Ngobi TerisaTERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Fa'afetai lava Mr Speaker. As always it's a privilege and an honour to take a call in this House of change especially on members' day and on this the Crimes (Child Exploitation Offences) Amendment Bill.If I can first—she's not here in the House—congratulate my colleague and my friend Ginny Andersen on bringing this bill to the House and passionately shepherding this kaupapa through. I know Ginny Andersen feels very passionately about this bill and its kaupapa to protect our tamariki and our rangatahi not only because that's what we do on this side of the House—the Labour Government want to protect our babies—but also as a mother. Myself as well as a mother of three we know not only wanting to protect our kids but the challenges of parenting young tamariki in this day and age.I know many before me have said it's always more challenging—every era—to parent your children. But I must say with the internet what's available to them it is really scary. Before the internet you had a little bit more control I guess. If your kids were doing anything naughty—not that I did mum and dad just to make that clear—you had the neighbours down the road you knew more or less where your kids were at; you did have that community feel.Well now with the internet that community is much broader it includes all kinds of overseas groups that as a parent makes you so nervous. At the same time online is the way of the world. So of course you want to be able to support—and I know Ginny's the same—our children online but safely as this bill talks about.So that is the conundrum and like I said our kids—and actually society—spend massive amounts of time online our children especially for entertainment education and socialising. So parenting and keeping your children safe while they are online is a real challenge in this day and age.That is why this bill is great. It will help keep our kids safe from harm online and it is super important. Unfortunately there are many stories of our young people with the grooming online being bullied online. And we know that unfortunately there are many predators out there—and again as a mum it freaks me out just being really honest—whose sole purpose is to dupe sexually exploit and bully our children online.So like many unfortunately we are all too often hearing of those stories and I also happen to know of someone who was quite close to my family—a young Māori Pacific and at the time she was 12 beautiful young girl who was navigating all of that: what it meant to be a young woman; what it meant to be a 12-year-old a tween; what it meant to be Māori; what it meant to be Pasifika; and what that meant for her and her family's life; what that meant for her and her friends' life; but also what that meant for her on her online world as I call it.While she was working all of this out she met a friend online—and this was about a six-month period. So she met a friend online was speaking to this friend quite quickly that became her boyfriend they were sharing photos and quite quickly they started sharing more than photos of just them hanging out. He was able to convince this beautiful young girl to share photos of her in her undergarments and then unfortunately he convinced this young girl to share more than just that and baring a bit more than that.I heard across the House as Mr Mark Mitchell was talking about once those photos are online that's it; they're there forever. Like I said this young girl was really swept up and had this beautiful young boyfriend online and was really willing to do whatever it took to hang in there and carry on with this young man.So during this time I just want to make it really clear that her whānau were doing the right thing so far as the internet goes. They were spot checking her social media they had passwords; so doing all the NetSafe recommendations of young people being online. They were checking all of her social media—or what they thought was her social media—and the passwords to all of what they thought was her only social media.But as I say in that six months this young boy had groomed her so much that she had another social media account that her family didn't know about and that was where she was sharing a lot of those photos as well. Of course unfortunately there was some really sexual language that went along with that as well. And I just want to remind the House: this was a young 12-year-old girl.She trusted everything that this young man—or young boy—had said to her online. And when her family started to notice that she was isolating herself straight after school she'd lock yourself in the bedroom wouldn't want to come out to family gatherings didn't want to do anything in the weekend they were getting more and more concerned.Again she had that secret social media account. Without knowing what was happening they started to limit her time online. What that did was: this girl was so under the control of this young boy—she'd been groomed that much—that she started to steal phones. She stole phones of her family and she stole phones from school—anything to get online to talk to her young boyfriend.It got to the point where this young girl started to access online at school and so that is when NetSafe had gotten involved—because it was the school system—and the school system was shut down. That was over a period of six months that this person was able to come in and groom this young beautiful 12-year-old girl.Once NetSafe came in a detective spoke with this young 12-year-old girl. Even after they said to her that the boy wasn't a boy—he was in his fifties he lived over in America he now had these photos of this young girl forever all of that—she was still convinced that they were lying to her and that her beautiful young boyfriend—you know.So that took some time. Again as a parent the mental—and actually the physical because you become unwell on that—the physical abuse was really far-reaching in just the six-month period. That young girl is now 15 and only just starting to come right from that.Again that's another example of how important it is for kaupapa or bills like this. I know I keep banging on about being a mum of young kids; we want to make sure that they can go online. That is the online world we want them to be educated we want them to be connected but we want them to be safe. And that is what this bill does.Just in my last couple of minutes while that was an example of someone overseas we know that we have unfortunately many examples here in Aotearoa New Zealand. And unfortunately they are rising. So many of them are these similar situations that I just described.This bill will in real life be able to deal to some of those who are out there grooming and they will be able to be charged with a crime of digital online grooming and abuse. Just going to the bill one of the things this bill will do is: if a person's first offence is the digital communications for a person under 16 with intent to mislead—which means that someone who is 18 years or older who digitally communicates with someone who is under 16 with the intent to mislead them about their age or identity and then meets or wants to arrange a meet with them—the person can now be imprisoned.We want to prevent that from ever happening but if that does we know that this bill will make sure that they know—us parents know—that we're taking this seriously that digital harm or digital abuse and grooming is a real thing that we won't tolerate that here in Aotearoa New Zealand.This is a great piece of legislation; awesome member's bill. Again I just want to congratulate Ginny Andersen say thank you to her not only as a colleague and a friend but as a mum of young children as well. I really look forward to watching what happens with this going through select committee. Kia ora.