SpeechSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. I hope you can hear me. I rise—or in fact don't—in presenting for the first time today via Zoom in this virtual splendid House with great pleasure to support the Harmful Digital Communications (Unauthorised Posting of Intimate Visual Recording) Amendment Bill at its third and final reading. But before I start to talk to the bill I'm considering some words that were shared with me just now by one of my colleagues who was told when they saw the scenes outside Parliament today that we need to remember why we're here. I do remember why I'm here when I consider what we're doing here this afternoon. What we're doing is we are continuing to work together to make things better for New Zealanders and for women in particular and for young people for our rainbow communities and for those who have been victims of this particular form of violence who haven't been able to until now seek or receive any justice and they have felt that keenly as we've heard. I'd like to acknowledge the Justice Committee which has been very ably chaired by my colleague Ginny Andersen. So I would like to thank them for their work. I'm not a member of the committee but I know that they have been working extremely hard although of course not as hard as the Health Committee which I'm a member of. They are working very hard and they've been doing some extraordinary work and we are very grateful to them for everything that they've done. I particularly want to thank my friend and colleague Louisa Wall for another piece of legislation in front of us that is going to make a real palpable difference to New Zealanders—to us all—because although all of us aren't going to be victims of this crime many are. But I think that holding people to a standard that is higher is a good thing and benefits all of us. I also want to say before I really go into detail here that one of the things that really strikes me is the need for me to share a little bit of a content warning. I apologise or rather I would just highlight that if you have been a victim of this sort of violence I understand that us talking about it this afternoon is going to be distressing and certainly the cases that I will be referring to—I'd just like to acknowledge the courage of the people who shared them not just with the select committee but with Stuff reporters in various stories. It's really to be commended. We're here because as Netsafe have pointed out up to 5 percent of adults each year in New Zealand have been threatened with this sort of personal intimate content being shared without their consent. So 5 percent every year and I believe that half of those have actually been actuated which is a huge number of people. The Justice Committee heard from some of those people who have had that harm perpetrated upon them. Some of those people were brave enough to come forward and present to the select committee and they shared stories that were very difficult to hear but obviously far more difficult to live. They have come forward so that we could make the changes to the current Harmful Digital Communications Act and make it better because it wasn't working and I hope and trust that as this bill moves forward that will change. I'm speaking here not just for those people who presented to the select committee but also for people who've shared their stories—a Christchurch woman for example. We heard that Christchurch police were unable to charge a man who uploaded a sex tape without consent because as we've heard other speakers refer to they were unable to prove an intent to harm. The man Jacques de Koker had a consensual sexual relationship with this woman and she had consented albeit reluctantly to him filming them having sex—reluctantly—because he had promised not to share it with others. She as my colleague Emily Henderson said before in relation to other people other women other men and other young people has done absolutely nothing wrong—absolutely nothing wrong. She's had consensual sex as we do and she agreed to film that. Intimate pictures we agree occasionally—I'm not speaking for the House or for myself but really for the community. When intimate pictures are taken between consenting adults consenting people we agree to share them on the very clear understanding that they are not going to be passed on. We understand now that the act of sharing itself without consent is intrinsically harmful and the need to actually prove harm is what has held people back from justice. There's nothing wrong as I said with sharing images of consensual sexual acts. The betrayal comes as I said by the sharing without consent to others. In the case I was referring to the gentleman took the woman's trust in him and totally betrayed it and totally betrayed her. He uploaded the footage to Pornhub. Multiple versions of the video were published explicit descriptions including the woman's home city were included and although she'd asked him to remove them he declined. At that point in my view he was aware that harm was being caused but she had to contact every website herself to ask them to remove it which is an extraordinary amount of work. That video she said has had 35000 views and was live for a year. Now although she filed a civil case and was successful—the judge found that she clearly had not consented for the images to be splashed around the internet—the police were not able to proceed with the case with the law as it stood until this bill moves forward. The detective inspector confirmed that legal opinions taken under the Harmful Digital Communications Act as it stands said that Mr De Koker's actions didn't meet the evidential test under the Solicitor-General's prosecution guidelines because the person who posted the material—the police had to be satisfied that it was with the intention that it caused harm and that intention itself was really hard to prove as my colleague from the Green Party has pointed out. I do slightly disagree with my colleagues who have referred to this behaviour as laddish. I have a high opinion of men and I agree with the Women's Refuge adviser who said that revenge porn is a strategy to degrade and exercise control over former partners and we have seen the highlighting of a lack of awareness among police and courts of how these instances are really part of a larger and insidious pattern of coercive control and degradation. I am really grateful to my colleague Louisa Wall for bringing this bill to the House. It's an important piece of work and I heartily commend it to the House.