Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this Protection of Journalists' Sources Bill for the first reading. I think that what the member in charge—I think it's Louisa Wall—has brought is an interesting question. If we agree that journalists should have a protection of their sources in order that they can bring to light information that those in power would rather be kept secret they must sometimes have to be able to defend their sources legally or protect their sources. If they can't people may be less willing to give them information and terrible scandals and abuses of power may go unreported fester and gradually corrupt this society. All of that makes perfect sense that there should be some immunity—or as they call it in the law privilege"—for journalists to protect their sources.What this piece of legislation does is widens the definition of who a journalist should be. And I have to say the ACT Party is not entirely sold on whether that is a necessary or desirable thing. We certainly understand that the particular party that brought it forward—and the particular MP who it has to be said has a chequered track record of producing legislation—has been very influenced by one particular person and it's not always a good idea to make a law because one particular person has influenced you or to have a law written that almost seems to have been written for a particular person. Of course that person in question is Nicky Hager. What the bill would do is say that if a person writes books that are original and reveal information that might not otherwise be revealed then they should be given the protections under the Evidence Act of not having to reveal their sources in court; they should be given the protections under the Search and Surveillance Act that the Government—or at least any agent of the Government—seeking a warrant or issuing a warrant or searching or surveilling somebody should exercise the kind of caution they would exercise towards a journalist.The question is should somebody who writes books be included in that? I think there's a few people who might say that if you wrote books for example with material that could only have come from a burglary material that it turned out was stolen and if you had some form at writing such books then some people might ask "Well perhaps that person should be subject to the full force of the law." Perhaps actually committing crimes to pry into people's privacy is not something that could be included in journalism. And if the purpose of this particular bill is really to protect one person who's an outlier maybe it's not so noble at all. That's what we want to see tested at the select committee. We think that the freedoms of a free press are important enough to warrant putting through but we have some real questions over whether this bill does it.I found it rather amusing earlier in the speeches by some of the Labour members—it was extraordinary—I heard the member from Whangārei Dr Emily Henderson in her Whangārei accent waxing lyrical about the ancient freedoms and the God-given rights that we should all have. Well let's just get a bit of perspective here. This is a Government which at present is rushing through—under urgency—legislation that retrospectively changes commercial contracts going somewhere that no Government of either stripe in this Parliament has ever gone before. This is a Government that got into a spat and I don't mean that to be a pun but a spat with a saliva-testing provider and is now producing legislation that says if you don't sell it to us we'll just come and take it. This is the Labour Party of high virtue that is trying to uphold the rule of law and actually passes retrospective legislation—under urgency—that tries to take people's property if they won't sell it to them at a price they deserve. But when Nicky Hager writes a book and gets shaken down they rush legislation into this House to try and uphold those high and mighty values.This deserves to go into the select committee because journalistic freedom is worthy of upholding but there's some serious questions about whether that's really what this is about from this Labour Party. Thank you Madam Speaker."