Tinetti Jan; Rurawhe AdrianFILMS VIDEOS AND PUBLICATIONS CLASSIFICATION (URGENT INTERIM CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS AND PREVENTION OF ONLINE HARM) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): I present a legislative statement on the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members that legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon JAN TINETTI: I move That the Films Videos and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.I am delighted to stand here to present this bill for its first reading but I also must acknowledge my predecessor the Hon Tracey Martin who did the work to bring this bill to this stage. This bill addresses specific legislative and regulatory gaps in our current online content regulation. These were highlighted in the tragic events of the Christchurch mosque attacks on 15 March 2019. The terrorist of the Christchurch attacks sought to exploit online platforms to promote his acts of hate-based violence. Following the original livestream broadcast footage of the attacks spread across the internet through social media and in the days that followed we saw thousands of links appear across our social media platforms. Unfortunately some of these links were able to autoplay. Viewing this type of content can be extremely harmful and distressing and I'm sure that members of this House like me know of people—particularly young children—who saw those links and viewed that content and it was extremely harmful to them. I can only imagine how hard that must be to know that that content was available to the families of the victims and the survivors.This bill is designed to remove inefficiencies and reduce ambiguities in our censorship system to safeguard us from the attempts to distribute such hatred and horror online again. This tragic event highlighted to us how important it is to stop such content from being spread. The internet can be positive in so many ways. It can be used for social connection it can be wonderful for education for employment for commerce for entertainment but the internet can also have a dark side. It can be abused as a tool to share and promote harmful content. The type of content that I am talking about is already deemed objectionable and is already illegal in New Zealand. The Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 or the classifications Act already defines objectionable content. At its worst this content includes child sexual exploitation violent extremism or terrorist content. Objectionable" is the highest classification that can be given to a publication under the classifications Act. This already means that it is illegal to possess the content and distribute it. The bar for determining objectionable content is extremely high but the chief censor in determining this objectionable content also takes freedom of expression considerations into account.However since the classifications Act 1993 we very much know that technology has changed markedly. Technological advances and shifts have changed the way that we access information and we interact with online content. It means we now have to change the way that we tackle the online content such as that violent extremism. And given the speed and ease that it can spread online it is vital that we have the tools and the ability to be able to act swiftly. My officials have worked really closely with people throughout the community in preparing and shaping this bill. They have worked with community representatives from civil society and industry in developing the proposals for this bill and a series of workshops were held with online platforms internet providers civil society groups and overall 200 people were represented at those meetings. I would like to thank those people in the work that they contributed to helping to shape this bill.This bill will allow us to act swiftly in the future if such events like the Christchurch attacks happen again and that horrific event is tried to be spread rapidly online. To do this the bill has six key policy areas. I'm not going to talk about all six but I would like to highlight a couple of them. Firstly the bill will make it a criminal offence to knowingly livestream objectionable content and anyone that commits this offence can face up to 14 years' imprisonment or if they're a body corporate a $200000 fine. Now the 14-year sentence does bring this consistency with the already existing penalty for distributing or creating objectionable content under the classification Act. These penalties are high because the offence captures a range of behaviours and at the extreme end this includes documenting and sharing child sexual exploitation and abuse material. Importantly this bill also allows the chief censor to make interim classification assessments in urgent situations for content that is likely to be objectionable. This really is important because it means that there will be no delay and that the public can be informed as soon as possible about content that may be significantly harmful and authorised inspectors will be able to issue takedown notices to combat the posting of objectionable content online. This is consistent with the already existing powers that they have for physical copies of objectionable content. Again if people or agencies do not take up those takedown notices they will be subject to a penalty of up to $200000. Finally the bill will enable the establishment of regulations that would allow the Government to implement web filtering of objectionable content if required in the future. Now this is a point that I want to acknowledge that there will be ongoing debate about. There is an issue whether there's merits or disadvantages in this web-filtering approach and this is something that I welcome this debate being ongoing when this bill moves through to the select committee process to ensure that we are able to get the best outcome for protecting New Zealanders from objectionable content online. I really welcome that work coming back from select committee. This bill is one of many actions that this Government is taking in response to the Christchurch terrorist attack of 15 March. This bill is about protecting New Zealanders in the future and I am extremely proud to commend this bill to the House."