Connell Brian: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Connell Brian: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 It is a great day for a speech and I am very pleased to be able to take a call. I appreciate the fact that you have called me Mr Deputy Speaker. When I last spoke on this bill I made a number of points and I would like to take the opportunity to recap. 
This bill is very overdue and the National Party strongly supports its passage. The reason we support it is that with the advent of new technologies—cellphone cameras hidden cameras etc.—surreptitious and covert filming of people in intimate roles or positions is taking place without their consent and knowledge and in circumstances when they would reasonably expect to be private. With the use of this technology people are able to infiltrate those intimate situations. In a few words we are dealing here with modern-day peeping Toms and the people of this country deserve to have legislation that gives them the protections they deserve. 
The point I was making in my interrupted call was that there was no point having legislation in place to give the police the authority to act if they were not resourced appropriately to take advantage of it. I gave a couple of examples one of which was the silly prosecution the police were bringing against the woman driver who crashed her car on the West Coast and who was down a bank for 2 days. I struggled to see where the public good was being met in that regard. 
When the debate was interrupted I was making a point—and I know my colleague Chester Borrows will also want to raise it in his contribution—in relation to the issue of covert audio recordings of people in intimate circumstances. I think there is a flaw in the bill in that it does not pick up this particular issue and I say to Government members that it is an issue they will have to revisit. Are people less violated because they have been listened to rather than watched in intimate positions? If a recording is made of people without their knowledge without their consent when they are engaged in an intimate act then I say that their privacy is invaded and that those people are due the same protection under the law as people will now have in relation to visual recordings of that activity. 
The last point I want to make is that a visual recording made with the consent of the parties involved is one thing but the distribution of that recording for wider public edification without the parties’ consent is another matter. An example that comes to mind is that of celebrity sex videos. One video I have heard spoken about regularly is the Paris Hilton video where she and her partner were filmed with their consent when engaged in sexual activity but the recording was then put on to the Internet without her consent—and in my view that is simply wrong. That is another issue in this bill over which there is a question mark. 
Having made those two or three points I conclude my contribution by saying that National strongly endorses and supports the bill. But I have drawn the House’s attention to two areas of exposure and I say to the Minister that he will need to address those quickly.