Prime Willow-Jean; Rurawhe AdrianWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Otirā tēnā tātou katoa. Can I first start my contribution this evening by also acknowledging the member Louisa Wall. I have been involved in discussions around your development of this bill from the very beginning and I was reading some of the Hansard from last year actually—it's been on hold until this point so it's great to see it back in the House. But the Minister of Justice at the time the Hon Andrew Little described this as a well-thought-out deeply principled well-crafted well-drafted member's bill and I know that when you brought the issue to our attention we were grappling with some of the challenges of modern society and of technology where you talked about high-profile cases. But what alarmed me in doing research for tonight's speech was not just those high-profile cases but the many many cases that perhaps many of us are not aware of and just how widespread this issue actually is. I agree with the Hon Simon Bridges that the member Louisa Wall is a very passionate and strong advocate and I think if you manage to convince Louisa to take an issue on your behalf and then you have the luck of the biscuit tin your issue is probably going to get over the line. So I do want to acknowledge you Louisa for that and I want to repeat that this is a well-thought-out deeply principled well-crafted and well-drafted member's bill. So I am really pleased to be able to stand here this evening in support of it. I was startled by the information that according to NetSafe 6 percent of New Zealanders—that number is 300000 people—have had intimate images or recordings shared without their consent. I have not been one of those people but I put myself in their shoes and thought about what that must feel like. As I went on to read the description of the impact the trauma that this can cause for people I think we can actually all feel that even if we haven't experienced it and it would only be heightened by actually experiencing it. So why we support this bill: obviously we believe that revenge porn is a form of abuse of somebody else and that is the message that you gave to us when you were presenting the issue and saying why it needed a solution. In the legislation as it currently is the threshold to prove the impact that it has had on you is so high. As we can see from some of the statistics since the Act came into force in 2015 just 196 people—this is in 2020 so it might be a little bit outdated—had been convicted and 87.8 percent of those convictions were men and that was for everything under that Act not just the specific intimate images. So what does the bill do? Revenge porn is currently covered by the broad offence of posting harmful digital communications which is created by section 22 of the Act but under the current law there is a requirement for the perpetrator to have intended to cause harm. The victim has to prove that they have suffered harm of serious emotional distress and as we have heard in the debate tonight there have been varying judgments from judges in terms of that in meeting that threshold. However what this bill will do is accept that the posting of intimate images without somebody's express permission—informed consent—is in itself a harmful act whether that was intended by the perpetrator or not. So that changes it significantly and I believe it will catch a lot more people. I heard one of the things in here where to one person it could just be a joke but to the other person—the victim—it's caused serious harm. So we support this bill because it is going to make it clear that the act of posting it without somebody's permission is in itself a harmful act and therefore they will be caught by the Act and the offences and the penalties within the Act. So I commend this bill to the House—and congratulations. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Louisa Wall—five minutes in reply.