Martin Tracey: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Harmful Digital Communications Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4651. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):Kia ora Mr Chair. Can I thank the Minister for the call. Can I also acknowledge that New Zealand First not only opposed the bill at its second reading but made an attempt to have the bill sent back to the Justice and Electoral Committee because we had such serious concerns around the criminality aspect of this bill. Can I make a statement now: New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through this Committee stage. We will be supporting the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 91. We believe the Minister has been constructive. She has addressed our concerns and we believe that the bill now does what its purpose was as is set out in it.We will not be supporting the amendment by Clare Curran nor will we be supporting Supplementary Order Paper No 93 by Mr Seymour. Part of the reason for New Zealand First taking the unusual step of attempting to have the bill sent back to the select committee was to discuss the very point that Mr Seymour has in his Supplementary Order Paper. So that we would suggest was his moment to support it and since then a constructive relationship has been created between the Minister and me and that issue has now been addressed so we are now comfortable.The purpose in Part 1 which speaks to the purpose—let us just go through it. It seeks to “mitigate harm caused to individuals by digital communications” and to provide victims of harmful digital communication with a quick and effective means of redress. It is about being quick and effective.A bullying report has just come out. With regard to cyber-bullying over 31 percent of school students who took part in this survey agreed that cyber-bullying was a problem at their school. Girls were more likely to say that cyber-bullying was a problem—34 percent of all girls who answered said so and 26 percent of boys. Cyber-bullying particularly is not just for our younger people but it is an area that all those of us who are parents hold a particular concern about. It is an invisible threat. It is very difficult for an individual on their own particularly a young person to find and deal with the invisible person attacking them. Therefore this House must create a system they can be confident they can go to in order to seek assistance to stop this attack. I believe and New Zealand First believes that the approved agency is an enlightened approach providing a trusted organisation—and the word “trust” is going to have to be earned but we have to start somewhere.The approved agency should provide that trusted organisation that a young person their family and their school can ring up instantly and say: “This has happened. How can we deal with it?”. The approved agency—and I went through this again since the second reading; I’ve sought more information from NetSafe and other organisations about how the approved agency would work and now feel very comfortable that the first port of call would be for the individual schools or families to contact the approved agency—will assess the threat to the individual. Every person who will ring it we must assume will ring because they believe that they are being threatened. We cannot start from an assumption that they are just malicious or vexatious. We must start from an assumption that they are actually truly seeking help because they need some.When we start from that point then they go to the approved agency. The approved agency will have a look at it. If necessary the approved agency can talk to the school the victim or the family and say: “Really? Have a look at this. Perhaps there are some things you could do.” Or it could then go through the mechanisms in the bill to the poster—I am not going to call them the perpetrator at the lowest level that we are talking about—and say: “Hey somebody’s actually got upset about this. You may or may not think it is upsetting to you but what are the chances of your taking it down?”. That is the absolutely lowest level that we are talking about. The majority of people whom we are talking about here will take it down because their intention was not to harm anybody. Probably 90 percent of what goes up there that hurts somebody—a young person particularly—is not meant to do that.Now we need to talk about the other people such as the older adult and the young schoolgirl here in New Zealand who had created a relationship through an online gaming situation. He had gained intimate photos of that young person and this older male then began to blackmail this young woman asking for more intimate information from her. He threatened her family; he threatened her school. He went in and hacked into her school and brought down her school site.Right now and with all due respect—I give absolute respect and I believe everybody in this Committee wants to deal with this issue—with regard to starting with education and waiting schools have been educating. We constantly educate around bullying and around how you should treat other people. The reality is that we have a bit of an epidemic in our school system at the moment with at least one-third of our students answering that they are being affected by cyber-bullying. How can we say that this is wrong and that people should not be doing it if there are no consequences when they do it? That is the purpose of the consequence.Certainly I was unhappy and uncomfortable with the concept of criminality for our young people. Quite clearly now as the Minister has said we have outlined a process by which there can be fines applied at the extreme end of this process and after the agency can do no more—after the individual has sought assistance and has not got the outcome they wanted. That stick is required. With every carrot there must be a stick. There must be a consequence for deliberately going out of one’s way to harm another person. There must be otherwise everything else is a farce.So we hope that this is the answer for our families. We hope that this is the answer for our students. It is new. We are going to have to watch it. The Minister is certainly going to have to make sure that the approved agency is appropriately resourced and has all the materials and the expert knowledge that it needs to be truly truly effective. But we have to do something. I take on board that this may have possibly gone through the select committee faster than some may have liked. I also take on board and mentioned previously that due to Roast Busters there was some emotive language and that there was certainly an emotive environment around this.We have seen some disgusting displays of behaviour using the invisibility of the internet. I also acknowledge that when I was at NetSafe some people had an opinion that we should let the internet have at it that the politicians should stand out of the way and that we should come and pick up the pieces afterwards. We would argue that we already have pieces. We already have a large group of young women against whom supposedly a crime has not been committed and who therefore cannot access any support services other than through special provision by the police because there was no legislation that covered them. We must pass legislation that those young women could have at least have gone to very quickly—instantly—and hopefully had something done about their situation in the first instance. But when we have the arrogance of some of the people committing these crimes against other citizens we must have some way that they will be punished. There is no alternative. Kia ora.