Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): First up a disclosure: I have not read Into the River either but I can tell the House that I have actually read the tracts of the book that Family First in its submission helpfully provided. There were quite large excerpts from the book in Family First's submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee which I found quite fascinating and anyone who wants to read that submission is welcome to come and ask me. I also did not sit on the select committee but I have had a look at the submissions and I am looking forward to the Committee stage of this bill.Labour supports this bill. I am going to actually stick up for Chris Bishop on this particular piece of legislation and say that I agree that there is an important place in this Parliament for bills to be brought through to correct anomalies in law if they are anomalies that have clearly been shown to have had an impact out there in society. I think that what we did see with the Into the River example is that there was an impact and it did have the effect of taking a book out of circulation. It was for a shortish period of time but it is still quite a shocking thing in 2017 in New Zealand for an anomaly in the law to have that impact.Chris Bishop will also be pleased to know that I have read his first reading speech in quite significant detail. He gave a couple of examples in that speech of other films I think that had been subject to interim restriction orders which meant that they could not be shown at a film festival that they were billed to be shown at. By the time the restriction order was lifted the film festival had happened so there was no point.This bill has got the support of the Labour Party. It did not get a lot of submissions but I think the four submissions that it got were actually quite meaty submissions. I have not got a lot of time in this second reading speech to go into those details but I would like to raise some of those issues in the Committee stage.Essentially this bill is really quite simple in what it does. In clause 5 it inserts a section into the principal Act that enables the High Court or a judge to impose what is described as a calibrated interim restriction order where access can be granted to certain persons or groups of people according to their age class or purpose for access. What that means is that with the Into the River book while Family First's appeal was being heard that board could have reverted back to a previous classification while it was being heard. I hope I am correct on that; I did not sit on the select committee so I do not know all the absolute details. That is not a very big change to the law but it is a change that corrects this anomaly.Going back to Chris Bishop's second reading speech though he has again referred to the principles of freedom of expression and his great libertarian ideals which are great. But in his first reading speech he actually went a lot further and said that what he would like to see happen is for there to be a much bigger review of the interim restriction orders. He gave three reasons—and I thought they were all quite valid reasons—that he felt there was a strong case for abolishing them completely: that they gave too much power to the president of the board who was the one that essentially meant that this book was taken out of circulation; that the extraordinary power enjoyed by the president was unnecessary; that the board unjustifiably interfered with freedom of expression; and that the interim restriction orders can be abused.I would like to challenge the member actually to bring another member's bill to the House that actually addresses those issues. I think it is probably quite timely because this legislation was written in 1993. It is now 2017. Community standards have changed evolved or whatever you want to say and maybe it is time to look at how that film classification board operates—which is the check and balance on the Office of Film and Literature Classification essentially which is the censor. Maybe it is time to have a review of that. Maybe it is time to put up a case for removing the powers for interim restriction orders and maybe you know the great freedom of expression ideals that are being espoused by Chris Bishop could be put to the test. The question is though whether or not his party would actually accept that as a member's bill to put forward or whether it is him just on his soapbox in a first reading and he knows that actually his party would not get behind that.If you want to talk about what is important in legislative change going back to first principles is important. A piece of legislation that was drafted in 1993—it is time. Twenty-four years later is actually a good time to have a good look at it as to whether it is fit for purpose.The other point I want to make around the legislation that we are dealing with is about how classification of content is undertaken. You know I have given a tick to Chris Bishop's efforts—the correction of the small anomaly. What this Government has not addressed is the anomalies—the much much bigger anomalies—that are occurring out there in our community right now in terms of how content is being classified. We have broadcast TV content which is classified under the Broadcasting Act according to a code that is overseen by the Broadcasting Standards Authority. We have got film content which is classified by the censor's office—the classification office—and it provides ratings. Then you have got online content which has no oversight no mediation and no ability—and so there is this grey area in our law and our community standards that has not been addressed.In 2015 the Government released a discussion paper on convergence and this was one of the issues that was raised. In 2016—nearly a year ago—the Government announced that it was actually going to put forward a piece of legislation to address this anomaly but it also said it was going to do something and it was going to bring it under the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Standards Authority which I do not think there was a lot of community outrage about. That piece of draft legislation which we still have not seen was also going to do something else: it was going to remove restrictions or partly remove restrictions on Sunday advertising on television. That was controversial and it was a bit mad.Anyway as I understand it there is a piece of legislation sitting in the drafting office of the Clerk. Who knows when it is actually going to appear? But what has not happened is that this Government has not dealt with these convergence issues after 9 years—after 9 years—and certainly in the last 3 years. You would think in 2017 that this Government would actually have worked out that it had to do something in this area to appear modern and to appear as if it actually understood the difference between broadcast television film and online content—were there differences; and if there were not then it all came under the same consistent regime. Well it has not. Who knows when it will? Look it is backward. We support this bill but there are much bigger issues that the Government and not a member should be dealing with.