Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Speaker. With the passage of this bill the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill we will be dragging an analogue law into the digital age. Many people have canvassed today the genesis of this bill and I think we Cantabrians particularly those of us living in Christchurch at the time are vastly in support of the intention of the bill. The 15th of March 2019 was a day that I think changed our innocent little city forever and for the murderous actions of the terrorist to be live streamed on Facebook took a common murder beyond the realm of comprehension for most people I think and it was indeed rightly termed a terrorist atrocity.This bill was viewed as a necessity borne out of that horrific day and I see the ongoing ramifications in my own electorate where a number of widows of people who were killed that day have actually moved. So I do see the ongoing impact of that. While I myself didn't see the live streaming of the attack I did actually see the live streaming of the police officers that took the terrorist down and we did discuss this at length in the select committee as to the range I suppose of what might be deemed as objectionable material. There was murder on one stream and there was the shooting and the live stream take down of a terrorist in another stream. So that was discussed at length and as the Minister made very clear in her second and third readings objectionable material" is very very clearly defined in the law and I think that that is a very good thing.So with the passage of this bill we are moving the law into a rapidly evolving area. It addresses a legislative and regulatory gap to the current online content regulations as has been discussed by many. It does make the live streaming of objectionable content a specific criminal offence. We've talked a lot about terrorist attacks but it does also include the live streaming of other objectionable materials like child sex exploitation instances. It will give the chief censor an ability to make very swift interim time-limited classification assessments that will last up to 20 days. Where we do have reservations as a party however is that it does put an extraordinary amount of power into the hands of the Classification Office. And while we obviously maintain that these are exemplary people doing an exemplary job it does put a vast amount of responsibility on to them because this law effectively lets the buck stop with them.It will also authorise an Inspector of Publications which is effectively the police to issue take-down notices and they're aligned with the current powers of seizure of objectionable materials and publications. But we are concerned again with the very nature of this in how effective it may be given we're talking about live streaming given we're operating in an environment in a digital world where the use of VPNs—or virtual private networks—are widespread mirror websites are widespread and the very nature of trying to enforce a local digital-based law on to a global community.It will also impose a penalty regime for convictions of up to 14 years' imprisonment or $200000 fines and it will create future mechanisms for the Crown to potentially create web filters as and when the technology becomes available. I think it's been widely canvassed today that we as a party opposed this at its first reading because of the internet filter provision. We did think it was too much of an overreach and while we do I think live in an age where the cancel culture is rife there is a very fine line to walk between reducing harm and protecting our freedoms of choice our freedom of thought and our freedom of speech. We did think that that web filtering tool was going to be extremely blunt and would have been a breach of many of those important democratic rights.So I think the comments of my colleague in ACT Nicole McKee were very pertinent very valid. My concern as I've outlined has not been so much with potential breaches of freedoms but actually the practical application of how this is going to work. It's a well-intentioned bill but it's going to be really hard to enforce. The very nature of live streaming is that it is instant. And while the chief censor can issue an interim classification while the police can issue a take-down notice harm will be done by the very nature of the instantaneousness of a live stream. So Governments of the future are going to have to be very very watchful of that.The Government is granting—or we as a Parliament I suppose are granting the Government enormous powers here. The chief censor will have enormous powers. They must be treaded lightly. The ability for the issuing of take-down notices was an enormous concern for the submitters that came and spoke to us about this bill and obviously we as a party at the time. But I do acknowledge the Minister for taking on those concerns and for removing the provision of a web filter and I do acknowledge that she is prepared to look at how technologies will evolve in future. So we do then stand and commend this bill to the House."