Hughes Gareth: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second Reading[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2554. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I would like to greet the six people watching the broadcast because I suspect the rest of the country is watching the cricket at the moment. It is an important topic we are discussing tonight the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. The issue of bullying in general—no doubt all of us have experienced it to a greater or lesser extent over the years. Sadly it is pervasive in our culture and in our history. There is a legitimate public debate around the nature of it given our online environments that we live in—and have for many years.I want to raise a few questions for the Minister of Justice because obviously the Green Party is supporting the bill at this stage. But we have got to say there are some concerns when we are dealing with internationally unprecedented legislation. We saw a fast select committee process additional evidence not considered by that select committee and intransigence by the Government benches to not have a second look at a select committee. We have heard of amendments to be introduced in the Committee stage. I think they should be referred back as the member Tracey Martin attempted to do to a select committee where they could be considered because there have been international developments which have been picked up on by other members. We have seen Australia avoid the criminal offence approach at the heart of this legislation. All members in this House agree with the intent—Hon Amy Adams: They’ve already got it Gareth. It’s already in place in Australia. That’s why they haven’t put it in this bill. They’ve already got it.GARETH HUGHES: It is a different place. So Amy Adams wants to run out on her own do something entirely experimental and unprecedented and then she will not listen to the public will not listen to the experts and will not put it through a select committee. The Minister I think should take her time and do it in a considered fashion. Let us look at across the Ditch. The fact is the Australian Government has created a Children’s e-Safety Commissioner. The fact is it has avoided a criminal offence. Let us look at what is happening across there and let us actually take our time. If there is going to be a debate I do not know why the Minister is afraid to have that conversation at a select committee.I want to address some of the points raised in this debate. The fact is there are existing remedies. NetSafe the approved agency currently with no advertising has informed me recently that it has dealt with 800 cases in the last year alone—800 cases. What we are seeing is people saying there is nothing that can be done about this new scary threat. What are we going to do? On The Simpsons people would say: “Won’t someone think of the children?”. But the fact is that 800 cases have already been dealt with in the last year. Take the Roast Busters case. Here is an area where the police in their wisdom put a preservation order on the material and did not request it to be taken down. Take that sad case of the drunk 9-year-old on YouTube. Here again the police blamed YouTube but did not get in touch with it. I would like to acknowledge the work done by our tech companies in New Zealand and their guidelines. This is where the education debate is so important. We should be educating our police. We should be educating our education officials. We should be educating the public on existing remedies.As I reiterate there is a legitimate public debate. Everyone in this House agrees with the intent. We want to reduce the impacts and the harm caused by cyber-bullying. But there are legitimate public debates around making it a criminal offence around the avoidance of decades of statute defences—for example the Harassment Act or the Defamation Act—and a legitimate debate around education. Of course the Government did not have to put the appropriation in this bill but signalling how much money it is actually planning to spend on education I think would be useful and a valuable contribution to the House and the public. Looking across the Ditch again there is $7.5 million in extra funding there.The last point I want to raise is the idea that something happening online should be a different offence to something happening off-line. We have heard discussions around telegrams. It would be ludicrous to think of a law against bullying on telegrams. It would be ludicrous to think of a law against bullying on the telephone. It would be ludicrous to think of a law against bullying by using Morse code. This is an important topic. The internet is incredibly valuable to our economy to our society. We need to go into this field and with the power of legislation form an Act to consider it. That is why it is disappointing we have not sent this to a select committee particularly on the latter point when the UK House of Lords has rejected this entirely. The UK House of Lords says that what is not an offence off-line should not be an offence online. In summary I would like to acknowledge the Government’s intention and the intention of all members in this House. No one in this House wants to see cyber-bullying. The debate is around the solutions.