Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (remote): I first became interested in this law when I caught a news headline and it said a man who uploaded a Snapchat screenshot of a woman—so basically it was a modern digital version of a sex tape—uploaded it to multiple sex sites without her consent and he wasn't going to be charged for a crime. I thought How could that be?" and then I saw a TV interview with the victim or should I say survivor. Her name's Tarryn Flintoft and it was about her case which to my mind epitomises the mischief caught by this bill and gosh what a horror story it was.Tarryn spoke really bravely and quite compassionately I thought about what had happened to her. She said a man her former partner had pretended to be her and used the uploaded visual recording to engage in online sex with other men. So now there were two sets of victims: there was the woman in the recording and the men who'd been duped into having online sex with a predator man. Surely having an intimate photo or recording uploaded online for all the world to see must be one of the most humiliating and harmful experiences. It is a grave violation and surely therefore subject to the full weight of the criminal law. Well apparently not. Now the man turned out to be National Party candidate for Upper Harbour Jake Bezzant and he wasn't going to be charged because police couldn't prove that he intended to do the woman harm. In fact as she said in her TV interview harming her probably wasn't his primary intention but harm her he did. After a nine-month break from posting the recordings while Tarryn thought her nightmare was over and she was trying to get her life together the predator once again reposted the screenshots and the woman was victimised again. She was re-traumatised she was harmed all over again and yet the police could do nothing because under the current law—as we've heard today—if harm or intention to harm are not proven then the police don't have the grounds to prosecute. This misuse of intimate visuals can be done as we've heard to make money. It can be done as some kind of a sick joke. It's often part of relationships which break up. In each case whatever the reason the posting of these images is just plain wrong and thankfully that has been recognised across this House. So there is no public interest defence there's no threats to freedom of speech. As a former journalist it's really interesting to me to see how my views on media freedom have shifted over the years. That shift parallels the shifts in the social media landscape and my experience seeing the real harm that can be done by unfettered media posting and I'm thinking here of other digital media harms that have occurred: the harassment of TV personality Charlotte Dawson or the intentionally harmful behaviour of bloggers such as Whale Oil. Actually these examples were mentioned in this House by my predecessor in Dunedin South the Hon Clare Curran who did a lot of really excellent work in the digital space when the primary legislation was introduced into the House in 2015.The posting of intimate visual recordings is at the hard end of harm and research shows that the impact of image-based sexual abuse on mental health is similar to that of sexual assault as we've heard this afternoon. Netsafe has been saying this since January 2019—including at the Justice Committee hearing on this bill—urging people to become aware of the dangers that this activity poses and urging us as lawmakers actually to do something about it. As we've heard today the intimate images often go viral—I think I heard one of the speakers mention something like 35000 views for one of them—as does the naming and shaming of victims as do their contact details and the public sharing of contact details puts victims at even greater risk of bullying of harassment and of physical assault. The harm of posting non-consented digital images causes harm to dignity to privacy to sexual autonomy and in law these are collectively known as cultural harms. As Rural Women New Zealand told the select committee the non-consented posting of intimate images is a form of control—a form of coercion—and often people feel so humiliated as a result that they can't leave home. So they become prisoners to shame and humiliation through no fault of their own.Now we've heard these numbers a couple of times this afternoon and they're worth repeating. The Netsafe survey in 2019 found that 5 percent of New Zealand adults or 170000 people had been the victim of online image-based sexual abuse and 40 percent of the time that had occurred through perpetrators who were ex-partners. Now the rainbow community is particularly at risk according to the advocacy group InsideOUT in its submission to the select committee and women are also particularly at risk and the ages of victims are getting younger. I thought 15 years old was pretty devastating and now the Justice Committee has been told by support agencies that kids as young as 12 are experiencing this extreme form of bullying. Overseas research has found that 51 percent of victims of image-based sexual abuse have contemplated suicide. Now we don't have that research in New Zealand but we do have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD. We all know that one of the main causes of that is bullying and that's according to the Mental Health Foundation. We need to change that and we are changing that with this law. As Netsafe says the law needs to keep abreast of technology. So the effect of Louisa Wall's member's bill is to provide a legal restriction on posting intimate images without consent that does not need to prove an intent to cause harm and in doing so the bill recognises that the non-consensual publication of an intimate visual image is harmful in and of itself. So harm is implicit in the action or the actus reus as Ginny Andersen has referred to.It makes it very clear that the posting of intimate visual recordings of another person requires voluntary and informed consent and full knowledge of how the recording will be used and it removes the requirement to prove that the posting has caused serious emotional distress. So this bill will help protect victims of image-based sexual abuse and enable perpetrators to be held to account. The maximum penalty for offenders has been increased from two to three years in prison or a $50000 fine which it's hoped will make people think twice before they actually post.It's been referred to and I'll turn briefly now again to Supplementary Order Paper 82 in the name of Louisa Wall which amends the bill's definition of victim. It ensures the law catches the situation where an intimate visual recording of one person is sent by that person to another person with the intent to cause harm so that captures a situation where someone sends an unsolicited nude picture or picture of their genitalia to another person. There is a name for it that I won't mention—thank you; everyone will get my point. I want to thank my colleague Louisa Wall for shepherding this bill through the House from whoa to go. Like others I want to thank the submitters especially the individual people who shared really tragic personal stories to the committee. I read some of them—thank you for your generosity in helping us as legislators to get this bill right.Back to Tarryn Flintoft. I wanted to thank her for her bravery for sharing her story. It turned out that there were multiple other women who'd been harmed by Jake Bezzant in very similar ways so her story flushed out theirs. Tarryn and the other women may not have justice but they can take heart in knowing that they've contributed enormously to ensuring others won't go through what they went through; or if they do that their tormentors will face the full force of the law. So I commend this bill to the House."