O'Connor Greg; Dean JacquiGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I think it was Julius Caesar who said I love treason but despise a traitor." And while it may not be directly related to journalism I think the basis of this discussion—the basis of this case—is often about how people regard the information for which the issue is being discussed. I look at some of the most recent cases: the Pandora Papers the Panama Papers; some of the more recent whistle-blowers: Edward Snowden Julian Assange Chelsea Manning—even going back as far as Watergate which someone had alluded to before. And in each of these cases your views on the information obtained by the particular person will often be coloured by your views on what the effect is of the information that's obtained. And so we go back to the genesis of this bill.The genesis of this bill of course as mentioned by the previous speaker Teanau Tuiono was a raid—a search warrant in fact—executed on Nicky Hager in order to obtain information about the theft of emails. And that was essentially what was being investigated. What police were looking for was evidence of an offence of theft—somewhat clumsily as it turns out if you look at the High Court judgment—and to be fair to them operating in an area which lacked clarity both in police operations and in the law. Ironically if you do look at the judgment or look at the articles afterwards what the police did miss when they were actually searching that premises was actually evidence of Edward Snowden's papers which were evidently at the address at the time. But of course that wasn't what the Police were there for; they were looking for evidence of stolen emails.So it goes back to your views on these matters will often be coloured by your views on the outcome. And so that's why this bill is important. Even if you go looking for a definition of "journalist" if you go to the Cambridge dictionary they'll say "A person who writes news stories or articles or broadcasts them on radio and television." And that's a relatively contemporary definition. It doesn't mention anything about social media. It doesn't mention anything about electronic media which of course most of the information which is going to be disclosed available is now in an electronic form. Even the Webster dictionary defines it a person engaged in journalism as a writer who aims at a mass audience. Perhaps that's just a little more accurate today but again just looking for a definition of who is a journalist which is again at the genesis of this bill.So what this bill of course does is it ensures that when police or any other authorities are looking for a search warrant that they're going to be conducting the search warrant they must indicate that the subject of the search warrant or the person whose address—or probably more likely their electronic devices are going to be searched—is actually a journalist and the investigation is a part of that journalist's or part of that profession. And it certainly at the same time does expand just what a journalist is beyond those definitions which I gave. And that is important because I go back to those various individuals I mentioned the writer of the Dirty Politics book. These were certainly not written by people who were acting as journalists necessarily at the time. So what this bill will do is extend the protections available to those people—extend the protections available—and more importantly will give those conducting the investigation much better clarity about when they are on safe legal ground and when they're not. And that alone should ensure and I hope it will ensure that in future information which does end up in the public will do so under much better guidelines. So I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired."