Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): I'm proud to stand and take a call in support of this bill. I first want to thank my colleague Louisa Wall for her work on this issue and actively addressing what is a significant area of harm for many. This is a bill about making it clear that posting a digital communication comprising intimate visual recordings of another person without their consent is an offence. Over the last week I've been speaking to individuals about the upcoming legislative programme in the House and mentioned this bill and some of the horrific examples of posting intimate recordings that have occurred in New Zealand and overseas. My most frequent response was Seriously—isn't this already an offence?" Unfortunately the answer at present is "Well maybe."—maybe. The reason it's a "maybe" is because of the high and largely subjective threshold for establishing a breach of the current Harmful Digital Communications Act. Under the Act posting offensive material is an offence only where three parts of a test are met and those parts are: where the person posts a digital communication with the intent to cause harm to the victim where posting the communication would cause harm to an ordinary reasonable person and where posting the communication actually causes harm to the victim. Women's Refuge chief executive Ang Jury commented on this high threshold after the refuge conducted a study researching the links between domestic violence and suicide. She said "This is a subjective and arbitrary determination of whether an offence has occurred and needs to be reviewed." This call for change was also echoed by Tess Upperton in her dissertation on revenge porn where she writes "The offence is too broadly worded to provide a strong deterrent to perpetrators of revenge porn as its focus is on the outcome rather than the act itself."But let's stop and think about the inherent impact of posting intimate recordings online. Speaking to this bill last year Minister Little talked about it being not just excruciating embarrassment and humiliation; it is anxiety it is depression and it can cause a person's life to be turned upside down. Let's be clear: shame is not just a more exaggerated form of embarrassment. Embarrassment is regret clothed in the company of others; shame feels knitted to our very bones and is often most deeply felt when you're in isolation.Under the new proposed section of the test it would be about taking the action to post an intimate recording and knowing the victim hasn't consented or being reckless as to whether they have consented to its posting. In other words the change recognises the inherent harm of the act of posting intimate recordings without consent. I want to speak briefly about the assumptions that are too often made about the radius of consent. Consent to one act doesn't mean consent to a second. Consent to taking or sharing a recording of an act doesn't equate to consent to it being shared further. Consent to being in a recording does not transfer ownership rights to a recording. So why has society allowed this for so long? We've grown from roots that have historically shamed women for sexual activity—actually both consensual and non-consensual. In this context blurring the radius of consent seems to matter less as moral judgment follows regardless. Here's where we have more work to do. Every act has an ecology. For those posting intimate recordings without consent online they are indeed individually responsible. But we have work to do to ensure that the culture we promote in schools at workplaces and online makes it clear that shaming by use of intimate imagery is never permissible. I hope soon if asked "Surely that's already an offence?" instead of saying "Maybe" we can simply say "Of course it is". I commend this bill to the House."