reality of what stalking looks like and the fear it causes and the lives it ruins. This bill marks an important step towards addressing that gap. However, while we do support the direction of the legislation, we, in the Greens, believe further amendments are required to ensure it is both effective and survivor-centred.

Of course, we first acknowledge and welcome the select committee decision to reduce the threshold for a stalking offence from three times in one year to two times in two years. This was a real worry for survivors and advocates when the bill was first brought to the House. Overwhelmingly, most stalkers are ex-partners, and we heard at select committee the harrowing stories that a common excuse used by stalkers is anniversaries.

Now, Zeni Gibson had been stalked and sadistically harassed—and I quote her here: “In the scheme of stalking, 12 months is really no time at all. And so, in those earlier years, the person who stalked me, he’d pop up and harass me before disappearing for months. In the case of those being stalked by ex-partners, there might be anniversaries that trigger these stalking behaviours.”

This change to the definition brings New Zealand more in line with comparable international jurisdictions like Australia and the UK. It reflects what survivors and advocates have long been calling for and recognises the serious harm that can be caused after just one or two incidents. Requiring three separate acts to even be considered for legal protection would have been out of step with reality and furthered the traumatisation. I acknowledge that the select committee went back and forth, and we really were careful to get that advice from our officials and from advocates in the community. I really commend the select committee for listening and making this really important change.

More changes to the definition of “stalking” are required. Specifically, the Greens, alongside leaders in the community, are concerned with the current wording, which outlines the requirement of a person to know that their conduct is likely to cause fear or distress. In reality, that could mean survivors are left unprotected unless a perpetrator has received a formal police warning or that person explicitly admits they know their conduct is likely to cause distress, and that is a high threshold, which has a lot of gaps.

At the select committee stage, we heard that many victims make their distress clear—sometimes through a message, sometimes in person, often in fear—yet, under this bill, that might not be enough, and that is unacceptable. People should not have to endure further harm just to satisfy a legal technicality. The Greens believe that the bill should adopt an ought-to-have-known standard where someone may be liable if they knew or ought to have known that their behaviour would likely cause fear or distress. This would bring us into line with other jurisdictions and better reflect community experiences.

Now, through this time, I have learnt so much, and I have to say thank you to Leonie Morris from Aotearoa Free From Stalking, based at the Auckland Women’s Centre, for her life’s work in protecting women and working on this stalking and harassment legislation. I also have to acknowledge the Coalition for the Safety of Women and Children and Awatea Mita, who has taught me so much with her gentle ways and her fierce advocacy for survivors and women. Those one-on-one sessions that she has and the way that she holds people and makes them feel heard and safe is so, so important. I also want to talk to acknowledge the Fired Up Stilettos, a stripper-led labour rights movement, formed in response to years of injustice in strip clubs, who advocate for sex workers. Sex workers and strippers are not convinced that this legislation will protect them. We know that they have been ignored by Police and the system over and over again when they have been harassed and stalked, and I want them to know that we are listening to you, we hear you, and we want to have laws that protect you and make you feel safe.

I also want to acknowledge the whānau of Farzana Yaqubi, who lost her life to murder because she was not taken seriously by police and because this law was not in place. I hope that her family feels some solace that we are bringing this law. I wonder to myself if Farzana, if she had lived, would have been submitting at the select committee. You know, today is for people like Farzana, for people like Zeni, and for the countless others who haven’t come forward, because they don’t feel like it’ll make any difference.

I want to talk as well about how punitive measures are not enough. We need to stop the harm from happening before it occurs, and that means that we have a responsibility to ensure that this legislation is part of a broader system that supports rehabilitation and addresses the root causes of stalking behaviour. Experts and survivors were crystal clear that access to mental health and addiction support, early intervention, and stalking-specific support services are essential to ensuring that the harm is not even a thing and that it is stopped before harm even occurs. The dynamics and drivers of stalking are vast and different; so too must be the solutions. As such, the Greens support embedding stalking-specific education and intervention into existing community-based rehabilitation programmes, including those run by prevention-focused sexual violence services.

The Greens will continue to support this bill through the remaining readings, but we urge the Government and this House to adopt the amendments that have come from survivors, that have come from experts, and that have come from advocates—the amendments that I’ve outlined here today. We will bring those to the committee of the whole House stage. Women should be able to live their lives without fear, and, today, this one is for all those survivors and victims who didn’t have this law and for all those survivors and victims who this law will protect.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real privilege to be able to stand here today and speak on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this legislation.

I’ve spoken to this issue a couple of times in this House, but what I would like to say is that often somebody in the general public listening into Parliament and hearing about legislation in this House may not understand the technicalities of the law itself. What I’d like to do is not go over again what previous speakers have spoken to, in the context of the legalities of this bill, but speak about what does this mean in reality for an average New Zealander who is suffering at the hands of a person who is stalking them—what does the reality of this look like for a victim out in our communities who has often felt very distressed, alone, and quite frustrated at the lack of response when they’re going through this. So, Mr Speaker, if you will allow me, I will go a little bit into what this looks like for a person on the ground.

I’ve seen firsthand not only from speaking to community organisations in the role that I have as Minister for the Prevention of Family Harm and Sexual Violence but also before coming to this House, growing up in an environment where you witness in your community how this affects those that you care about, your friends, sometimes family—and, sometimes, friends and family can also be the perpetrator. So it can often be very difficult to come to terms with how to deal with this on both sides. I’ve seen firsthand that this doesn’t just damage the immediate victim that is going through the stalking process and going through the process of trying to seek help; it affects everybody around them.

One of those that it affects the most is often children who are witness to not only the behaviours but are witness to a parent or somebody they love going through the worst moments of their life, and having to do what many children shouldn’t have to do, and that is grow up very fast and, often, become support people for those victims. It can be very distressing for those children and young people witnessing that, growing up and dealing with things that they really shouldn’t have to, and their innocence being taken away from them by the act of a stalker. I think I’ve said this before, but it’s very relevant—when you see the light disappear from the eyes of a victim who has lost hope of tomorrow being a better day, who has lost hope of somebody coming to rescue them, who has lost hope of the very people who are supposed to come and support them, not having the tools in place to be able to do anything about it.

We often talk about victims or people speaking about how the police have often ignored harassment or not been there or shown up to some of these incidences, but we must be fair here; often police were policing with one hand tied behind their back. They didn’t have the tools to enable them to enforce and actually do something about it, because it actually wasn’t against the law. Many stalkers are very smart, understand the laws, and understand how far they can push that boundary where nothing could happen to them. An example of that would be they could stand at the top of your driveway, knowingly intimidate you, stand there all night long, but as long as they don’t step foot on your property, they’re not breaking any laws.

This is unacceptable and we as a Government have made a commitment to focus on victims and to make sure that our communities are safer—not only for women, I might add; many men also suffer from being victims of harassment and stalking behaviours. We must start acknowledging that this is a problem. Unless we speak about these problems, we can never solve them. Unfortunately, this is a bigger problem that many people actually realise in this country. I’m hoping today will be the day that we have shown we’ve put our foot down and that enough is enough and that we’re not going to tolerate this any more. People deserve to live a safe, happy life in this country, with the support of people in this House to help enable that to happen, but in order to do that, Police have needed some tools, courts have needed some tools, and we are implementing that today.

I feel very honoured and privileged to be in a position to be able to stand here and actually speak to these issues. Often, I get asked, “Why did you put your hand up to come to Parliament?” This is one of those reasons; where we as a Parliament, across both sides of the House, can come together and create a piece of legislation that will better hundreds, if not thousands, of lives moving forward. It’s an absolute honour and a privilege to stand here today and to be part of that process, knowing that we in this House have made some contribution for a better life for many women and men going forward.

I would like to thank the committee members, the submitters who had the bravery to come forward and speak to often some pretty horrific circumstances, but I’d also like to shout out to those who may not necessarily have felt safe in coming forward and speaking to this issue. What I would like to say is “We hear you in this place. You do not have to physically come into this House and tell your story, because many brave women came and did that not only for themselves but on behalf of you. They care not only for themselves and what they went through; they don’t want to see it happening to anybody else.” So we hear those who often have felt silenced.

We hear those who may not have had the opportunity to come forward. We may not even necessarily understand exactly what that might feel like, but many of us have had circumstances where we have witnessed what that pain can feel like and what that absolute—I cannot think of the word, just that absolute frustration of not knowing where to turn to, but now knowing that there is an avenue that you can go down to stop this kind of behaviour.

Stalking is unacceptable in any circumstance and I’m hoping that this small but powerful change will make a real difference in the lives of men and women around our country. Thank you very much. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill. I’d first like to acknowledge the Minister for bringing a piece of legislation that is an important step forward in our commitment to reducing the numbers of serious crimes reported, and to demonstrating a strengthening of our law and order and protection for victims.

The stalking and harassment bill sounds simple when we talk about it in this House, but the reality is that stalking and harassment places its victims in prison. They are isolated, they are afraid to move about their lives, they are robbed of their liberty, they are robbed of their freedom. Therefore, to talk about it in a term that we use so frivolously—harassing and stalking—it just sounds easy to say, but the reality for the victims is enormous. It is that loss of liberty, that loss of ability to live your life as you should be able to live, and that is why it has been an important piece of legislation to bring forward.

I would really like to acknowledge the Justice Committee, and I know that there has been thorough and detailed and robust discussions around how to make this piece of law, as it’s brought before the House today, as workable and effective as possible. It is a recognition of all of the committee in the way they have engaged and recognised some vulnerabilities where the law can be strengthened and have addressed that by extending the time allocation and reducing the number of instances under which the offence can be founded.

What is important, I think, is to recognise that, most importantly, this piece of legislation is an empowerment. It is a protection and an empowerment to those who feel vulnerable and feel isolated and feel imprisoned in their lives. It is a strong message to say we are taking action and, as has been said repeatedly in this House, we are listening. The process of operationalising a piece of law for police, for enforcement agencies, for the courts is a difficult one, and I think the presenting of this legislation with an opportunity to consider and continue to review its impact and effectiveness is a good initiative.

This is a long time coming and I can appreciate the frustration for those who have lobbied to have their voice heard. There are complex areas of law when we’re dealing about the victims and vulnerabilities and we have prioritised—I think, rightly so—the relationship offences. But what we’re dealing with here is offences that occur when no relationship exists, as well as when a relationship exists—when there is only imagined connections and imagined relationships. That makes it all the more horrifying for those who are trying to live a free and happy life.

I think this is recognising that we are offering, here, a tool of empowerment. We are offering, here, another opportunity to hear those that are vulnerable and made vulnerable by those who have such bad intentions. I am very grateful for the legislation being put forward today. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important legislation. I look forward to it working its way through to becoming law and that we can finally take some action against the perpetrators of this type of offending. I commend the bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Similarly to a bill that I spoke to—it feels probably too familiar—just last week, around violence and domestic violence and family violence, and so it feels like some of this might feel and sound similar. It does reflect—again, I think I said this last week—Judge Recordon, when we were first trying to find out, and he said in court that day, “So what is this thing, family violence? We have to really figure it out because we don’t know what we’re looking at.”

I reflect again in this instance what that means in terms of stalking, because then that became a thing. Once you name something like this, you can figure it out. So if that’s the word, how do we identify it, and how do we know it and how do we manage it and how do we keep people safe? Those are the reflections as I speak today.

E mihi atu ana ki te whānau o Farzana. Aroha nui ki a rātou mō ake tonu atu.

[I acknowledge the Farzana family. Much love to them, for ever.]

When you say that name, and others, by the way, we then realise where we failed and where this House failed to not do more, and, generally, that seems to be because we don’t listen well enough. We don’t appreciate and recognise the truth when it’s spoken, and we carry on as if our own ideas are the only ones. So e mihi atu ana ki tērā whānau [I acknowledge that family].

Young women are entitled to feel safe—all women are entitled to feel safe. Wāhine Māori, mokopuna Māori, kōtiro Māori, tamāhine are entitled to feel safe, and they should, but we do not and they do not. This is why this is good—an idea still growing, I would say.

Much of my discussion—again, as you’ve heard me say before—is having worked in this field for a very long time and understanding the harm and the tragedy and the things that women suffer—different to men; that they suffer it differently to men: deeply, longer, and more enduring. I’m amazed sometimes how tough and brave we are when those things are forced upon us on a daily basis.

This point to require the offender to have known the behaviour was likely to cause fear or distress, it’s a dangerous but not—it’s a dumb thing. It’s a dumb thing. To think that you’re going to get any sense of a smart thinking-through consideration from an offender who’s already been doing the dumbest things. To think that you can leave that idea with them and go, “OK, do you get this? Do you understand the harm? Do you understand the trauma?” Look, I get that what we’re trying to do is to improve it, but I don’t know whether our swings are big enough, to be completely honest. I don’t know how long the harm has to be sustained on women, and therefore the children of these women, right? How long do we have to wait for this? I think bigger swings and I think braver moves is my view.

The other part of that is that, again, it minimises—and I mentioned this last week—the truth, because, too often, women in situations such as these are not taken seriously. Members will know, and our historical literature shows that we were called crazy and neurotic, right? The minute those words were used—and it shows in a lot of our history that when you’re called neurotic, who’s going to take you seriously? “She’s just another crazy wahine.”, right? So who’s really going to listen and take one seriously to get it to the point of this? Well, clearly Ginny Andersen, the Minister of Justice, and others in this House—particularly the women others in this House—have done that, and I recognise you and I see you in this instance.

Now, I’m going to speak to the boys and the men in this House and say that, OK guys, you need to buck up and speak up and actually have a look at your own, work on your own—work on your lot; on your men lot and your boys lot—because we’re doing all the work. I love some of you, at least, obviously—as I do in this House—but do the work and do the work with your men, do it for them. Do it sometimes, like a real damned good hug—but do the work so we don’t have to carry the load and keep doing the work.

I support this, obviously. I support the smart, good, full-hearted women and the full-hearted men in this and I honour it and I commend it. Kia ora tātou.

“Greg has told me how he is going to rape and kill me endlessly. It is devastating that until he acts on this, I am not protected under New Zealand law.” These are the words of Zeni Gibson and, because of the way that our laws are currently written, she had and continues to be violently stalked by a complete stranger that she had a handful of polite, civil interactions with—a smile, a nod, a quick hello—here and there when she was 16, which turned into a full-blown intense fixation. This happened just down the road from where we sit today.

He used every method he could to stalk Zeni. He harassed her social media accounts, he sent her persistent emails, which could be more than 1,000 emails in one week. When she blocked him, he would go on to websites to send newsletter sign-up forms and she would receive emails that said, “Hi, Zeni, check your message requests.”; “Hello, hey, in case you didn’t see the other messages.”; “Kia ora. Cut your throat.”; “Hey, I need to slice your smile off of your face.”; and even this last one: “43 [redacted street] rape your Mum.”, which was her mother’s address, which he somehow got a hold of.

This gives you a brief insight into the graphic, sexually violent stalking that Zeni had to endure, but does not even begin to touch on the real-life actions, including this person putting human faeces in her family’s mailbox. All of this unpunishable by our law, unless he acted on his heinous promises. “It’s hard to explain how insidious and all-consuming stalking is. Greg was with me while I was eating dinner with mum; while I was showering; while I was driving with my friends. I couldn’t lock my door and feel safe. He was there, wherever I was, every day, describing my sexual torture in bloody detail.”

I have spoken to Zeni over the last eight months, over Instagram messages. I’ve spoken with her family members and her testimony brought me to tears because I know firsthand, as a young woman in this place, that rape and death threats and stalking literally follows you everywhere you go. Many women know how this feels because, in this day and age with the internet, Zeni is but one of many women who have contacted me and shared their stories with me. Thanks to working with Zeni, I was able to get New Zealand Transport Agency to enable an email confirmation as part of their sign-up functions; they have removed the free-type name field and their newsletters no longer address recipients by name. Sir Brian Roche, our Public Service Commissioner, has also engaged with me on public websites being used to stalk others.

I have many complex views on this bill, but my major two points boil down to this. First, we rely on the Police getting this right. In Zeni’s case, the police made a number of mistakes that could have led to her death, including delivering her stalker with a notice which restricted him to enter the suburb of Mornington where she had just moved into a new flat, exposing her location. These mistakes cost lives. Farzana Yaqubi, who my colleague Kahurangi was talking about, was a 21-year-old woman in Auckland who was stabbed to death while getting off the bus, after a litany of police failures, as outlined by the Independent Police Conduct Authority.

I have met with the Minister of Police to bring these issues to his attention and I am hopeful that police notification after just one incident of stalking will have the same effect that it has had around the world in different international jurisdictions. Sadly, a stern warning from a man in a uniform with status is more authoritative than a woman who says no.

The second point is that imprisonment cannot be the only tool to eliminate stalking. In Zeni’s own words, “I completely reject the conversation around harsher penalties. I believe that my experience brings to light a lapse in access to mental health support. At the same time, I believe there needs to be a better way to protect victims of harassment and stalking and to prevent this from happening in the first place.” For some stalkers, imprisonment terms may make them more violent, more hostile, while they become even more fixated. An example of what that could look like in prevention is giving greater resources to the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, who are a preventative service focusing and specialising on fixated people who have an obsessional preoccupation with a person, place, or cause which is pursued to an irrational degree.

Finally, we must believe people, we must believe and protect women, and a reflection that we might not be there yet is the fact that it took decades of campaigning to get here today.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill at the second reading. I’d like to start off by saying rest in peace, Farzana Yaqubi, Allah yerhamik.

Farzana’s violent death by her stalker has been the torch of change flashed in New Zealand’s eyes, and it has turned tragedy into action. I’m really proud of the fact that, through the select committee process, we have, as has been mentioned, strengthened the bill to crack down harder on offenders and would-be offenders, particularly by changing the number of acts as to when the law will be triggered to two in 24 months. Victims are finally being put first. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I do want to absolutely acknowledge the serious harm that stalking causes. I just want to recognise that this is part of a significant shift in our law that has happened over the past few years—that, for a long time, our law really focused on physical harm, and it was very rare indeed that psychological harm to another person was seen as giving rise to any kind of criminal responsibility.

This is a further extension of things like the offences under the Harassment Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act. I guess I want to take a slightly legalistic approach, because it does throw up some real challenges about how we approach that. Before we do that, I want to also recognise the advocacy around this from numerous people and groups—far too many to name—and the fact that their work has led to this legislation coming before the House. I think it’s really heartening, and those people can feel rightly proud.

I also want to recognise Ginny Andersen’s work in this space. She also worked tirelessly with those advocates, and, in taking action, including drafting her own member’s bill, and I want to be clear that but for that member’s bill, the Minister of Justice would have continued to say that this isn’t a priority. It’s a really good example of how, in Opposition, we can have change and create change. But good on the Government, and I want to also recognise one other thing: as we sat around that select committee table, we all agreed in principle that this was a terrible state of affairs that needed to change, and we worked on making it better, and made substantial changes to the legislation as it went through the committee. So all of those are good things.

The stalking offence that this creates—I want to point one thing out—is a very serious offence. The maximum imprisonment for it is five years, so it puts it very much at the upper end, not up with serious violent offending, but very much in the upper echelons of offending. So we’ve got to be really clear that, yes, engaging in harassing or stalking behaviour is very bad, but we need to set the threshold for what that is, at a level that is commensurate with putting someone who’s a serious offender in jail for five years. It’s not a trivial offence; it’s a serious offence. So we need to recognise that.

If you look at the conduct—what’s the technical term?—the “specified acts”, some of them are obviously troubling: loitering and following home, or obstructing a person; things like that. But equally, others are things that people would do not as a matter of course, but things that nasty people would simply do to be nasty, such as sending electronic messages, or the like.

That’s why there’s quite an interesting provision here, and it’s quite a challenge, and that’s the mental state required. People who engage in stalking behaviour sometimes have a tenuous grasp on reality, you know? Sometimes, they are of a view that what they’re doing is either not a bad thing or will get them back together with an ex-partner, or something of that ilk. The test is that there’s a pattern of behaviour, and the person engaging in that behaviour knows that it’s likely to cause fear or distress. So it’s that “knows”—it’s not “ought to know”, or “a reasonable person would know”; it’s a test of actual knowledge, and I think that’s something that bears further discussion.

One of the reasons in new subsection (3) of the key section there: you have a warning framework where a police officer can go to a person who’s engaged in this behaviour and say—and Tamatha Paul just referred to this—“Hey, look, what you’re doing isn’t OK, it is causing distress, and it would be a stalking event. Now that you know this, you’re on notice.” So when that happens, people can’t then turn around and go, “I thought she liked it when I sent her these sexual messages.”, or whatever it might be, when they’ve been clearly told that that’s not the case. So that’s why that is in there. That’s an important part of the knowledge element. But I think we need to discuss that knowledge element—mens rea, if you want to use the legal term—a little bit more, and ask the question in this House whether we’ve struck the right balance there.

I do want to say this about this piece of legislation: we agree on this side of the House that creating a stalking offence is the right thing to do. But let’s not kid ourselves that it will solve the problem. The problem runs much deeper, and we don’t effect societal change by creating a criminal offence. We don’t effect a change in the way people see what appropriate behaviour and what a healthy relationship is and how to behave when the world doesn’t turn out the way they want, by creating a criminal offence. I think, as leaders in this House and elsewhere, we need to also be clear that we’re leading more than just a legislative change but also a cultural change, but that will be how we keep women in particular safe.

The other thing I’d note is this bill actually deals with some other things that are being bandied around in this House, and in subsection (2) of the proposed section 216P, dealing with specified acts, it talks about the use of artificial intelligence. I know there’s been a lot of discussion around deep fakes. I’m always concerned when we define things too narrowly and we end up having a long list of things that are included and things are always falling outside of it. I think this legislation would capture the use of deep fakes as a tool of harassment.

In terms of the deep fakes in the member’s bill that has been bandied around in this House, the bill actually talks about sexualised images. Deep fakes can be offensive without being sexualised, they can be harassing without being sexualised: they could be an artificial image of the stalker and the victim that’s totally fake. If that was posted on Facebook or simply emailed to the victim, that is stalking and harassing behaviour, and it is captured by this definition. That’s one of the reasons I think this is quite well drafted, because the prohibited behaviour is drafted quite widely, and the test for the behaviour isn’t exactly what you do; it’s the effect that it has. There’s two elements to it: that it has an effect of causing fear or distress, and that it was known to do that. It doesn’t even have to have been intended to do that, as long as you knew that that was what it was going to do.

I think in taking that approach, saying, “If you engage in a behaviour which you know causes distress, that’s stalking; here are some of the kinds of behaviours.”—in a very open-ended way—that’s actually a really good way to draft it. It’s not good drafting it like “You can’t stand outside someone’s home. You can’t send deep-fake images. You can’t send angry texts.”, because a list like that’s never going to work. So what we have here is a good piece of legislation; it’s not perfect.

The other thing I’d just say as a closing remark is that we have a patchwork of legislation in this space: we have domestic violence legislation, protection orders, the Harassment Act, the Harmful Digital Communications Act, intimidation under the Summary Offences Act, and now we have stalking Under the Crimes Act. It’s not satisfactory, and, at some point, we’re going to have to sit down and say that we need to think very carefully about wrongdoing which is about harassment, about fear, about intimidation, about coercion and control, and we need to have a carefully thought-out and unified approach to it. But this is one step in that direction.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to pick up on the comment the last speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, made about effecting change. Ultimately, there are a number of challenges in this space, but, actually, this is a critical step to helping to restore the balance of real consequences for crime. We are not prepared to accept an apologist approach like we saw under the last Government. This bill is about rebalancing law and order issues in this country. I want to thank the Justice Committee for their diligent work and their proposals to amend some of the clauses within this, because, actually, I think they’ve reached a good balance on that. We’ve heard too many sad stories of horrific situations of stalking and harassment, so this bill is a great way to progress that.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak in favour and support of this very important bill. I’d like to thank the Government for moving this through on the foundations of Ginny Andersen’s advocacy—her tireless advocacy, really—in terms of this area and in terms of other areas relating to sexual violence and intimidation against women.

In 2022, on 19 December, I was the electorate MP for Upper Harbour and I remember hearing the news that Farzana Yaqubi had been murdered in the electorate. The following day, Ibrahim Omer and I went to the place where she had been murdered, and we walked around the corner to where her house was—it was so close; so impossibly close—and sat for a time with her family before we went to her burial the following day.

This was a family who were grieving in just the worst kind of way—the absolute worst kind of way. They could not believe that she had been taken from them. But I think they were also really reeling from the fact that she—as they found out later through the Independent Police Conduct Authority process—had made a number of complaints and she had raised these issues and she’d done all the right things. Despite that, she hadn’t had the help that she needed.

On 25 October 2022, Farzana made her first 105 online report to the police and she actually sent screenshots of the messages that had been sent to her; she provided the police with information. On 3 December 2022, she updated her online report and she told police that she was extremely fearful that the man may pose a threat to her life. On 6 December, she filed a formal statement at the Henderson Police Station and was told that the file would be forwarded, but, essentially, it hadn’t progressed any further at all.

Then on 19 December, she was murdered. The astonishing loss of life—a young Auckland University of Technology law student—I just find impossible to think about. I do want to acknowledge her family, although what they said to me the day after still rings true: that nothing can be done to bring her back. I think that’s true for every woman who faces violence of this nature, and therefore we must pay attention to all the things that happened before that.

I do think that this legislation is a step in the right direction, but I do think, like other speakers have mentioned, we must continue to monitor it to make sure that it’s operating as it should. We had a number of submitters, including the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ submission and WAVES—Waitakere Anti-Violence Essential Services—who argued against that sort of repetitive pattern of behaviour, and that led to a change taken on board by the Justice Committee, which eventually got us to the two Acts in two years. However, as others have spoken to, there remains some dissatisfaction with the mens rea element, which is why Ginny Andersen has put forward her proposed changes.

Much like Duncan Webb has highlighted, the college of psychiatrists suggested that much more needed to be done, and they talked about developing sector guidance, education, resources. They talked about support frameworks for victims. I think about other programmes that are just in sort of seedling stage right now that this whole House needs to get behind in terms of supporting them, because one of our biggest problems is that women often don’t report when they’re subjected to acts of intimidation, stalking behaviour—they simply don’t report. There is a new tool that’s going to be launched in August or September called Tika. It is an app tool where you can register an instance of sexual violence, and if the same individual is identified, it flags that to you so that you can then say, “It’s not just me. I do want to go ahead and report now.”

I would just strongly, in my final comments, encourage the House that this is an area where we must all continue to work together. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you.

I too want to commend the Justice Committee for the substantive changes that they have made in toughening up this stalking legislation. I too, quickly, want to pay tribute to Farzana Yaqubi, the 21-year-old law student whose life was violently cut short on Royal Road, in Massey, in Upper Harbour in 2022. Her death is not in vain. I thank the committee for all its work, and I look forward to the third reading and for this to be enacted. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, thank you. First of all, I just want to commend the words that I’ve heard from many of the speakers tonight, particularly Vanushi Walters’ account of the terrible story of a woman’s death, because we weren’t adequately addressing this issue. Also, I’m mindful of other members of the House who have spent their lives working in this field, and I just want to acknowledge the very good place that people come from when they look at this legislation.

What we’ve made here is a difficult change, and we have had a system that’s failed because of some things that are very good in our system—some things where we are trying to make sure that we are always aware of the mens rea in a situation—and it hasn’t worked for us. It’s actually let a whole lot of people down, and we have to be flexible enough to see that our system hasn’t worked and move on from it into a different space. I see this is a well-formed piece of legislation that will need review—we will need to look at it again—but I think it is one where we’re taking stock, and we’re thinking, “We are a different world.” This was a world where, really, we underestimated the impact of events like this on people, and we did that probably because women didn’t have the power that they should have had in our society. We just weren’t, as a society, aware of the impact it was having on them.

I’m hesitant to use this example because I do not want to underestimate the true cost of this kind of stalking for other people, but I had a touch of this in my own life when I had somebody come to my law firm who had decided to track me down because my husband, in his career, had offended them. They were a member of the Special Air Service, so they had been somebody who was quite capable of killing someone—they’d been imprisoned. They had to close my office as a consequence, and, after several years of phone calls and being very fearful of a situation, I went through the process of standing for Parliament and, lo and behold, guess who turned up! I got that ominous call. It’s a special kind of fear that enters you when you get that call, and it’s because you’ve got children, and you’ve got a whole vulnerability that people just don’t get unless you’re absolutely in those boots. That would have been an example of a situation where it was after a two-year period—in fact, I think it would have been probably more like three years.

I think we do have to look at these things from time to time, because we may need to look at the balance between each act being something that, maybe, is lawful but its culmination being something that causes other people deep distress. I think it is very important at the committee stage of this bill that we talk about whether we’ve got that balance right, in terms of the test of knowledge and whether, in fact, we have to take a long, hard look at the area in a pragmatic way and say, “Maybe we need to alter that a little in favour of the victims of this kind of violence.” I think we can underestimate how much fear is part of the psychology of human beings. We need to be aware that people are fearful, and they need to be looked after in that state.

I just want to come back to the situation I went through and talk about one of the things that I think is a very strong part of this particular piece of legislation. That’s the signal to our community that this is just not acceptable—the signal to the perpetrator, and the signal to our police force, because, in the situation that I had, I had a man who’d just been released from prison, my office had been shut down, and the police actually were very dismissive of what was going on. The man was bailed to my area without any regard for the fact that my children and I had to move into another area as a consequence. It was extremely scary. The police officer said to me, at one point, “I saw this man at the Anzac ceremony”—because he’d skipped bail—“but I didn’t arrest him.” I just don’t think that that police officer understood the seriousness of what that man was engaged in. And it wasn’t just me; it was also the fact he’d been in prison because he had been very violent to his wife. These things are connected.

I think this piece of legislation is the signal; it’s saying, “We take this stuff seriously.” You may manipulate in this way: you may say that this is just a bunch of flowers. You may say, “I just know your address.” You may say, “I’m just playing around”, with some sort of image on social media. You may say these things, but we don’t believe you. We actually need to believe the people who are fearful—because that’s most of us. Most of us get fearful in those situations. Most of us are vulnerable. Our job as legislators is to make sure we change the norms and values of our society sufficiently when required—when that’s reasonable. It’s reasonable here. It’s reasonable that we look through the bunch of flowers, we look through the texts and the texts and the texts, we look through the violence, and we don’t say, “You’re being melodramatic.”; we say, “That kind of threat that makes you frightened, that’s not good enough. You can’t do that.” That is actually going to put into force the support that is the Police, that is the State. We are going to look after our own, and that’s a very, very important symbol. I think that’s the thing that this law has got right. I think it’s sending out that signal. It doesn’t mean that other stuff isn’t important; it absolutely is.

I’d like to end with talking about the bit that I think’s missing. I’ve picked up the sexual and family violence portfolio for the Labour Party, and I am very concerned that, currently, our sexual and family violence strategy has been prioritised in a way that ignores education. We need proactive education in this country. We need people to know about this law. We need them to know that it’s not acceptable to harass people in this way—that we won’t put up with it. We need them to know that the norms and values of this country have moved. We still have a situation where most women, if you survey them tomorrow, in this country, would not understand or be able to define what sexual abuse is, what rape is. That is where we’re at in this country. We’re not alone; that’s true of most countries. In most countries, that is knowledge that is not yet really assimilated into our populations. We need to put some serious money into educating our population on what we expect of them—what is OK, and what is not.

This law could be our chance to do that. We need to make sure that people are aware of where they stand with this law. It’s not just our police force; it’s our population. We need people to understand this, and we know—the science says—if we educate people, if we say it’s not OK to do these things, actually, the population will change in its norms and values, and that’s going to be very important. Our young men need to know about this law. They need to know what’s acceptable and what isn’t. This is one of the things we need, but the other thing we need to do is that sometimes we need to spend some money on areas like this to keep people safe, because that will mean less victims.

While there is a hue and cry about wasted spending, I don’t believe that this, in anyone in this House’s opinion, would be a waste of money. There was no money put into the sexual and family violence strategy this time in the Budget. Whether the Labour Party’s in Government or there is another Government, I urge people in this House to take this area seriously. It’s incredibly important that we support this with funding and education, because otherwise this law won’t work. It needs that support. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

Every New Zealander deserves to feel safe in their communities and anywhere in New Zealand. Stalking is very scary, and particularly it’s risky for victims and can escalate very quickly to very serious physical harm but also mental harm. I commend those people who have submitted in the submissions but also those who have emailed me your personal stories. We hear you and we feel you, and I have to say I feel you because I’ve also been stalked.

That is why a National-led coalition Government is introducing this new stalking and harassment offence in this bill, because we promised to reduce crime, we promised to restore law and order, and we are delivering on our promises to all New Zealanders. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.