Bridges SimonHon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): As a parent of young children I really worry about the online world and I'm sure that I'm far from alone. I'm sure that the kind of concerns that I have will be ones that actually the vast majority of parents in the modern world—with computers and all manner of devices—also have. We in our household look we try and limit screen time but boy oh boy do the boys love their iPads and YouTube and various other things they can access online. There's a couple of issues aren't there? There's the time they spend online and how much is appropriate and right for them there and then there's also the content that they're accessing. The reality is that in terms of that time the evidence about what a lot of time online does for children and young people isn't necessarily decisive—you'll find that there's multiple studies. I note Sir Peter Gluckman and his organisation connected to the University of Auckland has recently done a report on this. But I feel personally as a parent that it can't be entirely unproblematic. There has to be problems associated with a long time on devices and it can't be an unalloyed good in terms of what it's doing to young brains what it means for their attention span their ability to concentrate on difficult complex things at school and the like. Then of course there's also the issues not just in the time online even if it's nice worthy stuff that kids and young people are looking at there's also the issue of the content that is being accessed. I would just note in that regard look there's all manner of examples around the world The Wall Street Journal in the last month or so has run an investigative series on Facebook and the work Facebook is doing to have an Instagram for kids. And somehow my recollection is The Wall Street Journal came across secret documents or not public documents and they made it quite clear that the research of Facebook itself shows all the mental health problems and various other issues—depression and esteem issues and harming and the like—that go along with social media and the peer pressure that's around that. People are saying that social media is the new tobacco and if we could cast forward a few years that may be so.Then there's of course when we think about content the issues around clearly inappropriate harmful content for our young—and I'm thinking of course of pornography I'm thinking about extreme violence that can be accessed and as the member in charge of this bill Ginny Andersen has said Look we're not monitoring our children and our teenagers 24/7." So this is a real issue and it doesn't take much for a young one to—left unmonitored—find innocently enough they are on to harmful sites and the like that scare them and potentially scar them. So there are real worries about this whole area of online generally. And I for one want to protect my kids. I'm sure other parents want to protect theirs as long as we possibly can.That brings me to this bill which addresses the issues of unwanted digital communications and child exploitation. Sadly—in fact I'd probably use a stronger word than "sadly" and say "tragically"—it's not uncommon for adults to try and contact children and young people online for bad purposes; and the purposes can include the procurement of graphic pictures through to the sexual grooming for actual sexual conduct that again the member has spoken of—whose bill this is in the name of. I'm sure the entire House stands as one in condemning such behaviour. This bill if passed—it seems to me—would assist with adding criminal offences and criminal penalties for such terrible behaviour. I note what the member has said "It's based on Australian law"—that's not always a bad thing and I'm sure actually to some extent copying what they've done is a good thing. I'll be interested to see at select committee the experience a little way in—of Australia—given they have a similar law.All of that means that National supports the intent of this bill. More than that I think we support the substance of this bill. We're going to be interested to hear submissions on it and go through those. I would simply make this constructive—I hope—point at this very early stage and without having gone through it and thought about it deeply and how this bill would relate if passed to the various other criminal laws that are already on Parliament's books. I think from a cursory glance at the offences that are created by this bill and the increased penalty in relation to offences against section 131B of I think it's the Crimes Act 1961 is it? It could be actually that what's being done here should even go further. That the scope of what is in the bill isn't actually enough to cover the various forms of practices purposes that adults may try and have and do and effect against children young people. So I certainly record actually it may be this bill could—within scope and without trying to do more than a member's bill appropriately should—go further. So I think this is an area where all New Zealanders—certainly parents—will be worried about what happens online and I've tried to demonstrate there's a raft of things that can go wrong in this department. This area of it: adults seeking out children our young ones for harm purposes is one such. And a very important area as the survey results from Netsafe and the Ministry for Women that the member in charge of the bill has laid out made clear: this is not some marginal thing on the sidelines. Actually it's a very real everyday issue sadly in New Zealand and around the West.Given that therefore National supports it at first reading. I'm sure we'll actually support it all the way through albeit we'll be interested in the submissions interested in ways we can improve it and potentially actually increase the range of this bill to make sure that actually more harm is prevented against our children."