Harawira Hone: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6829] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker; kia ora tatou. This bill is long overdue. The Maori Party supports the third reading of the Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill to penalise the making publishing or distributing of perve material recorded without consent by up to 3 years in jail. We support it because we well remember the racist imperialistic and pornographic images on postcards at the start of last century—photographs of Maori women with cloaks draped in such a way that one breast was exposed or of young Maori women lying around naked. In case members have a hazy memory of those times how about this for a fact? In 1909 alone 9 million postcards went out through the post office at a time when our population was only 1 million. In fact the sleazy exotic of the native postcard was heavily exploited. One could buy images of what were called dusky Maori maidens on postcards and paintings—and even see them in the early days of the cinema—all over the country. Jacqui Beets in her paper  
Images of Maori Women in New Zealand Postcards After 1900 
 describes how those maidens were posed with lowered eyelids and a shy come-hither glance to invite possession or ownership of a native woman and her land. 
Other writers in the Pacific also used the same intimate covert filming techniques to promote cultural tourism and land alienation as one juicy package. One Tongan writer described such voyeuristic filming as a major contributor to as well as a manifestation of a process of cultural invasion. That cultural invasion—that promotion of sex and the dusky maiden to sell postcards and promote colonisation—has finally come before this House. 
Beets concludes her study of the alluring Maori maiden theme by noting: “New Zealand postcards featuring Maori women thus suggest a policy of exploitation by early 20th century recorders and image-makers.” More than 100 years later we will finally see legislation pass to ban the filming and distribution of images taken of people in those situations without their consent. 
The Maori Party also supports the recommendation of the Government Administration Committee to include recordings made in any medium and images that use any device whether recorded or shown live because today’s criminals are as devious in their use of technology as last century’s photographers were in the posing of their models. To cover every angle we also support the view that the possession of such material for the purpose of publishing importing exporting or selling it should also be considered as grounds for a 3-year jail term. 
There was one particular issue that we felt was missed out of the bill and was missed by the select committee and we raise it here. The Law Commission proposed a dual response to intimate covert filming. It proposed that legislation should firstly criminalise the conduct and secondly ensure a remedy for victims through the Privacy Act. The Maori Party agrees wholeheartedly with that focus. The commission even recommended amendments to provide remedies for victims but this bill has completely missed out those amendments. The explanatory note of the bill states: “sentences requiring reparation will also ensure that the victims will receive some compensation for the harm they have endured.” yet oddly enough such compensation is not provided for at all in the bill. This bill also carries a penalty of 1 year in jail for possessing such material. We have to ask with so much attention being paid to the nitty-gritty why there is no detail on how to respond to the needs of those who have been victimised. It seems that this bill has been put together with the same piecemeal and ad hoc approach that we have seen with other bills put before the House this year. 
This bill also raises the question of who is watching the watchdogs. I note that if a person is with the Police the Customs Service the SIS or the Department of Corrections and he or she wants to do some snooping in relation to legal proceedings this bill protects that person as long as he or she clearly records the reason for snooping does it only during relevant times and restricts it to small areas gathers only relevant information and does not film in toilets or washrooms. That is the plan. The Maori Party also supports the idea of trying to keep controls on the watchdogs. We supported the Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill in order to tighten up the running of our jails and to prevent the abuse of power so we certainly do not want to create opportunities for an abuse of power in this bill.  
We hark back to the images that once reduced our women to the exotic innocent natives of the early 1900s as a reminder of why we should support this bill. With the advent of cellphones micro-cameras digital streaming Internet service providers and other mediums of electronic recording and storage the publishing and sale of such recordings to the voyeurs of the world has blown right out of control. We are disgusted at the practice and we are disturbed that those who endure the humiliation and shame of such an invasion of their privacy are not being compensated properly. We recommend further work be done to ensure their needs are met and we urge this House not to wait another 100 years before such victims can receive the justice they are due. Kia ora tatou katoa. 
Bill read a third time.