Delahunty Catherine: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 02 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2895. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare ngenge. I am saying “tired House” because I feel we are all a bit tired. I would like to take a short call. The Greens are supporting the legislation arising from the Objectionable Publications and Indecency Legislation Bill. We have some reservations about it but we are supporting it. Actually the internet is the Wild West. The internet is as the Wild West once was before the sheriff came into town. I think this legislation is an attempt to bring the sheriff into town which is why we are supporting it. We think it needs to happen. As a previous speaker said there is a need for a more consistent and relative approach to a lot of aspects of internet control but we think it is important to start addressing those and it would be good to do them consistently.However the harder question is why now that we have the internet do we have this enormous proliferation of people who want to watch hideous images of exploitation of children. We can individualise that and say that these people are sick which no doubt is a very good argument but it is more than individual. There is a culture across the planet that regards children and to some extent women as objects for the kind of sad gratification that is based on the idea of power over an objectification of the vulnerable. This legislation is going to deal with some of that—that is why we are supporting it—but it cannot address the fundamental outpouring of sickness that we have around our sexuality. We do not want to talk about that often but actually this legislation does bring it up.The number that the Minister of Justice has quite rightly named of people who are guilty of this kind of behaviour tells you we have got a problem. It is not about being moralistic; it is about a deeper question. It is not about being righteous and sanctimonious; it is about asking how we got here. How did we get here and how did the internet that supposed bastion of greater democracy and freedom become a bastion of abuse? You can be damn sure that our children are not benefiting whether they are victims of the actual abuse or whether they are unsupervised and get to see it in the objectification of their childhood. So something is very wrong not only in the state of Denmark as Hamlet said but in society when we see this kind of abuse.This legislation will address some of that. We do have some reservations. We are supporting it all the way but we have reservations around the sentencing. Given the depth of the sickness across the society actually giving more prison sentences will not solve the problem. The floodgate is open and without a transformative educational rehabilitative intense process for the people who are going to be locked up we are not going to make change. Locking them up for longer is not going to change the illness in their consciousness. So we do not want to be under any illusions about how locking people up for a long time will fix the problem and stop other people who are flooding in to join this particular sick trade or this sick process of so-called recreation.It asks us deeper questions. We would not support the increase in sentences. We do not believe in going from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment—not only for the arguments for consistency with non-internet criminal offences but also because we just do not think it is going to work. If there is one thing we should try to test legislation against in Parliament it is whether it is actually going to work. Just doing things for the sake of rhetoric and so that we feel we are doing something about these terrible people is not good law and will not work. I am passionate about changing the way we protect our children from abuse including on the internet. I am supportive of that 100 percent when in a way that might work. So yes we need to deal with the education rehabilitation programmes that must be available to people who are locked up for this but we must also look at ourselves in the mirror.What is going on? Why is it people we know—and they are people whom we all know statistically—who indulge in this? What is driving it? I would argue that the marketing of the sexualisation of children is something that goes on across our society. You only have to see the clothing for young girls under the age of 10. You only have to look at the children’s beauty contests. It is much worse in the United States than it is here because we have actually resisted some of this but we need to resist it. We need to stop promoting an idea of beauty that is actually sexualising children. OK we have got good boundaries but not everybody has.Carmel Sepuloni: But the Minister of women’s affairs thinks they’re a good idea—pageants.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Well the pageant is part of the problem and it always was. We actually need to do something about protecting children right across society so that we do not feed the sickness—that children are objects for the gratification of adults—in any way whatsoever. So although we support the provisions of the legislation we cannot see these provisions addressing the underlying problems. We do not support increasing sentences because there is no evidence that that would actually stop people from reoffending—and one thing that would be great is evidence. We also believe that there is a societal context that sometimes the punishment pretends to address but fails to address. Punishment is not going to stop this but a deep hard look at our own attitudes in this society and what we market to our children and what we use the internet for is required.However we will be supporting the bill. We do think it is important that we do something about this and we recognise that it is a genuine attempt even though we feel that it will not substantially change the sickness in a society that objectifies women and children and makes them vulnerable to predators. We have to ask ourselves in what way does our infrastructures social structures and businesses collude with the predators rather than just say: “Lock up the predator. Throw away the key. Block them from the internet. Everything will be fine.” It is not fine. It is sad and it is sick. We are part of it and we can be part of changing it. Therefore we will support the bill but we would like to see a far less punitive but more substantial approach. Yes these crimes should be named as crimes but let us look at where the crimes actually come from. Kia ora tātou.