Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to commend the previous speaker for that contribution although I'd comment that while what Chlöe Swarbrick said is true that we often find ourselves with common cause on issues of social liberty she's never been able to explain to me why she doesn't trust politicians in the Government to regulate how you use your body and your mind but she'll allow them open season on all the rest of your property. I look forward to the day when Chlöe Swarbrick and the Green Party can explain that seeming inconsistency.I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. Now maybe people listening might see some of the confusion inherent in the bill just by reading or listening to what the title of it is. The truth is it is a nonsense that cannot work that has been trumped up to solve a problem that it actually doesn't align with whatsoever and it will reduce New Zealanders' most basic freedoms to think their thoughts and speak their minds without concern for arbitrary coercion by the State.Mr Speaker I want to tell you that I was in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 ironically on a Speakers' tour with my good friend Trevor Mallard and we were visiting the University of Canterbury when we were told that there were active shooters loose in the city of Christchurch. I watched the video that was live streamed—I watched it along with about 500 other students cradled over their phones and we watched it for the simple reason that we didn't know what was happening but it seemed like a very real possibility that if there was an ongoing terror attack then a university with students huddled in a great hall is a place that they might come to next.I make this point for two reasons: one is that I'm not blind by any stretch of the imagination to the horror of what happened on that day but number two is that within minutes of me and some of those students watching that video it had been taken down. Why? Because every major internet company that has any kind of reputation worth anything was scrambling to get rid of it as quickly as they were aware and as quickly as they could. That leads to the question: what is it that the Labour Party members think an agent of the New Zealand Government could have practically done in that window of time to have changed the outcome? And what do they think that the New Zealand State an organisation that can't even get personal protective equipment to the right place at the right time in the middle of a pandemic is going to do to keep up with future changes in the way the internet works? That's the simple reality: the connection between this legislation and the terrible attacks on New Zealanders on 15 March 2019 is totally symbolic. There is no practical connection. There is no morsel of truth in the idea that this legislation practically addresses what happened that day. That means that the connection is purely rhetorical that it's purely symbolic and that it is frankly a Government that is trying to sell the sizzle because it has no sausage to sell.It happens against a backdrop of a Government that does this all too often a Government that told us only last year—I think it was November—that we needed an extra five days' sick leave for 2.7 million workers because maybe some people probably numbering in the hundreds would need to take 14 days off with COVID-19 and just this week the Government said Actually we've got a special programme to compensate people who do need to stay home get tested and potentially isolate for COVID-19." showing that they never needed that policy. Well this bill today is another example of the Government using one tragic cause the public cares about to sell another agenda. What is the agenda behind this bill? It is the idea that some people should be able to have an apparatus to tell other people what to say and think. We've established it's nothing to do with Christchurch it's nothing to do with the terror because practically it wouldn't have helped on that day and it won't help in any similar situation in the future. But what it is about as we heard from Chlöe Swarbrick is giving this Government or some future Government the ability to set up a filter that controls what sort of information can come in and out of Aotearoa New Zealand. I think that is an affront to freedom of expression at a time when free expression is already under threat.We have a crisis where we are unable to have honest conversations and work through our problems in a civilised manner. Too often people are cancelled out and beaten down for expressing the views that they honestly hold. People are taken off radio stations in the case of Sean Plunket as we're hearing reported today. People feel unable to speak their mind because they don't know how they might find themselves beaten down for expressing an honestly held opinion. In that environment we are a much poorer society and we're also a more dangerous society because people who do have truly objectionable views are going underground. They're going to places that this legislation will never touch because the people that express truly objectionable views and who have truly objectionable material they won't be doing it on Google or Facebook or Instagram or any reputable company that could be named by members of this House. They won't be doing it on 8chan which was the thing that the real freaks went to when 4chan kicked them out which was the thing that the mild freaks went to when normal social media kicked them out. They'll be doing it on some sort of platform that most people in this House have never heard of except for some of the slightly odder people that have joined the Labour Party caucus lately. This legislation won't reach those dark corners of the internet. What it will do is supress and frighten people who are trying to have honest conversations about their own lives and the future of our country.It would be right and proper for this Parliament to say this law tonight doesn't solve the problem that it's advertised to solve. There's no practical way it can do that. It would be right and proper for this Parliament tonight to say this legislation has effects that we are not comfortable with. We don't know how a future Government might use the power to set up an internet filter on what people can access online. It would be right and proper for this Parliament to say that this legislation won't be effective at getting into the really dark corners of the internet which are the ones that we should be most worried about. And it would be right and proper for this Parliament to say tonight that we actually if we have any goal when it comes to speech and conversation need to start encouraging people to speak freely in a civilised and respectful manner because there's far too much hate there's far too much identity politics there's far too much cancel culture and it is breeding resentment that is going to lead to backlashes that will take New Zealand to a far less united and far less civil place.That's what the Labour Party needs to understand. That's what those Labour backbenchers have signed up to and what they should've been asking questions about in caucus. "When the leader's office gave me these speaking notes to support this bill that I don't really agree with that I actually should've questioned a few more times did I really trust them? Will I really be pleased that I supported this looking back in the future? Is this really what I came to Parliament for to erode the rights of New Zealanders without actually solving any practical problem?" Those are the questions those Labour backbenchers should be asking themselves and if they do they will cross the floor and defeat this bill that doesn't solve any real problem but restrains the freedoms of New Zealanders to think their thoughts and speak their minds freely. That would be a good night for parliamentary democracy but I suspect they won't have it in them and it will be just ACT National and the Greens opposing this affront to freedom of expression. Thank you Mr Speaker.Debate interrupted."