Henderson EmilyDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): It's a real pleasure to rise in support of this very important bill and with my colleague Ginny I say to our colleague Louisa—or as we now know her Lucky Lou"—this is a wonderful piece of legislation and I'm just so delighted to be able to rise and speak in its favour.You know I had a wee look at the Law Commission's recent report report 128 where they say "Alongside these obligations to provide the public with reliable and accessible sources of information the press was also charged with being the public's 'eyes and ears' and most critically using their privileged access to provide an independent watch-dog on the exercise of state and other seats of power." What a crucial role.In an earlier speech to this House I invoked my children. For this one I want to invoke my dad. My dad was a defence counsel when I was a young child. He always impressed on us the importance of the criminal court as a way in which you hold the feet of the powerful to the fire and you test in the rights of the vulnerable. This fourth estate does exactly the same thing. It was also Dad who gave me books by brilliant investigative journalists like David Yallop who wrote reasonable doubt the Arthur Allan Thomas investigation. Who gave me—Hon Member: That's a great one.Dr EMILY HENDERSON: It is. Who gave me Donald Woods' book on Steve Biko which first gave me that sense of how a State could stray from the path of democracy and how journalists play a vital part in hauling us back and keeping us to the standards of morality. Of course he gave me the great Woodward and Bernstein's amazing piece of investigative journalism. It is that sort of work that we are protecting today.However I do note Oscar Wilde said "In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad". I have to disagree with the great Oscar. The importance of investigative journalism the importance of them in holding our feet to the fire putting us on the rack cannot be overestimated.The situation we had with the extraordinary and wonderful Nicky Hager back in 2014 proves that we have a hole in our law and we need to fill it. It is Louisa Wall who has stepped in to make this piece of legislation come to fruition or at least start to flower perhaps to use a spring metaphor since that's where we are.In the era of social media rumours falsehoods in the era of super spin in the era of alternate facts in an era where we saw one of the world's great democracies coming quite close to a kind of ersatz coup so very recently the importance of strong journalism the importance of a free press who are able to get down and do the work and protect their sources in order to be able to do the work—the way in which they in some ways work with whistleblowers to become themselves whistleblowers—could not be more important to us.So I am very very grateful to have the opportunity as a member of Government to promote the freedom of press. I am very very grateful to have a moment to celebrate the work of investigative journalists like Nicky Hager like Donald Woods like David Yallop even like Woodward and Bernstein. It is a wonderful moment to be a fangirl of investigative journalists and I most sincerely am a fangirl of this piece of legislation and I commend it to the House."