Ardern Shane: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Ardern Shane: Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1780] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill and do so on a range of grounds but mostly of course on the grounds of human dignity and the preservation thereof. 
I congratulate the Government Administration Committee on the work it did. Although this bill seems to be very simple and sensible legislation to arrive at let me share with members some of the difficulties the committee had to grapple with as it went through the process. First of all I do not think too many people out there would suggest that filming somebody in a state of undress in a sexually intimate position or in a toiletry-type situation is something that society would accept. But then of course people can inadvertently get caught in circumstances sometimes. For instance somebody may be out on the side of the road videoing a scenic landscape or whatever and a young couple enjoying the night as it were may inadvertently be caught in that circumstance. The bottom line is that if the person taking the video knowingly distributes that material then we need to be able to send him or her a message that that behaviour is not acceptable. 
Further there is the whole issue of what happens when somebody has captured an intimate image in the way the Minister described after stumbling upon it as it were by accident—going through one’s Internet or otherwise. How do those persons alert the authorities about the material they have without in fact themselves becoming inadvertently caught by the law? The committee had to find a way forward on that. We had a major difficulty I guess in getting the right balance between what most people in society would consider to be unsavoury behaviour and legitimate use of the material in terms of apprehending tracking down and suchlike those who might be distributing this stuff. 
A further complication was that this bill does not just amend the Crimes Act of 1961 which of course is the principal Act; it also has influence over a range of other legislation—for example the Summary Offences Act the Crimes Act the Harassment Act the Human Rights Act the Employment Relations Act the Privacy Act and the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act. So the committee had a major difficulty in terms of getting the right balance on how to deal with all of that and come out with what is—I agree with the Minister—a fine piece of work from the committee. I guess the problem we had overall was in actually defining covert filming and we all have a view of the world on what that is. I think the Minister outlined that definition quite reasonably in his opening comments: surreptitious visual recordings of other persons in intimate circumstances without their knowledge or consent and in circumstances in which those persons would reasonably expect to be private. Given that this is a broad issue that is probably the simplest way to put brackets around what the committee was trying to achieve. 
The other issue that came out of this matter that was quite interesting but also difficult to deal with was the whole issue of the scope of intimate visual recording. This is in an area of technology that is moving at such a pace that if members know what 2006 technology is all about then they are already out of date because the next wave is about to descend upon us. That is the reason I guess that this bill came about in the first place. The 1961 Act never envisaged some of the equipment that is now available such as cellphones with cameras and the use of the Internet whereby one can beam images around the world simultaneously described as “streaming” and where one does not necessarily record save or store images in the way one would normally consider in terms of a photograph in hard copy or digital form. One actually films a subject and emails it simultaneously to whoever one may be trying to send that information to. 
 The next issue was to try to arrive at a sensible penalty or sentence for the offence this bill addresses. The committee spent some time on that matter. It looked at a range of similar offences and at international examples and decided that 3 years’ jail was probably a strong enough message. Some on the committee thought it was not; others thought it was a bit tough. But that is the nature of Parliament. However that was the committee’s decision and the committee reported back its findings to the Parliament on 1 August. 
I also say that the whole topic of films videos publications and classification was a vexed one on a number of issues not just around the amendments to the Crimes Act in this bill—the Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill—but also in a range of other areas. One of the ongoing issues that is still live is hate speech. In that regard the inquiry within the select committee is still live. The new committee which I chair has decided to continue with it because two-thirds of the way through the parliamentary process people indicated they wanted to make submissions. Some had submitted; others had not. It would not have been in the best interests of good parliamentary process to decide not to continue with that issue just because the committee was a new one in a new Parliament. So that matter is still ongoing and it will be interesting to see whether the Government’s view on it has finally been arrived at. Obviously National has not changed its view on it one iota. 
That is probably about enough from me. National supports this legislation. Clearly it is overdue. The Government was right to employ the luminaries it did to reach its conclusions. The Law Commission and of course the Law Society among others submitted to the select committee. At the end of the day I think this bill achieves a reasonable balance on a very difficult issue.