Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. This my first time speaking via a Zoom Parliament so it's good to be here and I do want to acknowledge that everybody who is in the House right now in person is probably quite anxious and experiencing the anxiety that comes with what's going on outside. I do want to begin by congratulating my friend Louisa Wall the indomitable Louisa Wall who got this bill to us for magically having every bill that she puts in—and they're always very good bills—pulled from the ballot and for shepherding it through the select committee process which was actually quite a difficult one at times in terms of the details of the harm and the experiences that were heard from survivors. I had the privilege of sitting through some of those hours and hearing firsthand the kind of far-reaching very serious harm that's involved not just in the actual offending that this bill captures but also in the process that comes after which this bill seeks to amend and moderate—which is to say proving the harm in court. So I do want to acknowledge her but I also on that note would like to acknowledge and thank the survivors in particular who came to the Justice Committee and did the difficult work of telling us what the harm looks like and what that experience looks like through the justice process and also in their own personal lives as a result of this type of offending. And also with them I want to thank the organisations that have been working on this for such a long time who also came: others have named them but the likes of Women's Refuge who told us about the sheer prevalence of this that we probably didn't know and were horrified to find.This is about posting intimate visual recordings being intimate sexualised nude images that often the victim will have consented to having made and shared—maybe not always but at some point most often done with the consent of the victim—that then have been shared without their consent. As others have said that victim is predominantly female but this bill does cover men gender diverse people the rainbow community—all victims—acknowledging that actually the full spectrum of our communities are now engaged in making recordings and images that are sexualised because we live in a digital world and that harm can come from the abuse of that trust. So what this bill does is take away the incredibly high onus that the previous law placed on victims to prove not only that the harm had occurred as a result of their intimate recording being shared without their consent online but that the harm was specifically intended by the offender. That's incredibly difficult and it's also a detail and an onus that isn't part of the defence. It would be the prosecutor who would have to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. So the onus and the standard of proof were incredibly high and victims barely able to make it known—to make a complaint—in the context of the shame and stress of offending like this were then faced with meeting that incredibly high burden. So this simplifies the law in terms of acknowledging that this type of harm is innate if consent is breached in posting the recordings. Actually the harm as we've heard is incredibly deep and long-standing. Again we live in a digital world so having an intimate recording shared online affects every aspect of a victim's life. So whether she misses out on work whether she's shamed and humiliated in her profession whether it's her community—and certain cultural communities we heard would receive this differently and have different levels of knowledge and understanding of how this might have happened without consent. Different levels of shame and humiliation and loss of face would occur from the victim having even consensually made the recording initially with their partner for example. And all of that harm—to have to prove not only that it occurs which is hard enough but that it was specifically intended is just impossible and of course victims were working in the context of suffering the grave mental health costs of even having suffered this harm.I think the other thing that we have to hold and that was repeatedly made clear to us is that the actual making of visual recordings that are intimate and the sharing of them comes with incredibly high prevalence among very young people—so teenagers. That's because there's pressure. There's a cultural pressure. Whether it's direct and interpersonal or just broadly at school and tech or wherever they are it is there and they're far more likely to do it. So it's far more likely that they will be the victims of that recording being then non-consensually shared—whether it's the space where it's been shared that wasn't their intention or the people that it's been shared with not being their intention—and again that can harm them irreparably often for a lifetime.So that's there but also I think that the thing that we need to acknowledge in Aotearoa is that we are also dealing with an incredible rate of domestic and sexual violence—that we used to call an epidemic but I don't know if that's appropriate now living in the pandemic—and that this is part of that continuum. Often it will be as part of an abusive relationship whether it's young people or whether it's much older people that the harm is happening and is intended. So it's part of a power and control dynamic in the partnership: punishing a person for leaving the relationship for example; shaming and controlling them with threats that may then be realised once they do leave or once they behave in a way that the abuser doesn't like. At any rate whatever the intention of that abuse it's an incredibly dehumanising way of treating that person for having shared their sexuality and it is always abusive always a form of sexual violence and in the context of relationships a form of intimate partner violence as well. So this bill acknowledges that acknowledges that this is a huge problem that we as a community and society need to address starting with acknowledging that the harm is innate whenever consent is breached in any type of sexual act whether digital or not. One of the concerns that I will address that the Green Party has is the focus on imprisonment because we know that that's not always the most effective way of addressing criminal behaviour. It is our hope that while this House acknowledges this kind of harm and this form of offending and makes it easier for prosecutions to happen we also continue to acknowledge that for example Māori are far more likely to be targeted by any criminal justice reform; that prisons in Aotearoa are overcrowded; that we do over-imprison; and that our rehabilitative measures are far far less effective and less invested in than they need to be. This is actually an opportunity in particular when it's young people at stake to educate and invest in preventive measures to protect victims and to prevent harm from happening prevent offenders from offending. So all of that needs to happen and the investment needs to be in mental health care and addiction treatment and resourcing community connections and education as well. With that I do commend the bill to the House.