Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's great to be able to stand up and speak upon a bill and this is a very important bill. So first of all Louisa Wall another fantastic member's bill that you've brought.When I thought about how to speak on this bill—because to be honest I really enjoyed doing this work at select committee; we worked together really well and I felt that it was probably one of the best bills since I've become an MP where we've seen MPs working collectively across both sides of the House to try and improve the bill and I think largely because there was no politics involved. Everyone knew that this was a real issue that affected people in their daily lives and genuinely endeavoured to make the best changes possible. So I feel that this has been a really good and positive experience in general in an area that's concerning and has got real issues for New Zealanders on an ongoing basis. I thought the best way of illustrating what we're talking about here was to read out from a couple of the submissions—and these are the ones that stuck with me. When I thought back today when I sat at my desk what stuck with me the most about this bill was the women who came and submitted to the Justice Committee about their experiences. So I'm going to just read those out pretty quickly to underline some of the main issues that we're trying to address through this legislation. In September 2019 I pursued a relationship with a man which ended in October 2019. During this time we created an intimate visual recording together on one occasion. Without my knowledge or consent the man subsequently uploaded the intimate visual recording to several international pornographic websites including Pornhub. I did not find out about the posting of the intimate recordings until August 2020 which was 11 months after when I was alerted by one of my associates. Altogether the posts of the intimate visual recordings had gathered over 35000 views internationally and featured on multiple degrading comments that had been picked up by other users and shared to several third-party amateur porn websites. After 10 months I am still left navigating the complex justice process on my own. I am entirely competent capable and a professional woman with the ability to access resources. Nevertheless this has and continues to change the trajectory of my life. The impact this has been continues to be multifaceted and the effects span across multiple domains including emotional social physical and financial."The second one I'd like to read is a lot shorter and what I would like to demonstrate with this submission is the nebulous and difficult way of taking down harmful content once it has been posted online. The submitter states "I managed to get everything that I had found taken down. That didn't stop him from making new accounts to upload again and at some point to put videos of me into compilations with other videos—that they would be harder to find and at the same point I wasn't immediately visible in the thumbnails of the video and was hidden. Again he uploaded them again and again and they were always the same videos."I felt it was important to speak to that because it goes right to the heart of what this bill is trying to identify. As the chair of the committee I would like to acknowledge all of those who submitted particularly those women who were brave enough to come to the committee whether they submitted anonymously or in person to talk about the stories that they had—talk about the experiences that they had endured dealing with these sorts of situations dealing with intimate visual recordings. I feel incredibly strongly on this issue. I feel that no woman should be made to feel ashamed or afraid at all and I see that this is a tool that is used to do exactly that. I would like just very quickly to say that Women's Refuge's Ang Jury has spoken and linked it quite closely with family harm and with what we see happening in terms of revenge porn as a strategy that is used to degrade and control partners. Women's Refuge has commented that 40 percent of victims had intimate content shared by an ex-partner either to control them blackmail them or punish them for leaving a relationship and that family violence works across a continuum of any number of different harms and this is just one example of those many ones; so it's important that we recognise that in this House today in terms of exactly what it is.To take it further Netsafe's chief executive has also made similar comments and I think it speaks to the heart when you've got the head of Women's Refuge and the head of Netsafe agreeing that this is exactly what the problem is. The chief executive Martin Cocker has said that the typical image-based sexual abuse reports from women tend to involve an ex-partner trying to maintain control blackmail them or as retaliation for leaving the relationship. And he said that sometimes these cases are part of a wider pattern of family violence.I know I've mentioned Louisa already but I would just like to say how courageous she is how relentless she is and how deeply passionate she is about those issues that affect women that affect our communities and I'm really proud to have her as part of the Labour team and work alongside her to continue to make New Zealand a safer place for those people who deserve that representation but sometimes don't have the voice to do it. The real nub of the bill which I'll get to because I can see the clock's ticking is that it does two things and these two things are really important. So the first thing it does is it creates a new offence. So under the existing law it's an offence of causing harm by posting a digital communication but you have to prove in the prosecution that there is intent the mens rea. You have to prove that there is intent to cause harm. And that is what has been incredibly difficult for police or prosecutors to demonstrate—that there was an intent to cause harm—because you can say "Oh well you know we made it you know under consent and I thought it would have been fine. I just put it up there you know. I didn't know." Proving that intent has been difficult. So what this bill does is it says that intent is implicit in uploading without consent. So if you upload an image knowing that it was not provided with consent then there is not a requirement in law now to prove that you intended to cause harm; the very action of uploading that image on to a platform demonstrates that harm was intended. So that makes a really significant difference and to be quite frank it makes it a lot easier for the New Zealand Police to prosecute in this space. The second thing that this bill does and Louisa's already mentioned this is it provides take-down orders. So from those two submissions that I've read from what was really evident is how prolific and how quickly material can be shared once uploaded. So what the bill does is it provides a new ability for while something's waiting to go before the court which can take time—while you know cases are being prepared for court—that there can be an interim order to say "Take this down for now." and have that ordered to be taken down and that can make a significant difference in how frequently that's shared across different platforms. So having that ability to make an interim take-down order means that the court can make an order for material to be taken down from the internet or that a defendant can cease or refrain from the conduct concerned. That means that the perpetrator can be prevented from doing further harm to their victims during the court process and I think that's an incredibly important change to the existing law. I've already spoken a little bit about what the committee has done but I would just like to give a general acknowledgment to all the members from the Justice Committee who tackled a really difficult issue. We really looked into all of the aspects of what consent meant how that would work and how that played out on a digital platform and understood how young people are engaging in different ways than I might have when growing up using the internet and how that played out in terms of the principles we hold in terms of how we should treat each other—looking at a digital platform and seeing what is fair and what is not. Even having that discussion around consent and when it's withdrawn and how that plays out is an incredibly important one. So I'd like to conclude by saying that this is a really important bill in New Zealand's history because it forges a way of trying to keep our communities as safe as possible while respecting people's ability to express themselves at the same time. And it strikes that balance of ensuring that particularly those who are vulnerable particularly women have that right to be able to stand up and not be ashamed. I commend Louisa Wall for this bill and I commend in particular all of those who submitted. This is a good bill and I look forward to it becoming law. Thank you."