Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party on the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. It's quite a mouthful but it's quite simple in what it's trying to achieve. The events of 15 March 2019 shocked the country and in particular one of the things that folks wanted to try and do something about was to make sure no one could inadvertently watch horrific content like that online. All of us will have heard stories of young people being inadvertently exposed to watching those horrific events unfold. So this bill endeavours to do something about that.National did not support the first reading of this bill as it overreached. It had an internet filter in it which all parties apart from Labour were very concerned about but we're pleased to see that that has now been taken out of this bill and as a consequence National although we still have concerns that it doesn't necessarily quite strike the right balance feels that it does more good than harm as my colleague Ian McKelvie said. As a result we are in support of it.The main ways in which this bill changes things is it will criminalise the act of knowingly live streaming objectionable content. It allows the chief censor to make interim classification amendments. That will enable the chief censor to make an interim classification in an urgent situation for content that is likely to be objectionable and it's obvious where that concept has been drawn from in respect of those fast-moving events back on 15 March 2019. It allows take-down notices to be issued requiring the removal of objectionable online content. So it allows authorised inspectors to be able to issue take-down notices for online content hosts to remove objectionable material on their sites and it comes with a potential civil pecuniary penalty of up to $200000 if the online content host does not comply with an issued take-down notice.The final key provision is that it clarifies that safe harbour" provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 will not apply to objectionable online content. So that will close a loophole by ensuring that "safe harbour" provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act will not apply to objectionable material online. We are pleased that the internet filter that we spoke about before has been removed. That was a massive deal for the National Party and something that we could never have supported. It was also the key concern of many objectors to the bill including human rights groups and tech experts. There is a fundamental issue that this bill deals with and I acknowledge my colleague Ms McKee's points about free speech. This is a fundamental issue that we're dealing with at the moment with technology running far ahead of policy makers in terms of designing new platforms and policy makers are trying to figure out how to get the balance right in terms of managing the different interests in the community.So we have free speech. We have the tech companies who are focused on user engagement but user engagement often involves echo chambers and it often involves the promotion or the support of quite negative content. People are entitled to be negative if they wish but the question is where that line is drawn and we feel that this bill has largely got that right in this respect although there will be ongoing issues that we're going to have to deal with. There has a been a storm developing around the globe over the Facebook papers recently and the papers have indicated that the social media giant has been privately and meticulously tracking real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms and ignoring warnings from its employees about the risk of its own decisions and allegations that it's exposing vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.This is a huge challenge that we need to try and balance and we have so many of our young people and middle-aged and elderly people on sites including TikTok Instagram Facebook Snapchat and Twitter and I can certainly say there's a lot of negative people who like to attack people from either side of the divide in politics.In summation National does support this bill."