Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. Some years ago I was asked by a group of young people what issue would cause me to cross the floor and vote against my own party and the answer was easy. It was if my party took steps to undermine New Zealanders' freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Now we are in a conscience situation so that's not going to happen and I'm very confident that in the future it wouldn't either. But for the record I just want to say how much compassion and concern and sympathy I have for any woman who is going to have to go through a termination and the idea of running a gauntlet however peaceful and quiet of people holding signs often with the most distasteful and disgusting images on them—I absolutely condemn that behaviour. But should it be a crime? Freedom of expression is deeply enshrined. I respectfully disagree with the sponsor of the bill—Louisa Wall—and I congratulate her. I do think this is a freedom of expression issue. So the question for me is: does this bill go too far in curtailing the rights of people however objectionable their views are to express them? And on the face of it I believe it does. Now some provisions I think are fine. The questions of intimidation interference and obstruction are probably unlawful anyway and to the degree that that could be a belt and braces approach I think I could support that. But communicating with or even standing silently expressing a view with imagery even if it causes emotional distress could go too far. Does simply standing in a safe zone expressing those views constitute a breach of this legislation and who decides what constitutes that breach? The Attorney-General has quite rightly said that he has a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says that this isn't consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act albeit it's a bit of a flip-flop because when the previous bill came in the Attorney-General's advice was that it didn't. Now I'm particularly concerned about the term objectively" in clauses 9.1 and 9.2 of his vet. It's almost an oxymoron—objectively causing distress—and who is to say what causes distress? What causes me distress may not cause someone else distress and so by its very nature that's going to be subjective. So this is a considerable conundrum for me and the conundrum is this: if I feel so strongly about the rights of people to have their views and express those views should I then oppose this bill at first reading and prevent members of the public from coming to a select committee and doing just that? On balance I have decided that the answer to that question is no and therefore I will be supporting this bill at first reading and encouraging it to go to select committee. Now that support will end at the end of the process if my concerns are confirmed and those infringements on behaviour however distasteful do breach section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and if the committee isn't able to make sufficient improvements to it I think that would be the end of my support. But I think there's another reason why this is actually an important conversation that we should have. Later this year we are going to be considering other legislation in the wake of the royal commission report into the Christchurch terror attacks. There are 44 recommendations and the Minister responsible for that—Andrew Little—has said that two of those recommendations are on hate crime and hate speech. I think this is going to be a test of the attitude that will be introduced the Government's response in that regard and the degree to which freedom of expression is going to be curtailed. So I see this as an important early sojourn into a very difficult conversation that this House is going to have to have over the next year to 18 months. So with that I do have a series of concerns about it but if I am to be truthful to those principles of freedom of speech I need to let New Zealanders speak. Therefore at first reading I'll be supporting this bill."