Ardern Jacinda: Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2773. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I rise to take a very brief call. It relates somewhat to the provisions that the member who has just resumed her seat Tracey Martin was speaking to. As I discussed in Part 1 I am concerned around the consistency of the age of criminal responsibility that is scattered through this bill. I am speaking specifically to clause 13 new section 124A(1). If you make a cross-reference back to the Crimes Act there are some significant differences when compared with the amendments we are making today. New section 124A(1) provides that “A person of or over the age of 16 years is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years if he or she intentionally exposes a person under the age of 16 years (the young person) to indecent material (whether written spoken visual or otherwise alone or in combination) in communicating in any manner directly or indirectly with the young person.”At the moment it seems that we are debating legislation in this House controversial legislation around digital harm that has an overlap with legislation. There has been some discussion as to whether or not we are creating inconsistencies with what is able to happen in an online context versus what will happen elsewhere. I think it is important that we are consistent in the way that we legislate in this area. My concern is that this is an increase in the potential term that might be applied—3 years as opposed to 2 years I believe as it is currently written in the Crimes Act under this section. But the Crimes Act is also silent on age. The Crimes Act does not specify an age so we assume that it is the age of criminal responsibility that applies in the provision as it may apply currently. That is my assumption just on my quick read of the Crimes Act.But now we are creating liability if an individual is of or over the age of 16 years. I question again why it is 16 years when in the Crimes Act it is 17. So why is it 16 years in this legislation? There might be justification for that. It might be that you create another regime that applies to young people. But I am consistently concerned that there is an erosion of the youth justice system in the way that we are no longer differentiating between adult and child and that we have consistencies across our legislation when it comes to care and protection at 17 and when it comes to the age of criminal responsibility at 17.Our care and protection age is the lowest age in the developed world that someone will exit care and protection. When it comes to criminal justice it is 17. When it comes to being able to take out tenancy agreements it is 18 and accessing most of our benefits it is 18. I believe even real estate licences wait until at least 18. There are a few things that sit at 21.Clare Curran: Cyber-bullying.JACINDA ARDERN: Cyber-bullying is 14. We have to decide in this Parliament when we consider an individual to have moved from child to youth to adult. If we listen to the overseas jurisdictions they have generally stuck to a rule of thumb that it is 0 to 12 12 to 18—or it might be 14—and then from 18 on you are considered an adult. Yet in our legislation we are consistently all over the shop.I understand carve outs for legislation as it relates to for instance significant crime like murder. I understand that. But I am concerned that we have pepper-potted through our legislation different ages for liability. If we do that I think we should be explicit that that individual should still be considered a young person or child for the purposes of the way that they are dealt with perhaps in the court. If we are going to say we want that liability to apply to a 16-year-old perhaps you say therefore from 16 to 18 we want it dealt with in the Youth Court for instance because that is what the Youth Court is designed to do. Maybe then your penalty regime for that age group might be different. We are not saying ignore the issue; we are saying make sure the response is catered to work with a young person. This is based on the fact that we know the evidence tells us that the earlier you criminalise a young person the less likelihood you have of being able to turn that situation around. I look forward to the Minister’s response.