Faafoi Kris: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — Referral to Justice and Electoral Committee Second Reading[Sitting date: 24 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2544. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is my pleasure to speak in the second reading debate on the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. It is also a pleasure to speak at a time when National members claim to have a monopoly on the virtues of right and wrong. If you look at their recent history what they do have a monopoly on are the virtues of wrong. If you look at what they have done with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and at the way they use that and at the evidence that has come out that they used it for the wrong purposes of trying to further the career of Tim Groser and if you look at the virtues of them being wrong with regard to the pork barrelling that is going on in Northland you would think that they had the monopoly on what is virtuous and right. But after that—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Bring it back.KRIS FAAFOI: —contribution from Jacqui Dean I think you will see from the evidence that has been presented by this side of the House and through the media that they do not have a monopoly on the virtues of what is right and what is wrong but that they simply have a monopoly on what is wrong at the moment.It was a disappointing contribution from Jacqui Dean because I think we deserve better from the Government. This is an issue that is important. She did make mention of our youth but it is absolutely paramount that we get this issue right for our youth. It has been a short time since I left high school but technology has advanced so that these things here and the internet are ubiquitous. We are growing up in very different times. My teenage niece faces much higher pressures around social media than I would ever have had to. I got bullied; everyone in the House probably got bullied when they were at school. But we dealt with it face to face. These days the internet and these things take bullying to another level. These days we have to protect teenagers in an effective way to make sure that their lives are as good as they can possibly be given the ubiquitous nature of the internet online text messaging and email. We on this side of the House do not believe that the bill as it stands right now is an effective way to make this country and their lives as safe as possible when they interact online—whether that be via email whether that be via text messaging whether that be via Snapchat Facebook or Twitter. We want to make sure that there are effective measures to make sure that our young ones especially are safe.This bill has come out of a Law Commission report. It commissioned some of its own research which I believe found that about 10 percent of young people have been prone to some kind of online bullying. When it narrowed the numbers down to between I think it was around 14 to 29 that number went up to about 22 percent. So online bullying or cyber-bullying is an absolutely real issue for our young ones. So I am a bit disappointed in the Government for making this a political issue because I think there is an onus on us to make sure we get this legislation right. There was an attempt by Government members to pre-empt what was going to come from this side of the House saying: “We’re disappointed that the Labour Party does not want to support this measure for our young people.” Well if this Government were serious about these measures—this bill was introduced in December 2013; the select committee submissions closed in February 2014; that process was rushed; and this bill has been sitting on the Order Paper for months and months and months—if this Government over there were serious about protecting our youngsters from the harm of cyber-bullying we would have seen this legislation much earlier.But you have got to look at the DNA of this bill. It was introduced by Judith Collins who in her tenure as Minister of Justice Minister of Police and Minister of Corrections was all about introducing bills of the justice nature that looked tough but that actually did not do a lot. We have got another version of that here. I did not sit on the Justice and Electoral Committee but I read a number of the submissions and the papers that the Ministry of Justice put forward to the select committee. There were a number of details in the bill that would have made it effective but that were completely absent from the bill and that can be seen in the nature of the penalties that were placed in the bill. There was some debate as to whether or not they were appropriate given the nature of some of the crimes that have been proscribed in the bill. Some debate was had about whether or not they marry up with other pieces of legislation. I put to this House that that is one example of where the Government was making up the legislation as it went along because if it had been doing this properly everything would have lined up. But the select committee had to go backwards and forwards with officials to make sure that those things married up. If the Government had been serious about getting the details right in this that process would not have happened in the select committee stage.Another example of that relates to what powers the approved agency has—what it can do. The select committee sorted out what the approved agency will do and can do; not the Government in putting forward this bill. It was the select committee which filled in the detail of what an approved agency can do and it still does not know what it is going to do. It still does not know where that approved agency will sit or who it will be. One year there is some talk that this agency might be the approved agency and then the next year that that agency will be the approved agency. This is another example of this piece of legislation just being put out there to try to be popular at a time when the Government was on the ropes with Roast Busters.I go back to my earlier submission: this is a piece of legislation that we need to get right for our young people. For the Government to say that this side of the House does not care about preventing harm for youngsters in terms of cyber-bullying is just nonsense. We want to sit here and get the legislation right so that we do not have to come back and make the changes that really need to be made in this bill. There may be a glimmer of hope that the Government might see that in the Committee stage and that it might actually make the amendments that are necessary to make this piece of legislation effective because the way that it stands now it is not. I will not bore the people at home who are watching this instead of the cricket tonight with the process but if a complaint gets serious it will end up in the District Court. Our District Courts are already inundated with a whole lot of other work which they are struggling to do. So what we are asking our District Courtsto do—they are under a lot of pressure and they have had budget cuts over time—is to take on more responsibility on complex cases and to make rulings on them. So in reality how effective is this piece of legislation when it has asked the Districts Court to do much more to take on new responsibility but we are not funding them for that. Oh no heaven forbid. They will do it for free. They already have a huge workload which they say they cannot handle.This piece of legislation has been rushed and still has plenty of holes in it. We would hope—and I think Clare Curran has already suggested this—that the Government might reach out and try to make the amendments necessary in this bill. Because as it stands right now it is just punitive and there is no resource in terms of education and preventative measures to make sure these kinds of things do not happen in the first place. The Minister is wrong; in overseas jurisdictions there is resource put into prevention and education to try to reduce the harm. But nowhere in this piece of legislation as it stands right now do we see any commitment from the Government to serious and effective education prevention on cyber-bullying. In terms of its police portfolio this is a Government that sings to the top of the hills that it is prevention first but in this growing area of cyber-bullying we are not seeing any resource or any effective measures being taken when it comes to looking after our youngsters. There is some work to do to make this piece of legislation effective. We would hope that the Government recognises this and that in a mature way we will engage with it will take up the offer to make the piece of legislation effective because as it stands now it is not.