Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): I just want to acknowledge the previous speaker Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki. I think that the last piece of advice she gave was a very good one and that was: never be afraid to step forward and seek help. I'll share a personal story of mine shortly.But I do want to acknowledge the member Ginny Andersen for bringing this bill as a member's bill into the House. She's also the chair of the Justice Committee. She's done a very good job on this.Can I thank the other committee members. I am a member of that committee. Like the previous speaker can I acknowledge and thank our advisers on this bill because there were some technical parts of it that we actually had to work on and work our way through.I said I was going to share my own personal experience around not necessarily the grooming but certainly the risks that our young people are exposed to. I'm sure that anyone in this House that has children of their own or nephews or nieces has probably had some sort of experience. But mine related to my daughter when she was 15 years old. We live in a golden age without a doubt in terms of communication and the ease of communication and all the different social platforms that are available that we can use. But with that of course now comes enormous risk as well.My story was quite simply about my 15-year-old daughter whom I'm very close to and raised as a single dad for a good period of time through her lifetime and I felt that she would always come to me and she'd always feel confident to be able to confide in me. But I started to notice in her all the classic symptoms of when something is going wrong in a young person's life and that was a withdrawal. She was a very outgoing and confident young woman and she started to withdraw. Alongside of that was weight loss; she started to lose weight. Of course like any of us as a parent I tried everything. I tried to see if she didn't want to confide in me would she confide in my mum or my sisters or other adults in her life that she trusted.But anyway finally there was a circuit-breaker and she did confide in me. Quite simply what had been going on is that she had been bullied online by a boy at school and other kids had joined in. She didn't know how to deal with it and it had created massive stress and anxiety in her life.Once I was aware of it we took steps to try and address it. As hard as we tried to address it through the school it was actually very difficult. I think that's another issue another problem that we have to try and constantly deal with and work out in terms of how we can provide leadership inside our schools so that we can move towards a zero-bullying policy whereby every child in this country can get out of bed in the morning without having the fear of being bullied at school—whether it be physical bullying verbal bullying or bullying online. Look I couldn't sort that issue out for my daughter until I actually ended up having to go direct with the parents myself and highlighting the behaviour and encouraging an intervention to ensure that the young man involved understood the harm that we was causing the inappropriateness of the behaviour that he was engaging in and to try and get a change in that behaviour.But the reason why I raise that as an example is because grooming of young people generates the same type of response where often they won't share it. They can be living in the same house with their family members and the family members will be completely unaware of actually what's going on and the harm that's being created. What Ginny's done is she's identified the fact that there was no actual legislation or law that was able to deliver with the front end of this offending which is the grooming. So there are laws that are on the statute book that deal with the actual offending of engaging in an unlawful behaviour or contact with someone under the age of 16 but there's no legislation that actually deals with the grooming and the actions that are taken leading up to that. So this bill here actually does a very good job of filling that gap and now making it an offence for someone to actually groom a young person online.The only thing that I would say—and it's a message that I've relayed to my children and tried to teach my children from a very early age—is that if you're using email or social media whatever you choose to put out there once you press the send button even if you feel that you've got a high degree of trust in the source of whoever's receiving that email or photo or information or whatever you may be sending the minute you press the send button you have lost control of it; you no longer control it. So don't ever send anything that you aren't prepared for the whole world to see because you do not know where that is going to end up—that piece of information that photo you don't know where it is going to end up.By the way when I ran my own company that was actually something that I'd regularly send out to all my employees and my team: a reminder around email protocol. Email is not there to solve problems. Walk out of your office and go down and sit with someone. Email is quite simply a way of sharing information. And by the way again do not press send on any email that you're not prepared for the whole world to have a look at.But coming back to the bill some of these numbers are actually quite sobering Mr Speaker and I acknowledge you and your past experience as a law enforcement officer and dealing with some of these issues. Seven in 10 teens have experienced at least one type of unwanted digital communication in the past year. So just think about that number. Seven of 10 of our children have experienced some type of unwanted digital communication. Nearly 19 percent of teens experienced an unwanted digital communication that had a negative impact on their daily activities the most common of which involved being contacted by a stranger. So almost 20 percent of our young people are being contacted intentionally by a stranger and that's having a negative impact on them. Nineteen percent of young people have been asked to share nude or nearly nude images of themselves. This is something that I feel really strongly about in terms of communications through the school through parents through mentors through positive role models in our young people's lives coming back to the fact: please double-check and think before deciding to take a photo and share an intimate image because you never know where that might turn up or when it might turn up. Just double-check.The bill seeks to help protect children from harm online and is modelled on recent Australian legislation. The bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 to provide for additional offences relating to persons over the age of 18 using electronic communication such as a social media platform to make false representations relating to their age or identity intending to meet with persons under 16 and to procure or plan to cause harm to persons under 16. It then goes on to say that although—like I said earlier in my contribution—there are laws in place right now that deal with the Act there weren't any laws in place to deal with the actual grooming or the actions that were taking place before the Act.So look I'm just very happy to stand and take a call in support of this legislation. I think that as members of this House we put a member's bill in because there's something that we're passionate about we think we can make a genuine real difference and contribution—in this case to making our young people safer. I'd just like again to acknowledge Ginny Andersen in bringing this bill to the House. Thank you.