Nash Stuart: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4660. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):I—David Seymour: You’ve got 2 minutes.STUART NASH: 2 minutes. I find myself in a rare moment of actually agreeing with something the ACT leader Mr Seymour mentioned.Chris Bishop: Oh be honest. You agree more than that.STUART NASH: Oh sorry Mr Bishop I thought you were going to say something sensible for a minute there. What I want to talk about is these communication principles in clause 6(1). I must admit that when I look through legislation subjective terminology tends to concern me because when you have subjective terminology in legislation it means that it is often open to the law—well obviously open to the law courts—to determine what certain words mean but it is also open to the people enforcing the law. Usually in this case it is police officers who will be the first port of call when they have an incident or a complaint about certain communications. What I would like to do is just work through some of these communication principles and just point out how subjective these actually are to the point where I suspect that the police are going to look at this and say: “Goodness me we have some real problems here.” I will also bring in an example I had very recently.Let us start at principle 1: “A digital communication should not disclose sensitive personal facts about another individual.” What actually constitutes sensitive personal facts? Is it that someone is single or is it that they are married or that they have diabetes? Or is it that they take offence?Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members the Committee is resumed. Before the dinner break the Committee was considering the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. The question was that Part 1 stand part. Stuart Nash had the call and he has 3 minutes and 27 seconds remaining if he wishes.STUART NASH: Yes please Mr Chair I do wish.David Shearer: Mercifully short!STUART NASH: Thank you very much Mr Shearer. What I was talking about is that it really worries me when I see subjective wording in legislation. This bill has a whole lot of subjective wording that I fear will put those who are in charge of enforcing it at the first stage in a real bind. Whom I am talking about here are the police I suppose. If someone goes to the police and says: “Under these communication principles I find someone has disclosed sensitive information about me.” what is the definition of sensitive information? This is in principle 1 and we could go through all of these depending on how much time I have got. Principle 1—this is in clause 6—states that “A digital communication should not disclose sensitive personal facts about another individual.” What is a sensitive personal fact? What denotes “sensitive”? Is it the fact that they are single or they are married or they have diabetes? I am not too sure what constitutes “sensitive”. I suppose what is sensitive to me might not be sensitive to Mr Shearer. Who knows?Principle 2 states that “A digital communication should not be threatening intimidating or menacing.” They are three extremely subjective terms: threatening intimidating or menacing.Rino Tirikatene: Menacing.STUART NASH: If Rino Tirikatene stands up because he is about 6 foot 6 some people may find him threatening or menacing; others may just find him very friendly. But what is the definition of that and how is this going to be policed and enforced?Principle 3 states that “A digital communication should not be grossly offensive to a reasonable person …”. Again we have “offensive” “grossly offensive” and “a reasonable person”. You know there was a time in the United States in the late 19th century when they used to put curtains on pianos in case people got offended when they saw the legs of pianos.Peeni Henare: Oh!STUART NASH: I know. That is true—it is true. What constitutes “grossly offensive” changes with the times. [Interruption] No no we are down here Mr Chair. I am very much talking about the bill.Principle 4 states: “A digital communication should not be indecent or obscene.” Again “indecent or obscene” are subjective terms. You know what are the police going to do when they get a call saying: “Someone has sent me an indecent email.”?Let me give you an example. I had a constituent in my office who brought in a message that someone had written on her 14-year-old daughter’s Facebook page. I think by any stretch of the imagination it was indecent and it was obscene and I actually found it grossly offensive. This was an older man trying to groom—from all accounts if you read the email—a 14-year-old girl. Well that mother had gone to the police and the police had said: “We can’t do anything. We’re just going to give her a warning.” Again if you had gone to another police station then the police might have said: “Well we’ve got to talk to this guy. We’ve got to bring him in.” but these terms are so subjective that it really is up to how they are defined by the person who is dealing with the first call.Principle 5 states that “A digital communication should not be used to harass an individual.” What does that mean—“should not be used to harass an individual”? Goodness me! As Mr Seymour said and I agree with him this is the sort of thing you would say to a year 7 class on the way to camp.