Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Just to respond to some of the points raised by other speakers it has been mentioned that the provisions already exist in the principal Act but in fact if I look at that provision it refers to discs and stored information. I don't know about other members but I certainly haven't seen a disc for a number of years. Clearly that legislation is out of date and we need to move with the times. Live streaming is a very different proposition from recording and we need legislation to reflect that.We've also heard about the fact that this bill looks at objectionable material. Well with respect the censors are making decisions about objectionable material all the time based on written submissions but with live streaming there simply isn't that opportunity; it happens in real time. Therefore there needs to be decisions made quickly. We heard about the rights of individual New Zealanders but those individual New Zealanders now have a great deal of power in their hands that they did not have previously because of the advances in technology and with that power comes responsibility and the responsibility not to harm others.We need to unpack what this proposed legislation can do. First it is to remove harmful content and I believe that is the primary intent based on the fact that this came out from that terrible incident on 15 March. The penalties are a secondary matter and surely in a country where we have mens rea and we look at intention those people who innocently find that they are capturing offensive or objectionable material live streamed—that will be taken into account at the time that penalties are considered. The most important element is to remove the content before harm is done.I do commend this bill. It's a very important bill ensuring that New Zealanders stay safe but also that they feel safe. It's an emotional piece of legislation for many of us particularly people in my electorate in Taieri. This is very relevant because the terrorist actually lived in the electorate for some time and the Muslim community in my electorate found out later that they were actually the original targets of the mosque attacks. So they had to deal with that. They had to deal with seeing members of their own community many of whom were friends and whānau to them be impacted by that terrible heinous event but also the live streaming of it made that a double injury for them.So the bill seeks to provide protection against the live streaming and the hurt I've just described and it will prevent hate speech. That is an end in itself but it is also to prevent the proliferation of further hate. We know from what we have seen overseas that hate can spread just like a virus in the fertile world of fake news. We are operating in a different media landscape than when the principal legislation was enacted and I can tell you as a former journalist and media lawyer that I am the first person in this House to defend free speech. However that free speech needs to keep up with technology and it needs to keep looking at the balance of power and responsibilities of individuals and of the way that individuals can now influence and spread information.I did mention in my maiden speech recently that access to truth is actually I believe a critical issue of our time and the issues that are raised by fake news by live streaming by the power that vests in individuals and also in the platforms that allow individuals to have mass audiences are really complex difficult issues to deal with and we must deal with them if we want to avoid the peril and the dramas that we have seen on foreign shores.It's been claimed that this is an overbearing piece of legislation but these decisions to remove live streamed content are not final; they are interim classifications and final orders are to be made as my friend said on this side of the House after 20 days. We have interim orders already available in many other areas of media law where the harm is deemed sufficiently serious. For example we have name suppression laws and we certainly have a number of interim laws available in all areas of child protection not only the child protection that is available around protecting children from sexual exploitation and the media but also ex parte interim orders relating to other areas of child protection. Interim orders are a part of our democracy and they are countered by the opportunity to then have a full and substantive hearing down the track.So it is appropriate to use those interim orders to prevent harm and the merits can be debated after that. With live streaming if we were not to have this legislation given that it is not covered by the principal Act we simply negate the opportunity to mitigate the harm that could be done from objectionable or even heinous material being live streamed. The issue of filters has been raised. As has been said by other members this potentially is a really complex area and like other members in this House I welcome the opportunity to discuss that and to hear submissions on that in select committee. But what I do applaud is the fact that a mechanism will be there to anticipate changes in technology that will enable those filters to be able to be applied should they be deemed necessary. We cannot constantly play catch-up to technology that is causing harm and that caused the harm that it did on 15 March because the law is not keeping up.This bill enables us to have things in place so that there can be proper debate and that we can move quickly when we need to in order to be able to reduce harm to members of our community. During that debate I think it's very valid for us to look at where we cast the net with filters and in many instances the net will need to be cast more widely; in other instances it will need to be cast narrowly. I really welcome anyone listening to the debate to submit on that when that goes to select committee.Finally I'd just like to say that the internet is no longer a free and friendly environment. We know that it is controlled by big business. We don't even know some of the entities behind some of the platforms. To suggest that a voluntary regime might be adequate simply doesn't wash—or Yeah right." It's not going to happen. We need to be able to give our Muslim community and others who feel vulnerable in our society the assurance not only that we will keep them safe but that they can feel safe when they go online that they will not accidentally happen upon something traumatising something damaging something that is going to perpetuate hate speech or that is going to harm them or indeed their children.I know recently there was a video on TikTok where we had message warning us to please make sure our children weren't watching because there was a TikTok of somebody committing suicide. These are the kinds of perils that parents face at the moment and as a mother of a seven-year-old I want to know that we have the adequate protection in place that we can stop those live streams or those events from happening online and keep our children safe.So let's ensure that we don't make it easy for terrorists to hijack our media platforms for their 15 minutes of fame and their evil campaigns and please let's make sure that New Zealand remains safe and that New Zealanders feel safe in a very quickly evolving world that we need to keep ahead of and make sure that we have adequate laws and protections in place so that we can roam that world with liberty and with security not worried that we're going to stumble across something that could potentially be incredibly damaging to us or our children. So I do commend this bill to the House very strongly. Thank you Mr Speaker."