Tinetti JanFILMS VIDEOS AND PUBLICATIONS CLASSIFICATION (URGENT INTERIM CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS AND PREVENTION OF ONLINE HARM) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): I present a legislative statement on the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill to the House.SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon JAN TINETTI: I move That the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. That's a very long title Mr Speaker of this bill and I hope that you forgive me for just reading this first part of my speech so I don't get that title wrong. This bill amends the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 also known as the Classifications Act. I think that title I like better being able to say it. It does make really important changes that come as a direct response from the atrocities of the March 15 Christchurch mosque attack where it became really clear that our legislation needed quick improvements to protect New Zealanders from objectionable material such as the terrorist attack being livestreamed online. Prior to this time the actual act of livestreaming wasn't illegal.The bill updates the Act to take urgent steps to prevent and mitigate harms being caused by objectionable publications. The objectives are to ensure that the Government and internet service providers and online content hosts can swiftly and consistently take action against objectionable material. Now I need to be clear that when I say objectionable" this is already referring to a legally defined category of content which is already defined in our primary legislation. This is the worst type of material that is already illegal in New Zealand. It includes child exploitation material and violent extremist and terrorist content. Now the bar for determining objectionable material is already extremely high and it is the job of the Chief Censor to apply the legal test. In that legal test the Chief Censor already takes freedom of expression considerations into account. Once a publication is deemed objectionable it is illegal to possess the content or distribute it; that already exists in law today. I say that because people have got that confused that this bill was about redefining that definition that exists in current law; it doesn't. We're talking about something that already exists in law.Since the bill has been at select committee we have made some significant improvements. Firstly I said in my first reading speech that I had reservations about the way that the filtering provisions in the bill had been drafted but I wanted them to go through to select committee to see what submitters were presenting at select committee and to see if improvements were being made. It became clear to me from the select committee submissions that there was a high level of concern around the filtering provisions and how they would work. So both the select committee and Cabinet agreed to my recommendations to remove new sections 119L to 119O and all references to the electronic filter including the regulations in the bill. Given the purpose of this bill was to enable the swift response if another attack or another incident such as livestreaming of a terror attack were to occur I think that what the select committee has sent back for this second reading now creates a really good place that we have landed and that means that we will be able to act effectively and efficiently without the use of an electronic filter system.I'd like to take a moment to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for their work and their careful consideration of this particular bill and the valuable improvements that they have made and recommended for it. I'd also like to thank the 163 submitters who gave careful consideration to this bill but particularly those who made oral submissions on it. Overall I feel that the work that was done in the select committee by the members but also those submitters has added to the bill and made it very much stronger. They've made some sound recommendations to improve the bill inserting clause 5C to add a new section 14A to the principal Act. This amendment would provide a process for online content hosts to submit online publications for classifications. It would provide more clarity to the process for online content hosts as currently they are not specified in the Act.The majority of the remaining recommendations that the committee suggested clarified existing provisions increased transparency or were technical in nature. But there are a couple that I'd just like to highlight here today. The first one is around the "safe harbour" provisions. When the bill was first introduced it included a provision intended to ensure that online content hosts were held liable under the Films Videos and Publications Classifications Act 1993 where they had knowledge that objectionable content was being hosted on their platforms and refused to take this down. In order to achieve this the bill recommended removing those "safe harbour" provisions that were under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 for online content hosts. Those provisions do provide protection to online content hosts from liability when illegal content is posted on their platform without their knowledge providing they take certain steps set out in the Act.Following the submissions on this clause it was acknowledged that a blanket removal of the "safe harbour" provisions would lead to unintended consequences and that it's not appropriate for platforms to be held responsible for content that is uploaded or shared on their platform that they have no knowledge of. So the select committee and the officials agreed that the removal of the "safe harbour" provisions should only apply in instances where it is subject to a take-down notice and where knowledge of the element is met. So a take-down notice would specify the material that is objectionable and require it to be removed. So then they would have knowledge of that at that point. It is appropriate and consistent with existing offences in the Act that an online content host becomes liable once they have that knowledge that they are hosting objectionable content and refuse to take it down. It gets a little bit confusing but it's about the fact that they then know and have that knowledge and if they refuse to then take it down after having the knowledge then they become liable.The bill provides safety for New Zealanders and certainty for content providers with the new ability of the Chief Censor to make interim classification assessments in urgent situations for content that is likely to be objectionable. This means that the public will know as soon as content is found to have the potential to cause significant harm. It also means we will be able to move faster on content as enforcement agencies and online content hosts will have the legal certainty they need to remove objectionable content. So unlike other jurisdictions we've had to rely on voluntary requests to remove illegal online material. This bill now will use authorised inspectors who will be able to then issue take-down notices. So we'll be moving from a voluntary regime to now having inspectors who will be able to issue those take-down notices for online content hosts to remove objectionable material on their sites.I'd also just like to signal before I conclude my speech that I am giving notice of my intention to table a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) at the committee of the whole House stage. All this SOP will do is amend the commencement date of the bill which has since passed.So finally I would just like to say that this bill is about fundamentally protecting New Zealanders from harm that we know viewing objectionable content online can cause and I commend this bill to the House.SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."