Omer IbrahimIBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I too want to add my voice to the voices of the previous speakers in thanking Ginny Andersen for bringing in this bill the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. She is the Hutt South MP who works hard and I'd like to thank her for her diligent work in bringing this bill to the House. Ginny talked about being inspired as a mum to do this and the online activity of children today is a nightmare for every single parent in Aotearoa and beyond. Having all of the House of Representatives coming together and doing this is quite commendable and I'd like to thank all the political parties for agreeing to support this bill. It's an open secret that our children spend significant time online often unsupervised which means they are exposed to unimaginable harms. There are evil-minded people out there and their sole intention is just to prey on young children and to harm young children who can't see bad from the evil. The recent online harm against children today is rampant and the social media companies have failed to do anything about it. That's why we need the proper tools to deal with this evil and I believe that this legislation is going to achieve that. The bill will help to mitigate these harms against our tamariki. As introduced it intends to protect children from the harm—primarily focusing on the harm of online grooming to be specific. It's good to see that some good work is being done in this space because as the previous speaker Mr Mitchell has mentioned there has been a gap in legislation and now it's good to see that something is being done to deal with this phenomenon. The bill aims to protect children who are at risk from harm—harm that's caused by exploitation committed through digital communication. The bill also introduces into the Crimes Act a new offence in new section 134AB in clause 4 of grooming for sexual conduct with a person under the age of 16 years where a person commits an offence if they communicate by words or conduct with a young person and do so with an intention to engage the young person in conduct that would be an offence. The bill also creates a new defence for the offence which is that before they communicate they must have reasonably taken steps to find out the young person's age and at the time that they communicated they believed on reasonable grounds that the person was over 16 years old. The Justice Committee have done a good job in terms of hearing from submitters scrutinising the bill and eventually making recommendations. The committee unanimously recommended that the bill be passed. The committee also recommended the following amendments. Initially the two offences were increasing the penalty for intentionally misleading a young person about their age or identity and subsequently meeting or arranging to meet them—this could have caused up to seven years' imprisonment—and a person over 18 years old who digitally communicates with the young person intending to cause harm or who is reckless as to whether the young person is harmed or not also could cause imprisonment for five years. The select committee recommended that an offence include all types of communication but need not require the grooming to meet the young person. The committee obviously recommended this—to repeat what is in other legislation because it's better-aligned with existing legislation and because the policy intent of this legislation is to protect children from harm. Much of the behaviour covered in this bill is covered by existing legislation in the Crimes Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015. Penalties are less and better match other penalties of this type—up to three years of imprisonment. The submissions from various organisations defined child-grooming behaviour as broad strategies used to facilitate sexual conduct and this includes online and in person. Other related information included obviously the survey done—this is quite alarming—by the Ministry for Women and NetSafe which found that seven in 10 people have experienced this one type of unwanted digital communication. Obviously not all of this resulted in harm or distress. Māori Pasifika and other minority children are highly unlikely to report the unwanted digital communication and this is for quite obvious reasons. Also in the survey two in 10 young people had experienced unwanted digital communication that had a negative impacts on their lives probably for the rest of their lives. The general reports showed that harmful digital communications have increased by 24 percent. This should worry all of us and we should be doing everything we can to fight this. Between 2015 to 2020 about 200 people have been convicted—this is according to NetSafe—but NetSafe also said that they have supported about 14000 victims of harmful digital communications. This is a very very scary number. To mention some examples that the media have reported: for example we can mention the schoolteacher who groomed two 15-year-old boys. It started with a text message and gradually became explicit photos. This eventually culminated in her having sexual intercourse with two boys in a locked car in a public place. A mother found out that her son was being groomed online by looking at the phone. The 14-year-old had an Instagram account to obviously keep in contact with gaming friends which is quite innocent. Messages from a random girl of apparently the same age or claiming to be the same age who had the same interests quickly became explicit. I want to acknowledge everyone who contributed to this bill. Obviously there are the submitters—the 25 people who submitted who were interested and took time to submit on this bill and six of them submitted in person—the select committee members the clerks and everyone else who contributed to bringing this bill in front of the House. But my specific acknowledgment is to Ginny Andersen who not a long time ago brought another significant bill in front of this House which was the miscarriage bereavement leave bill and which was passed by this House. Ginny as the mother of young children has done a good job. It took interest and it took time in putting this together—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Omer can we just use surnames please just for the dignity of the House. You've several times gone to first names—so just full names please. It just maintains the dignity of the House. IBRAHIM OMER: Thank you. I apologise Mr Speaker. Ms Andersen has worked diligently to bring this piece of legislation in front of this House. My acknowledgment again is to all the House in coming together to support this bill because this is not any bill; this is a bill that deals with the issue that affects our most vulnerable—our kids—at a time when social media and smartphones have changed everything. I'd like to say how similar this phenomena is: leaving your child to use social media unsupervised is like dropping a piece of meat in a river and expecting the crocodiles not to eat it. So I hope that every parent pays attention but I hope also that this legislation gives every parent here in Aotearoa and beyond peace of mind because this will deal with the issue that we are dealing with. Thank you Mr Speaker.