Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): I was just about to launch into the huge presumption that I was likely the only journalist in this Chamber and then Ingrid Leary walked in so I can no longer assume that position. But because of that—because of my experience as a journalist—that is why we are very pleased to support this bill this evening primarily because it canvasses the very important issue of journalistic privilege. Although the Search and Surveillance Act currently in place does identify the existence of journalistic privilege where it isn't as clear is the description as to the processes to be followed when the issue of privilege arises. I do find it a little bit ironic that the person well known to us all who does tend to get a bit of a hard time from journalists is actually the person that went in to bat for extending the privileges and protections of journalists and that is of course one Judith Collins. But look harking back to my own experience and the importance of being able to protect the anonymity of sources I've actually lost count of the amount of times people would come to me with something really really important that they wanted to discuss and felt was important for the public to be aware of but for fear of my inability to give them an absolute guarantee and an assurance that they would be protected they often declined in the end to give me privileged information. So too are the issues for journalists who tend to write books and this has been well played out in a number of high-profile cases now. Obviously many speakers have referred to the Nicky Hager case but there's also the David Fisher case where the Crown attempted to coerce him into revealing information that he had revealed on Kim Dotcom. There's also the John Roughan case—Chris Bishop: This is a blast from the past.NICOLA GRIGG: —where lawyers for Bradley Ambrose attempted to secure recordings of interviews that he'd used to write his biography on Sir John Key. It's funny my colleague Chris Bishop talks about blast from the past". In researching this piece to talk tonight I came across words I hadn't heard of in a long time you know not only "Dirty Politics" but "Rawshark" and "Rawshank" and "Whale Oil" and so on—and "teapot tapes" and all those things that let me tell you as a press secretary during that period it was testing. But actually I spoke just before about David Fisher. He writes very succinctly about the lack of protection that journalists who write books currently have. And he does tell the story of the attempts to drag him in front of the courts to hand over the information that he had managed to glean for his own book. I quote him—he said "there was no difference in my mind as to how I gathered the material for the book. I did interviews in the same way and wrote the book in the same way [it was] just longer." So that is one important aspect that this bill will seek to address. So too will it seek to address the definition of a journalist in the Evidence Act to explicitly include the investigative journalists. It also amends the Search and Surveillance Act to ensure that journalists' sources are clearly protected in relation to police searches as Greg O'Connor has canvassed. But despite how many of us in this Chamber may feel at times about our friends in the press gallery we do believe in the importance of a free and well-functioning fourth estate and the importance it plays in New Zealand's democracy. It's important that sources—or as they're colloquially known as whistleblowers—can feel free to engage with media to uncover matters of importance to New Zealanders and that is a fundamental that I will always defend. We do however have one slight reservation and while we do support right now the intention of Part 2 of the bill we do want to ensure that these provisions do not stand in the way of exceptional cases where the sources of information may have been obtained illegally. And while we tend to instinctively think of that as a robbery or a breaking and entering of course we now have to expand that to the likes of hacking and data breaching. So finally we are looking forward to the select committee process. We do want to hear the practitioners' views on these matters and obviously the academics will have a say and probably the legal fraternity too. And so I do commend this bill to the House."