Simpson Scott: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4867. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the House as the last speaker in the third reading of this Harmful Digital Communications Bill. The bill is in the name of my colleague the Minister of Justice the Hon Amy Adams but of course it was originally introduced by her predecessor the Hon Judith Collins in the last Parliament. In the last Parliament I had the privilege to be chairing the Justice and Electoral Committee where the bill was first sent—Tim Macindoe: You did that almost as well as your predecessor.SCOTT SIMPSON: —almost as well as my predecessor Tim Macindoe says notwithstanding that he was indeed my predecessor—so I had an opportunity as the bill was introduced to the select committee to hear the submissions and to take an active participatory role in the select committee process until the end of the last Parliament.This was always going to be testing legislation in terms of where this Parliament sits vis-à-vis its responsibilities to our society in terms of new modern technology and the harms that come from cyber-bullying harassment and those sorts of things. It was always going to be legislation that was going to test the minds of MPs as to where the balance should lie in terms of our involvement and the State’s role and people’s right to express themselves freely using modern technology. So I have watched with great interest as this bill has progressed its way through the House. I have been encouraged by the quality of speeches that have been presented in this third reading and I want to congratulate all members even those who have I think used the opportunity to speak against the bill. I think they have made good points—some of them in my view a little misguided but good points none the less.It is all very well and good in this House to oppose for the sake of opposing and to do so sometimes on the basis of high moral ground but actually there are times when this House needs to act and to do something and needs to take a lead. Often parliaments like ours around the world follow too far behind the innovations that come with modern technology and this is a case where our Parliament like other parliaments around the world is trying to grapple with the negative impacts and the downsides that occur from so much of the wonderful attributes and opportunities that new technology brings us.Jacinda Ardern in her speech earlier on this afternoon in this debate said that Labour members felt that they were wedged on this issue—that they were a little unsure about what to do and how to do it—and I think that she accurately summed up the position. It is probably not just Labour members who were wedged; it is probably all of us as parliamentarians that are wedged on this issue because we all come into this place wanting to profoundly enhance the rights of individuals to participate in an active free democracy where freedom of choice and freedom of speech and freedom of expression are all fundamental foundation stones of that democracy. But at the same time we are balancing as we always must the responsibilities that go with protecting those who are vulnerable in our society and in our communities and there are none more vulnerable and exposed to these things in the digital age than young people who do not have the ability to use the tools that existed prior to this legislation being enacted such as taking defamation actions and doing all the sorts of tortious legal remedies that actually do exist already in our existing legislation. Those options simply are not practically available to them.So this bill is a measured approach a measured response and a balanced response to try to juggle some of those difficult and hard issues. I note that the Greens are struggling with it as well and that some of those members are going to vote for and some are going to vote against.This is a bill that will test not only us as legislators but our fellow country folk as well because they are difficult issues. Here what we are trying to do is apply purely subjective measures to a whole range of challenging modern issues so with that comes hard questions about trying to find where the balance should be in terms of determining and then remedying the harm. How do we measure that harm? How do we identify it? Who decides what that harm should or should not be? What are the sanctions once harm has been identified? Where does the responsibility for the intervention lie? And who is responsible for righting the wrongs? This bill attempts to achieve an answer a resolution to many of those hard questions.Is it perfect legislation? Well it might not be perfect legislation but it is legislation that I think is much needed in this House. I have been heartened by comments made publicly by the Minister over recent times that if we have not got this quite right we will look at it again. I think that is the responsible and appropriate measure for a Parliament to take because on this issue there simply is not in my view a do-nothing option.Our young people and their future is too important to allow us to just abrogate our responsibility and leave it to organisations such as NetSafe or Facebook or Google or any of those other organisations to try to find their own way through it. Most of those organisations actually do already have their own rules and I remember going with the select committee to have a look at the offices of TradeMe where we saw how it tried to moderate the messages that were on its message boards and how it did it. But essentially it came down to a subjective values-based decision of one person sitting at a desk at a computer screen somewhere in the depths of the TradeMe organisation and making a call as to what was harmful what was right what was wrong what was offensive and what was not.If there is one thing we know as legislators around the world it is that offence and harm and things of that nature are a bit like beauty. They are in the eye of the beholder. So one person’s freedom of speech is another person’s offence and harmful bullying tactic. There has been a lot of comment on various channels on blogsites and in a whole range of other media commentaries about the infringement that apparently exists because this bill seems to somehow remove people’s right to freedom of speech.I listened carefully to the contribution of my colleague Chris Bishop a few minutes ago. He made mention of the section 7 report that the Attorney-General had presented when considering this bill and in particular he made reference to section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 which of course guarantees to us all the right to freedom of expression. However what is really important is that that is not an absolute right. It is not an absolute right of freedom of speech because freedom of speech does not automatically trump offences and it does not of itself provide a way to evade the protections that are set out in other pieces of legislation. So the new proposals that are part of this Harmful Digital Communications Bill are consistent in my view with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and do not impose upon the freedom of expression that is set out in section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.There will be clear criteria used to determine whether someone has broken the law. For example the new communications offence would apply only where a person sending the communication intended to cause serious emotional distress to a victim. So there is this element of intent and where the intention cannot be proved or is not shown then the provisions of this bill obviously do not kick in. I think that is a sensible sort of process for this bill to be considering. The communication would not apply if the communication would not cause serious emotional distress to an ordinary reasonable person in the position of the victim. So there is a test of ordinary reasonableness. Our common law clearly sets out—and has done for many many years—a test and a strong foundation stone for testing what is reasonable and what is not reasonable.This legislation as I said is a difficult area. It is a difficult area for us all as MPs as parliamentarians to get our heads around and to try to grapple with but grapple with it we must because as MPs we are charged with making the hard and difficult decisions. We cannot simply say we are not going to take a role in trying to find a solution when our young people particularly are put in harm’s way by the use of modern technology.I do commend this bill to the House. It is a good piece of legislation and Parliament has done well to consider it as it has done.