Parker David: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second Reading[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2559. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Well I have read the bill and I want to address some of the issues that arise from it. First today the irony could not be greater in that we are discussing the Harmful Digital Communications Bill on the very day when the Government will not answer allegations as to whether the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was used to intercept the communications from competitors for the job of the Director-General of the World Trade Organization—the rivals to Minister Groser—whose emails it appears were intercepted by the GCSB in pursuit of a job application by Mr Groser. That will have long-term consequences for New Zealand’s reputation as an honest broker in the world. It will have implications for our trading relationships with countries like South Korea and Indonesia. And we have already seen I think some of the disquiet in civil New Zealand as to the consequences of those harmful digital communications.In respect of this bill I think the first thing to say is that no one in this House of Parliament is saying that some of the egregious conduct that we see through the internet amongst other media is acceptable. People who are criticising this bill are not condoning that conduct. The second thing I would say is in respect of the Roast Busters issues that have been referred to by some speakers in this House let us not go too far down that line for two reasons. One is that the report of the Police Complaints Authority showed that there were legal remedies that could have been used in respect of those individuals that were not used because of either incompetence or some other form of bungling by the authorities. It was not for want of authority that they did not do anything; it was because they did not do their jobs properly.The next thing I would say is that this legislation was given a kick along because of the Roast Busters controversy. The Minister at the time was the Hon Judith Collins who was the Minister who conducted this bill. Again I think with the benefit of hindsight given what we have seen in respect of what we know of Judith Collins passing information to Whale Oil which was a harmful digital communication it is deeply deeply ironic that the National Party is pretending to be protecting people from cyber-bullying when some of the worst instances come from its own members including the then Minister who was responsible for this bill.In respect of the offence that is created of causing someone serious emotional distress the commentary from the select committee reportuses the term “a digital communication which has caused or is likely to cause someone harm” and “‘Harm’ is defined as ‘serious emotional distress.’” Nowhere in the bill is that term defined.The commentary then says: “We consider that the principles would provide a useful reference to help infer a common set of values when assessing whether behaviour was acceptable.” How woolly is that? You then turn to the principles that are meant to give us the confidence that we are creating something that is reasonably easy to understand—and some of them are. Some of them include: “A digital communication should not be grossly offensive to a reasonable person in the position of the affected individual.” I can agree with that. “A digital communication should not incite or encourage another individual to commit suicide.” I can agree with that. But these are not principles that all have to be met—any one of them from the list can be met.Principle 5 says: “A digital communication”—not a series of digital communications but a digital communication—“should not be used to harass an individual.” Well if that is the test—if this law was in place when Judith Collins sent her email to Whale Oil and then Whale Oil used it to attack Simon Pleasants on the basis of the address disclosed by Judith Collins Judith Collins would be in breach of a criminal law. Is that really what you are intending to criminalise the likes of Judith Collins for her conduct because that is what this says? It does not talk about a series of harassing emails; it talks about a digital communication that is used to harass an individual. That would be an instance of a criminal offence that was created because I am sure that it caused serious emotional distress for the person who was on the end of that. I have not heard the Minister stand up and say that that is the sort of offence that is intended to be created because I do not think the Minister has thought it through properly.I want to refer to principle 10: “A digital communication should not denigrate an individual by reason of his or her colour race ethnic or national origins religion gender sexual orientation or disability.” I do not like people doing that and I do not think that they should do it but we do not have laws against hate speech in New Zealand. If the Minister wants to introduce a law against hate speech introduce a law and properly discuss the principles that should lie around whether we should have a prohibition on hate speech because we have not got it in New Zealand and if we are going to have it for digital communications why should we not have it in the newspaper? What is going to be the implication of this?When we have a body like the Sensible Sentencing Trust or some of these other organisations in New Zealand that I think say reprehensible things I think that a lot of the things that they say would be caught by that principle. I know that they routinely denigrate judges. They denigrate them as a class of people. I have heard some of these groups that are in favour of fathers’ rights feel that they are abused by the criminal justice system. They abuse some of the judges on the basis of their gender as if they are showing bias. That would offend principle 10 if it went to the stage that it was causing serious emotional harm to people and we do not know really what that term means.Laws should be of universal application in principle if the principle is right. If we are going to have prohibitions on hate speech they should not apply to just the internet. They should not apply to just the limited situations here. We will have if this law passes in this present form the ridiculous situation that it would not be illegal for someone on a New Zealand website to host deeply offensive messages from the Islamic State people saying that anyone who is not a Muslim of their persuasion and who does not believe in sharia law is justified in being killed that the State should be overthrown that homosexuals should be put to the guillotine and all of those sorts of things. That would be perfectly permissible under this legislation because this legislation would not cover that ill whereas some of the other things that I have described would be covered by this legislation.In the time that has passed since this bill was prematurely reported back to Parliament under pressure by the then Minister of Justice because of the Roast Busters case times have changed overseas and I would call upon the Government to reflect upon whether it is creating some unusual laws in respect of criminalising behaviour in regard to the internet when we do not have general prohibitions against the same conduct under other laws. We in the Labour Party have written to the Minister offering to meet to discuss some of these issues. I do find it deeply ironic that we are debating harmful digital communications the nature of which would have been offences committed by the very Minister who introduced the bill Judith Collins.