Tisch Lindsay: Films Videos and Publications Classification  Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Films Videos and Publications Classification  Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:623;Page:18651] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 National has been very much involved in the Committee stage of the debate this evening. I will summarise the major points we have articulated. We are in support of the bill and we have been right from the word go. It has also been interesting sitting on the Government Administration Committee to hear what the submitters said. I find that some of the views expressed this evening are certainly not my understanding of the bill. However that aside we have made what I think is a positive contribution to a bill that deals with something we strongly believe in: the protection of children and of society. 
But we should look at a couple of points that possibly have not been made and they are concerns that we will probably never get away from. The bill is about effects not causes. What are the effects on children and on society? That is really what the issues are. It does not matter what laws we pass it will be very difficult to give the 100 percent protection that society and parents look for in protecting their children from pornography. The United States has found it extremely difficult to find a law to battle online pornography in particular and that battle has not been easy. The only thing one could really say is that it is about the way children are brought up. We know that it will be very difficult for police telecommunications the chat rooms and messaging that children can have access to and cellphones that can send images. The police in their submission identified those things as major challenges. 
If we look at the term “objectionable” what is objectionable to me may well be different from what is objectionable to my neighbour so it is very very difficult to define. I may be quite happy sitting at home watching a video that has scenes that possibly my neighbours might object to but in my own home they may be facets that I believe are important to me. I want the freedom to be able to associate with to view and to hear whatever messages are being portrayed at that time. 
But one of the real concerns especially with young people now that they have cellphones and digital cameras is whether they are offenders or victims. That question has not been talked about this evening. When they are trading those images between their friends are they offending or are they victims? Some would argue that they have an addiction. A lot of people would argue that it is not an addiction at all it is a behavioural pattern and that is a view I share. Some people would say that they have a sickness or an addiction. It is certainly not easy to quantify but at the end of the day these are behavioural matters because it is about choice. 
So as we draw this debate to a close I believe that the major features of the bill are moving in the right direction. It is about the protection of society and the protection of children. I said in the second reading that the bill probably does not go as far as many would like—it will be a matter of interpretation—but the bill does extend the scope of the trade in commercial offences in the Act to include non-commercial distribution. It further extends the trade in commercial offences in the Act to include importing and exporting objectionable material for the purposes of supply or distribution and aligns the relevant provisions of the Customs and Excise Act 1996. 
The bill increases the maximum penalties for making trading in and distributing objectionable material including child pornography to 10 years’ imprisonment. It creates a new offence punishable by up to 5 years’ imprisonment—and this was in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 326—relating to the possession by a person of an objectionable publication knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that it is objectionable. The bill requires the court when sentencing for an offence involving an objectionable publication to take into account as an aggravating factor the extent to which the publication is objectionable because it contains child pornography. It gives a District Court judge the power to issue search warrants in connection with the suspected commission of a new “possession with knowledge” offence. It removes any doubt that nude or partially nude images of children that can be reasonably considered sexual in nature are publications that deal with “a matter such as sex”. The bill specifies that a publication that would otherwise be classified as “unrestricted” may be given an age restriction if the publication contains offensive language exposure to which would be harmful to persons under that age. 
Those are the main points of this amendment bill that we are debating tonight and they have been supported by National through the Committee stage. We will continue to support the bill when we move to the third reading.