Faafoi Kris: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4663. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Can I try to pick up where Tracey Martin left off because I think she used a very good example of postings that are made online that I do not think anyone in this House would like to see. The devil in the detail in this bill—for us on this side of the Chamber although we are going to be supportive of this bill at this stage—is that it does not quite meet up with the responsiveness that we would like to see in the bill.Yes Ms Martin the complainant in this case could go to the approved agency and make a complaint and if the approved agency thought that complaint was valid it then has a process where that complaint is sent off to the author or the person who posted it and there is a 48-hour potential window for the author to respond. If the author then responds at the very last minute they then have 48 hours to put a substantive response together. So we have a situation where it would be 4 days potentially before that post came down. That on our side of the equation is not responsive enough in a digital world where things go up damn fast. At the moment we do not see quick responses to posts that no one wants to see there.So to have a post up there for potentially 4 days as this legislation allows under the safe harbour measures is not fast enough we think. It is something that we have raised at various stages including during the select committee process I must add to make this legislation as good as it can be as responsive as it can be and therefore as effective as it can be.As people in this Committee know 4 days was a long time before the internet was around so to have a 4-day window for these damaging posts—they are obviously causing harm because the legislation says that that needs to be triggered before the complaint can be considered—is a hell of a long time. It is a very long time under this legislation and we would like to see—and maybe the Minister in the chair Jo Goodhew or the Minister responsible for the bill may be able to answer this—why the Government did not consider something that could be eligible for almost instant take-down as soon as the approved agency meets those tests that Ms Martin spoke of before to make sure that less harm is done or that the least amount of harm is done to someone who makes a complaint. It is harmful if it is up for an hour and it gets increasingly worse if it is up for 4 days. In the digital world the author can put it up and take it down but if someone takes a screenshot which is easy to do that can be spread on and on and on.I understand that this is a difficult thing to try to tackle but if we are not being as responsive as we possibly can through the approved agency in this bill then although we do reluctantly support this legislation we believe that that is one of the areas where strong opposition should be put up to make sure this piece of legislation can be much much better. And we do think this legislation could be much much better. It is interesting to look at the process and at the way this has been presented to this Parliament. I have got Supplementary Order Paper 91 in my hands. It is roughly 22 pages and most of the changes are to Part 1. The bill is 22 pages and I think that tells an interesting story about this process not really being the ideal process to make sure we are getting the legislation right.The Government should have engaged more with parties right around this House. It had the opportunity—and Clare Curran has made this point—to engage more with communities especially young people to make sure that we get the legislation right. We would argue that although something needs to be done in this area the legislation is not as precise as it could have been.I do want to make the point that there is Supplementary Order Paper 93 in the name of the leader of the ACT Party David Seymour to delete clause 19 in Part 1. He thinks—and David Parker made the point—that clause 19 is a bit too vague a bit too broad and could catch as illegal behaviour what some people think would be reasonable behaviour. The Supplementary Order Paper put before the Committee by Mr Seymour is much more precise and it will catch some behaviour that we all would think abhorrent. It is not behaviour that is out of the realm of thinking. I can think of a couple of instances in the last couple of weeks where this has been relevant. I would like to thank David Seymour for putting that forward because we think this is the kind of measure that could have happened if the process had been much better.There are some pieces of the legislation that we do think are reasonable. I think that being able to use internet service providers to identify people who are anonymous—I think that is in clause 17; I am trying to get a nod from Clare Curran—sounds about right. A lot of the harmful comments that are being are made by people who use pseudonyms. They are not man or woman enough to use their own names.Peeni Henare: Keyboard warriors.KRIS FAAFOI: Keyboard warriors as my colleague Peeni Henare says. We are going to be able to use this piece of legislation to say to internet service providers: “Let’s figure out who this anonymous person is.” so that they can actually front up and hold them accountable under this process. I think that is a good thing. One of the things that frustrates me about social media—Facebook more often than Twitter—is that you get these people who do not use their real names and under these pseudonyms they are as tough as hell and they get away with murder. I think one of the things in this piece of legislation is that we can go and figure out who these people are.I want to finish by saying that we believe this is a necessary area of law that needs to be addressed but we are quite upset that the Government has chosen to use the process that it has taken. The process could have been much better. The Government has taken the chance to take a crack at Opposition parties through this process. It has not worked cooperatively and collaboratively and I think we as a Parliament and as a country suffer because the legislation before us is not as good as it can be. In this age of social media and connectivity we owe it to people to make sure we get it right and on this occasion although we support the bill we do not think it is as good as it could have been.