Franks Stephen: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20326] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to comment on the introduction of the Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill which is yet another ad hoc amendment to the Crimes Act. We have amendment bill after amendment bill and some of them sit for 3 4 or 5 years on the Order Paper. Because the Government so likes to look busy active and hot on crime it keeps introducing something to scratch an itch every time one appears. In this case I expect that if the Government Administration Committee does its job and patches up this shoddy piece of work the ACT party will vote for it. But I have to say that once again Mr Goff has come into this House with a bill that does not do what he said it would do. We know that when he puts his solemn voice on and sounds terribly responsible we probably have something of the— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: The member should try it some day. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Try putting on the responsible voice? [ 
Interruption 
] I cannot hear the Minister. He is being overridden by his own whip but never mind. If he had a genuine question I would try to answer it. 
We have a bill here that does not even bear cursory examination in the sense that it catches people whom no one would want to catch. Why could the Government not have made sure for example that we knew who would be liable when the inadvertent filming was done by a security camera? Nothing in the bill states whom that filming has to be by. Presumably a security camera that has been installed often operates automatically and without any doubt at all some of those cameras catch people who are engaged in intimate sexual activity in situations where they would not reasonably expect to be caught. I see Dr Richard Worth looking up. He will be aware that some law firms have had to put security cameras into places like the photocopier room to try to discourage people from using the photocopier to copy their own buttocks. That became a sport and I understand that some law firms have installed security cameras. 
The Government did not have the wit in developing this law to provide already for something as obvious and as frequent as the ownership of security cameras that are intended to prevent offences. There will be security cameras in some places where people shower toilet or undertake dressing or undressing and everyone would want them to be there. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Like a beach. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Like a beach although that may not be a place where someone would reasonably expect privacy. But there are places where one would reasonably expect privacy—and it may be in a locker room where one would expect privacy—but nevertheless there have been thefts and therefore a security camera has been installed. This bill has no proper exception from its purpose—a really simple thing. It should not take the ACT party’s lawyer to ask where the protection is for proper-purpose filming that inadvertently catches people who are engaged in sexual activity. 
As I said there is a question as to who exactly makes an intimate visual recording of another person when in fact it is done by a machine that may have been installed a long time ago and that may operate on a time switch so it is perfectly automatic. I think that the Government Administration Committee can deal with that sort of thing. ACT does not have a member on that select committee so I am trying to assist the Minister by recording one or two of these things for the committee to take into account when the legislation gets there. I am sure that the bill can be fixed and these issues do not detract from the overall need for legislation like this. All that it does is to highlight the incompetence of a Minister who would rather think of the slogans he will use when he introduces this bill and announce it three or four times before it is brought in than look through the detail and decide what the bill actually does. 
There is another perhaps just historical feature that members may be interested in. This legislation is probably the final death knell to the old private detective photograph. If we think of the people in that profession we recall that for many years they went about trying to catch intimate sexual activity by parties who were not married because those photographs were essential to produce in proceedings for divorce. I think this bill will be the end to that if there is any circumstance in which it still goes on. Again there is no exception for someone who is filming for a proper purpose. Whether the select committee will consider that that too is a proper purpose to be preserved I do not know. One of the most famous cases of the inter-war period involved the so-called “headless duke”. The proceedings turned on the identity of the duke or the person filmed and of the person who might have been assisting him in an intimate sexual activity. It seems that this century will not ever have such a prominent piece of titillation for the benefit of the public in a court case. 
New section 216M in clause 3 gives a set of protections from liability and as we would expect with a Government like this that is focused on elevating State power the only people it thinks to protect are essentially those who are the agents of the State or who are lawyers or agents. I wonder why the Minister and his officials could not have addressed their minds to the other people who may have equally legitimate reasons to be protected from liability. If they had been focused on anything other than elevating the power of the nanny State they might have come across the fact that they were potentially intruding— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Hugh Grant would have been protected under this! 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Yes he would have reasonably expected privacy. He could well have reasonably expected privacy—he was in a dark place in a street and under trees I think. We have another reason for the film industry to come to New Zealand! It is true. As Dr Mapp says it takes only 5 minutes to think of things the Government should have thought of but has not. 
That turns the mind to something a little more serious. This Parliament will spend time on this bill and treat it as a matter of urgency when there may have been only a few cases of covert filming. I do not know how many there have been and I am not going to go through the list. I detected a salacious note in the summary provided by the Minister and indeed by Dr Worth of the ways in which this law can be triggered so I will not indulge in that to the same extent as them. But there is a serious point in looking at what this bill says about the priorities of this Government. At the moment on the streets of New Zealand we have night after night children offering themselves in prostitution. There is a simple solution and it is one that the Justice and Electoral Committee tried to get put into the Prostitution Reform Bill. It is very straightforward. It is to enable the police to ask the age of young-looking prostitutes. That would put into the hands of the authorities some kind of power to enforce the law against under-age prostitution. We already know now the effect of the Labour-Green removal of that power from the Prostitution Reform Bill. This Government in the short remaining time that the House has before it rises for the election chooses to get headlines through the salacious attraction of the intimate covert filming amendment instead of going back and fixing something that is simple and that clearly harms people every day—that is the almost unrestrained indulging in child prostitution which could have been fixed. 
I hold United Future culpable in that too. I understand that part of the pressure for this bill came from Marc Alexander. If United Future had any weight and influence on this Government at all why did it not say that rather than pandering to the media interest in covert filming a much higher priority would have been to make effective the existing law against under-age prostitution? It could be done quite simply. The thinking had already been done by the select committee. It could have simply reinstated the provisions it took out instead of the Government making such a fuss about this bill.