Street Maryan: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7717. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and speak to the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill. The member who has just resumed his seat used the word “aspirational” and seemed to imply by the way he used it that there was something somehow wrong with that. One could wish for a little more aspiration to be evident in the policies speeches and contributions to this House from the Opposition but we will have to continue to wait for something of that order. 
This bill is an important start. As the Minister the Hon David Cunliffe said in his speech introducing the third reading it is not the last word on getting rid of spam entirely but it is a start. I make reference in particular to his comment about looking to enhance or provoke or produce international agreements. In the event that we cannot legislate outside of our own jurisdiction we can at the very least make sure that New Zealand is not a spam haven. 
I enjoyed working on this bill in the Commerce Committee and I thought that the member who resumed his seat quite enjoyed working on it as well although the support evident in the select committee was not evident in his speech just now. However I will proceed. 
There are a couple of points I would like to make about this bill. One of the things that struck me as most interesting when this bill was before the select committee was a submission we received from the Direct Marketing Association—that is the representative group of commercial retail outlets that direct-market to people in their homes. One could characterise the people in this association as being the producers of the junk mail that comes through our letterboxes. The association did a survey of its own. My entire expectation when I went to read its submission was that it would oppose the bill and that of course direct-marketing through personal computers into people’s homes had to be an even more efficient way of marketing than junk mail in letterboxes. 
So I expected the association to be vociferous in its opposition to this bill but in fact the opposite was true. Even those that by any normal expectation one would imagine opposing this bill were very much in favour of it. It was because the association had done its own research. Much as people hate getting junk mail in their letterboxes they hate getting commercial spam even more. So the association from its own research determined that it was completely counter-productive on its part to insist that commercial spam be regulated on an opt-out rather than an opt-in basis. I was most interested in the fact that that association thought it would be completely self-defeating and counter-productive to allow retailers to send commercial spam out across the countryside on the basis of any list they were able to harvest from anywhere. 
This bill does exactly what most people want which is to put in place an opt-in regime not an opt-out regime. In other words under this law people cannot receive even one commercial email seeking their custom. They cannot receive even one. If people want to receive commercial-marketing emails on their personal computers they have to tell retailers that they wish to be on their emailing list. So people cannot get one and then unsubscribe; they have to actively opt-in to receive those emails. That was an excellent protection and gets rid of a lot of the unsolicited electronic messages that have been besieging people’s PCs up and down the country. 
 So having dealt with the commercial aspects of unsolicited electronic messages the committee then went on to consider further how this regime would be policed and enforced. Members will see there is a provision in the legislation for an enforcement department to be set up within the Ministry of Economic Development that would keep an eye on this. It will be a place that is not a complaints desk. It will not be a fix-it agency but it will be a monitoring agency that will allow through its monitoring this legislation to be enforced. 
There are a number of constructive and creative aspects to the bill. There are also some slight amendments to it that the select committee chose to make and that from my recollection were agreed to by the select committee unanimously contrary to what might have been inferred from the previous speaker’s contribution to the debate. 
The other thing the select committee went on to do was to look at messages that could be considered offensive. They were not commercial in nature but could be used for sexual exploitation purposes and for what is commonly called grooming purposes. Grooming is to be particularly noted as a practice that is used to inveigle young people into Internet and email conversations that are undesirable and that if the young people understood their full import would certainly be unsolicited. So it has begun to move down that path as well in order to regulate this whole electronic environment. 
Of course it is notoriously difficult environment to regulate but this bill is a very practical and good way of doing it. It has the support of Internet providers up and down the country. They themselves are not responsible for the things their clients do although they do extract required behaviours in return for providing Internet services to customers. They can enforce those contracts and withdraw their services. The bill does regulate the provision and circulation in the first instance of commercial spam. But it goes beyond that as well. It is constructive excellent legislation that will help the efficiency of our economy and will aid in the protection of people from unsolicited electronic messages. Thank you Mr Speaker.