Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is a member's bill that was introduced by Ginny Andersen MP: the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill. She introduced the bill to create a new offence in relation to grooming young people and when we looked at it closely in the Justice Committee it became very obvious that most of what the bill intended to capture was already covered by existing Acts: the Crimes Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act. So the bill that we were debating in the first and second readings is much changed by the select committee process and we now have a much more tightly focused and smaller bill which focuses on making it an offence for someone over the age of 18 to communicate by words or conduct with a person under the age of 16 but in doing so there needs to be an intention to facilitate the young person's engaging or being involved in conduct that would be an offence under a couple of existing Acts around indecency sexual crimes and exploitation of a person. So it's quite a narrow bill. I'm a father of three teenage girls and like everybody we're concerned about the rise of digital crimes against young people. It is definitely a concerning trend and something that all sensible people worry about. The question before us is whether the laws of the land give sufficient coverage to dealing with the issues that young people are facing. The National Party has supported this legislation. It doesn't do a hang of a lot but it does bring in one little area of extra coverage and in so far as it does that to keep our younger people safe from predation we support it. The only point I would make in passing and not wanting to prolong this debate lengthily is that there was a change. Originally the bill as introduced was extending jail time penalties from five years to seven years for a section in relation to these crimes and I did make the point in a previous speech—and I'll make the point again—about how kind of odd that seemed. This is a Government that has focused on reducing the prison population and at every turn we see people having short periods of home detention after violent assaults and crimes and yet we have legislation introducing seven-year prison sentences. I suppose it's not the legislation and the sentences listed that matter; it's what actually happens to keep the community safe. It just seemed a slightly odd and dissonant approach from the Government to on the one hand be very focused on reducing prison sentences and the amount of time people spend in prison but to also be passing a bill that was extending so-called prison sentences for this particular group. I think what we do need to see is a little bit more consistency on that issue and our focus when it comes to law and order on this side of the House is community safety being the primary object. If the incidence of crime continues to grow as it has in the last few months particularly in serious crime and ram raids and things like that—if that's the case then we need to deal with it firmly and with always a focus on keeping the community safe. But overall this legislation creates a new offence and deals with a particular area of digital crime. It seeks to close one area to keep our younger people just that little bit safer and in so far as it does that we support it. Thank you Madam Speaker.