SpeechHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you Madam Speaker. Firstly can I just acknowledge the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and thank her very much. The public may not know but the lifts in Parliament work really really slowly. There's only two going at the moment in the core of the Beehive. And even though I came down—I left my office at call number 10. The calls have been short and the lifts have been long. So I apologise and I thank the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for standing and taking the first call. Can I acknowledge the member Melissa Lee who has just resumed her seat. This is an area of extreme interest to her. She has raised and did raise at the Governance and Administration Committee with the Department of Internal Affairs areas that she had specific interest in that she was worried may have needed to be on the Schedule. But then after going through it I understand at this stage she is comfortable that they are not on the Schedule. That may be the Supplementary Order Paper she's talking about. Can I acknowledge the conversation and the comments that are made in the House and will be made in the House. The member who resumed her seat is quite right. The media content regulatory system the whole of it needs to be reviewed; it's pre-internet. My reality when I sat in this seat was that I had major research from the chief censor among young people themselves that said We are being harmed and we think adults should be doing something about it" and 83 percent of the New Zealand public said they wanted to see a single classification system applied across all platforms.One of the reasons why a single classification system is so important is the parental blocker that you can put on your devices at home are set to New Zealand classifications. So if for example you have gone as a responsible parent and put in "I don't want my child to see anything that is over a rating of R16." if we don't have alignment of the classifications that won't work. That's exactly what happened with a programme that I'm not going to mention by name. And there's a programme on right now that required a complaint to be made because it had an R16 rating. At the moment because this law is not there the chief censor had to get a complaint first which means harm has already been done. He had to go and view that programme and then he lifted the rating to 18+. Again I'm not going to mention it because I'm not going to give them the media coverage but this is important. So I carved it out because the piece of work as the member Melissa Lee actually clearly identified—she's absolutely right—is a much bigger piece of work.The Hon Amy Adams did start that piece of work. I felt as the Minister of Internal Affairs and strangely enough as the Minister for Children that I couldn't wait or we couldn't wait and continue to allow young people and children to be harmed while we waited for that bigger piece of work to be done. I also felt and I have had representation from the industry saying that if it's overly burdensome maybe people would geo-block programmes in New Zealand. It is my view and it is the view of this Government that actually the wellbeing of our children is more important than sometimes I might not be able to watch a programme that somewhere else in the world they can watch. I know it's a delicate thing when we start to ask the internet to take more responsibility or work with us and legislate levels of responsibility on them. I know it's a delicate space and I know that there are members in civil society who say it should be free and a Government should not touch it but it is doing harm. The chief censor has quite clearly done an enormous amount of research with thousands of young people in New Zealand and they are asking us to do something to make sure that they can be safe. Yes young people will seek out a programme if they've heard about it. But the reality is that more young people will now be informed that if you watch this programme you will see these things inside of it. Once you see it you cannot unsee it. It provides them with a choice. That's what this bill is about: choice. Kia ora. Thank you very much Madam Speaker."