Mackey Moana: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Mackey Moana: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:18113] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I was not sure I would take a call in this debate but I thought that was an extraordinary contribution from the member who just resumed her seat Melissa Lee. It highlights the lack of any kind of plan from this National Government. 
The example my colleague Clare Curran gave went to the nub of the problem. We are making these changes because we want to support New Zealand artists and to support their copyright rights. We want to make sure they are not losing enormous amounts of money and to make sure they are not prevented from continuing to do what they want to do because of people illegally downloading and obtaining their information. That is what we want to do and that has to be the end goal. 
Melissa Lee said that the Labour Party was saying it was OK for someone to download illegally and that that was like committing assault but that was not what Clare Curran said. Clare Curran said that if people cannot find online something they desperately want to purchase legally they may eventually go to a file-sharing website because they were not able to find it anywhere else. A solution would be to work out as many ways as possible to allow people to find this information and these products legally. It is about prevention. 
The National Government’s approach to law and order is all about passing at the tail end ridiculous legislation such as the three-strikes legislation which will do absolutely nothing to prevent crime. It does all those things at the tail end of the spectrum after an offence has happened and they do nothing to keep people safer at all. National rubbishes all the great work that the Labour Government did in trying to prevent crime through early intervention. It rubbishes it calling it PC and namby-pamby and loads up ridiculous laws such as the three-strikes legislation at the ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff end of the spectrum. Melissa Lee was suggesting we do that in this area as well. Labour members are saying we want to make sure people can access things legally. That will be the way that we solve this problem—as well as having a penalty at the end. But to say that the penalty at the end will solve the entire problem is not being realistic. 
I pay tribute to my colleague Clare Curran. This has been a very difficult issue. It has been ongoing. As the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment has said a number of us have received numerous correspondence through our offices on this issue. It is an issue that strikes to the very heart of the freedom that New Zealanders feel they should have when they are accessing the Internet. We need to determine whether the punishment fits the crime and try to balance it with the need to protect New Zealand artists and their work and ensure they are not losing their livelihoods. It is a very difficult balance to get. I congratulate Clare Curran on the work she did in trying to find a compromise and trying to find a safeguard. It is not perfect by any means—not perfect at all—but it is a compromise and it is a safeguard. 
Labour members did not have to do that. We are in Opposition. The Government had the numbers to push through the original law as it was. We could have just railed against it shouted into the wind and said how terrible it all is but we wanted to be constructive in this area. We wanted to find a solution that works and also protects the rights of New Zealanders so that they do not feel they have a kind of Big Brother over-the-top Government approach coming down on top of them. It has not been easy but that is what a responsible Opposition does. That is what a responsible Opposition has done in this case. As we said the solution is not entirely perfect. If we were in Government we would probably do it differently having learnt from our experience when we were in Government. But “compromise” is not a dirty word and the compromise in this respect and in this regard is far better than what would have gone through had Clare Curran as our spokesperson on communications and information technology not put in that work to try to find something that would allay the concerns of all those people out there who were contacting us before the last election and post the election about the excessive nature of that particular penalty under the law. 
I was disappointed that the Minister in the chair chose to attack my colleague David Parker in the way that he did. I think the issues that David Parker was raising were actually very sensible.