Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Kei te mihi atu ki a koe e te tuahine e Louisa mō te kaupapa nei. He kaiurungi o te kaupapa kaha nē rā? Ka mihi atu rā.[Madam Speaker greetings. I offer thanks to you my sister Louisa for this work. You have shown strong leadership. Thank you.]Acknowledgments to our sister Louisa Wall on having this bill pulled to take forward what is a very important kaupapa to many groups across Aotearoa. But particularly what I'll speak to this evening is around our rangatahi our young people. We know that we've had exponential growth of our internet since my time as a teenager and decades before that. I referenced very early on in the day today about a platform called Bebo which was the first of its particular kind. For anyone that sits in their 30s you'll remember it fondly. But what that gave us was an opportunity to engage with people outside of our home and outside of our communities engage with family members and at times people that we may have crushed on. But it meant that we were able to extend very much beyond where we lived and breathed and that really shifted the culture of how we engaged in our lives and in this case engaged online.So the harmful digital communications amendment bill is a very important one to ensure that we continue to have law that protects the individual whether that be a young person whether that be women whether that be any New Zealander that in a time of trust chooses to share content online that others therefore can share at different times. It's heart breaking to see when relationships may go bad that people take it upon themselves to take revenge and to use content in such a negative hurtful and harmful way.The objectives of this bill are obviously to amend the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 but to introduce a new offence of knowingly posting a digital communication that is an intimate visual recording without the consent of a person who is the subject of that particular recording. It's also to help protect victims of image-based sexual abuse and enable perpetrators to be held to account. We know that at times that this has happened that it is very very difficult to prosecute someone to the extent that that harm has caused. The problem that we're trying to address in this is really to ensure that this doesn't happen that people don't have very personal content shared to an audience that they have not given that particular consent to. It's also to ensure that we protect the mental health and the safety of our young people and that we take action against what I believe is gender-based violence.And can I acknowledge the speech this evening from the chair of our Justice Committee Ginny Andersen and also to my right the chair of our justice caucus committee who would have heard the submissions from many many groups in relation to this particular bill. One that I'll start off with tonight is one that I researched from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. Their feedback really comes back to the concern about how normalised some of this behaviour has become. We know that people are sharing particular content and we know that they are sharing this on in turn and not in the right way. But most of all one of my responsibilities in our caucus is as the chair of our rainbow caucus which means we get to have a particular lens on how this law particularly impacts our rainbow communities. In this particular submission it was heard very loudly on the impacts of harmful digital communications on our LGBTQAI community. So we have to take a bit of action.I also come back to the second submission that I'm going to speak to this evening that came from RespectEd Aotearoa Madam Speaker—Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: Yeah we're supportive of quick changes here.SHANAN HALBERT: Mr Speaker my you've changed. My apologies. But the submission from RespectEd Aotearoa was in regards to non-consensual posting of intimate visual recordings that they believed was a very alarming issue. They quoted the NetSafe survey that was completed in 2017 that revealed 3 percent of the respondents had experienced the non-consensual sharing of intimate recordings. In 2018 this number increased from 3 percent up to 4 percent. For women aged between 18 and 29 the rate is over twice as high up to 7 percent. That's significant and impacts on particularly our wāhine. Can I acknowledge our wāhine in the room but also those that have been negatively affected in this particular circumstance.What is important is that we continue the work to protect our young people protect our women protect our rainbow groups from a culture that is the internet that we can no longer trust that we know can be misleading. We know that misinformation is shared and in this particular instance we know that content is shared that has not been consensual.So finally I just want to acknowledge once again my colleague friend and tuahine Louisa Wall. Kia kaha tonu e te tuahine. [Stay strong sister.] I commend this bill to the House.