Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe tēnā koutou e te Whare. I've been googling because that seems to be the kind of theme in Parliament this week this notion that's called the Streisand effect". It's defined on the internet on the Google as "a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide remove or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicising that information often via the internet." This is exactly what happened in a situation in 2003 when someone by the name of Barbara Streisand attempted to hide photos of her Malibu mansion.With that kind of introduction it probably makes sense to provide at the beginning of this speech a bit of an understanding to the House of where the Greens are coming to on this. We've had extensive discussions about this and whilst on paper about 90 percent of this legislation seems to be hitting the right note the 10 percent that is not if weighted properly makes this something that we cannot vote for. So the Greens will not be voting for this legislation at first reading and we very much hope that there is substantive debate and discussion throughout the select committee process—a committee that I understand as most are in this Parliament is weighted primarily towards the Government—and that there is a genuine attempt to take on board and not just push through the comments the recommendations of the general public because there's an opportunity to do something really important here.So as has been outlined by others there's a number of things that this legislation attempts to do. The first is to make a criminal offence of knowingly live streaming objectionable content. On the face of it it doesn't inherently seem like a bad thing. There is also the opportunity for the chief censor to be allowed to make interim classification assessments in urgent situations for content that is likely to be objectionable. This importantly speeds up a process that is currently incredibly cumbersome. It also therefore as a result of that chief censorship opportunity enables authorised inspectors to issue what are called takedown notices and there are enforcement clauses that follow.But the part that is the most objectionable to use—I guess rather ironically given the context of what we're debating—is that this bill enables the establishment of regulations that would allow the Government to implement web filtering of objectionable content if required in the future. That is where the Greens cannot support this piece of legislation because whilst it has been put by members on the Government benches particularly as my colleague who I worked closely with on a number of issues Ginny Andersen put it—inherent in this draft law is not the ability to straight off the bat create this internet filter system. In fact it only just enables the power to do so but that's the problem. We don't actually know what we're dealing with here. There's no parliamentary oversight whatsoever on the kind of internet filter system that could end up being created not only by this Government but by a Government in the future and that—that unbridled power of regulation—errs towards far too much authoritarianism for my liking.Whilst we've been debating this bill in the Chamber tonight I have been discussing it with right next door our neighbours in the Chamber David Seymour and ACT and it would interest those who are interested in political ideology to know that whilst we vehemently disagree on economic ideology there is substantial overlap when it comes to social liberties. The idea of freedom of speech however is not a shield. Freedom of speech enables you to say things; it does not defend you from the consequences particularly of saying daft things and particularly where violence and deeply abhorrent racist behaviour ends up as a result.So the question I'm sure that is pressing on the minds of Labour members in this Chamber in particular is why the Greens are opposed to this filter not only for the opportunity for overreach—you know "If we were able to carve this out a little bit more in the legislation perhaps that would satisfy?" But that is not the case because when it comes to filter systems—again I've been back on the Google and I've found that Google itself was actually shut down in the early 2000s as a result of the voluntary systems that were undertaken in the early 2000s to banish or attempt to prohibit that highly objectionable and abhorrent sensitive material when it comes to children and the violation of those children. What that demonstrates inherently and you can look at examples in other jurisdictions of how this hasn't worked—unless of course you're looking for a key performance indicator of complete authoritarianism and control therein—is that anybody motivated can get around internet filters. They can do so by the use of things like virtual private networks (VPNs). It also has the opportunity to capture unintended content. But worse than that it also has the ability to completely miss the intended content in the first place. The likes of which is currently being proposed that is leaving all of this stuff to the regulations is the equivalent of me handing you a piece of paper and saying "Please draw the rules" and then enforcing those rules without having had any parliamentary oversight of what those rules actually are. And that is a problem when it comes to particularly the potential to curtail the opportunity of all New Zealanders—and might I add actually particularly minorities in this country.Here I'd refer actually to Anjum Rahman of Inclusive Aotearoa Collective who agrees with this idea of a filter in theory and has been recognised for her incredible work in response particularly to that terrorist atrocity in Christchurch. She herself has warned that this practice of a national filter could and has the potential to end up disempowering those who it is intended to protect. That is the problem. We are centralising far too much control with the progression of this legislation. So in my final few moments to contribute to the House tonight noting that of course this will pass with this solid Labour majority—outright majority of Government—I hope that we have the opportunity to discuss this in depth and really mull over those submissions from the general public when it comes to the select committee stage and hopefully improve the legislation substantially therein. What we are looking at here is a bill that was prompted by an incredibly abhorrent disgusting terrorist attack that everybody in this House thinks has no place in Aotearoa New Zealand. But it happened here. That it happened here means that here exists racism and dare I say it—because I know it makes some people's skin crawl when they hear it—white supremacy. I really want people to think about that because if the idea of talking about something like white supremacy makes you feel uncomfortable does it make you feel more uncomfortable that we're grappling with something that actually is causing harm to minority communities or is it the fact that you feel personally offended? This is the point of freedom of speech; it comes with consequences. If we are to want to genuinely deal with the actual core root of this issue then we need to do things like tackle racism and tackle white supremacy begin to unpick them begin to have these conversations. But that does not start with curtailing the opportunity to have those conversations in the first place. Ironically the very mention of some of these buzzwords—if enabled by this legislation in future further down the track by some virtue of regulation there is an algorithm that has the opportunity to do these things then it might capture conversations just like this which are so important to the flourishing of democracy and our ability to begin to unpick these deeply problematic viruses that exist within our society and cause undue violence.The Greens will not support this at first reading and we very much hope that there is a response from the general public and that that response is listened to at the select committee stage so that this law may be improved for all of us. Kia ora."