Hughes Darren: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Second Reading 
Hughes Darren: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:6865] 
DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on the second reading of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill. It has been reported back to us from the Commerce Committee which has made a few changes to the bill that was referred to it by the House at its first reading. 
Can I just pick up on the point made by the member for Invercargill. His basic assertion was that some emails were stolen and were turned into a book and that Labour should ignore that because they were stolen even though there are 3000 copies around the country of a book containing all the details of these emails. That is patently absurd. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: It’s embarrassing though. 
DARREN HUGHES 
: It is embarrassing for them I accept that. The unsolicited emails have been foisted on the country; none of us asked for these emails. They have turned up in a book and they are unsolicited in that regard. 
One of the most important things the Commerce Committee did was to delete references to promotional messages. It decided that when it came to spam it was too hard to define what a promotional message was; it would be problematic to try to determine what a promotional message was. This is a very interesting point and Mr Hide Mr Harawira Mr Roy and my colleague the Hon Paul Swain have commented on what these promotional messages might be. 
We have seen unsolicited promotional messages quite a lot lately—most recently of course in this book that has been referred to several times throughout the debate. I wonder whether the select committee possibly had that in mind when it was looking at deleting that reference to promotional messages. Of some of the emails that have been sent around this country we know that one email was sent on 24 May to the Leader of the Opposition Mr Key. That was a promotional email message because it actually offered services to assist in the National Party campaign. The email which was an unsolicited electronic message was headed: “Urgent Important and Strictly Confidential”. The letter began: “Good afternoon Don and John Doug Watt and myself enjoyed your presentation this morning at Millennium Hotel.” In that sense the author was trying to personalise the message even though it was an unsolicited one in terms of the promotional message provisions of the bill. 
The email goes on to explain how the Exclusive Brethren sect had been involved in a defence campaign. The Brethren actually had a misleading campaign saying that the Labour Government had decreased the amount of money being spent on defence in this country when in actual fact we have rebuilt the armed forces of this country while we have been in Government with some significant increases in defence resourcing. The email goes on to state: “Basically we believe marketing is the name of the game.” Of course the bill as reported from the select committee refers quite a lot to marketing being the purpose of a message and there is reference to clause 6 being removed. 
The email states: “Whilst the meeting this morning was excellent it would not have got one extra vote for National. (Everyone there is going to vote National anyway). Getting the message out and to a younger age bracket is paramount.”—because the Exclusive Brethren are quite in touch with the youth of New Zealand being on the hip side of things. The author of the email believed that that was a paramount goal and said: “time is of the essence. Our campaign (a total of seven nationally distributed flyers) is direct and simple:—It creates and demonstrates MISTRUST in the current Government. It builds TRUST in a DON BRASH led National Government.” That was the unsolicited promotional message sent to the National Party on 24 May. 
Why do I mention that date? It is because later in the year the National Party including the Leader of the Opposition tried to argue that National knew very little about the Exclusive Brethren’s role in the election campaign the unsolicited electronic messages they were sending and the promotional material and services they were offering. In actual fact John Key has said that even though the email was sent to him—and that is demonstrated by the material in front of me in the book—he did not open it. I ask colleagues in the House how on Earth one remembers an email one never read. If one never knew one had received it and one never opened it how did one know that one had not actually seen it in the first place? Can this be so? No one really bought that as an argument. 
Then Mr Key had to move to the next stage whereby he made what I would call the President Bill Clinton defence: “I did not have email relations with that sect.” That seemed to be the defence—that he did not have any email relations with that sect at all. That was getting to the point of being preposterous. Although the message was unsolicited—I accept that; National did not ask for this email to come forward from the Exclusive Brethren sect—it was offering promotional services to and was trying to market the putting across of messages for the National Party. Part of the bill addresses the issue of address harvesting and of how people are able to get email addresses and then bombard people with messages. That is in the book as well funnily enough. The book says that addresses were harvested from various National MPs. One thing I am interested in building on the point that Mr Key said he had no idea that the Exclusive Brethren were involved in the National Party campaign and that he did not remember opening the email that he did not remember receiving back in May is what else was happening. 
I read in the book that some bloke in Napier a Mr S Lusk who was a campaign manager for the National Party said in an email that he was shown details and copies of Exclusive Brethren election advertisements that had been shown to other National members of Parliament. So an unsolicited email came in from a campaign manager in Napier who said that he was with National MPs who were shown copies of the Exclusive Brethren election advertisements and that some of the MPs were a little uncomfortable about it. Well I bet they were. I bet they were uncomfortable about that in terms of what the bill does to try to deal to this concern about unsolicited electronic messages that offer marketing services and that try to put out promotional messages to people. It is absolutely farcical that a campaign manager in a provincial city could know about these things and the leaders of the party could not. But as we know the email was not opened and could not be remembered even though it was already in John Key’s in-box. 
What the bill is trying to do in cracking down on electronic messages is a very important measure. It is a frustration to many members of Parliament that they cannot get into the decent emails sent by constituents because there is so much spam. As a speaker previously said we still have to go into the Mimesweeper programme and scroll through emails because genuine messages are often captured by that programme and we want to make sure we are not missing out on those. It becomes quite a difficult issue for members of Parliament members of the public and those conducting legitimate e-commerce activities to put up with. 
One other aspect is the market research that goes on by way of unsolicited electronic messages. In that regard I notice that Crosby/Textor a public relations company that I understand the National Party has quite an intimate relationship with has done some work on how to communicate electronically. I am sure there is rich material indeed in this book. 
I make one other point regarding messages containing links to other websites. I have been using a series of examples to try to highlight the changes the select committee has made to the bill and there is an amendment around spam that links to other websites. I was interested in the role that the so-called non-partisan Maxim Institute played in emails to the National Party. The institute gave website links to its organisation showing very clearly who it was trying to assist in the last election campaign. 
When we go through it all we see that primary resources we have are rich material. We can line these emails up against the bill and see whether the bill would be effective in the case of these messages— 
Simon Power 
: Sit down! 
DARREN HUGHES 
: —which I know are of enormous embarrassment to the member for Rangitikei but which sadly exist. I say to Mr Roy that the Labour Party is not responsible for these emails coming into the public domain. [ 
Interruption 
] The Labour Party was not involved in hacking into others people’s computers or any of the other things that Mr Finlayson is talking about. He thinks it is possible on his Commodore 64 to hack into the parliamentary server. I do not have quite the same confidence in the ability of members of Parliament and their information technology skills in that regard. But what I do absolutely know is that now that the emails have been made public and made into a book it would be wrong of Parliament not to put its attention to some of the unsolicited electronic messages going between National and the Exclusive Brethren the racing industry and the Maxim Institute. And of course there were the wonderfully rich emails—about which I have run out of time to inform the House—that were unsolicited electronic messages that members of the National front bench sent to their leader complaining about and bagging their own colleagues. I do not know whether there is a legislative solution to that; I suspect there is not. I think the problems have gone too far for the law to change that but it is certainly worthy of the attention of members of Parliament. I am very happy to support the second reading of this important legislation. 
Bill read a second time.