Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. Just in speaking to this bill I'd just like to acknowledge the significant role that both Clare Curran and Louisa Wall have had in bringing this to the House. I think like all of us in this job we rely on the media to keep us up to date. In most situations it's quite clear where the sources of their information are coming from. So just thinking through the COVID-19 update at 1 p.m. in our local newspaper the public views on certain things like a bridge that's starting to fail or even a debate about where the sewage pond should go it's usually quite clear who's saying what and how. You've got videos you've often got press releases you've got photos and you've often got attributed quotes.And so for most of the sort of things that we deal with day to day it's quite clear what's happening. But there's another range of stories where it's actually a bit more sensitive I think for stories like where potentially someone's investigating potentially a corrupt official or those other kind of stories where basically journalists often what they're doing is they're putting together pieces of information from a variety of different sources and they're trying to corroborate that. And often people will only step forward and disclose information with a clear understanding that they're going to be able to do so anonymously because often there's a power imbalance and there's a real fear of repercussions. I think many countries including New Zealand actually acknowledge and recognise this and they do afford journalists some particular protections. And I think that's because there's the understanding that many things are in the public interest but they wouldn't be coming forward and being brought forward to the media unless those protections were available.And I look at New Zealand and its own Evidence Act and I think it's quite clear just reading out some of the legislation there. It says If a journalist has promised an informant not to disclose the informant's identity neither the journalist nor [the] employer is compellable in a civil or criminal proceeding to answer any question or produce any document that would disclose the identity of the informant or enable that identity to be discovered." I think that's a really important protection that protects the freedom of the press to be able to report and investigate sensitive issues but it also goes on and says it's not without limit. It basically says that a judge of the High Court may order that this subsection does not apply and then it goes on to talk about weighing up some factors in that respect. But pretty much by and large that protection is conferred.And I think when we look at the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 it does recognise journalistic privilege and it does reference the Evidence Act in that but the problem we've got is it actually doesn't spell it out in terms of how that might be implemented in the context of police searches. I think as has already been discussed in the House tonight of the situation around the police searches in 2014 of the journalist Nicky Hager and basically some of the limitations that were identified in that respect. And so a lot of the issues that are being addressed in this bill actually try and fill in some more clarity and some more detail in that practical application.I think firstly what this bill does is that it actually basically expands the definition of a journalist to include investigative journalist just reflecting the importance of investigative journalists in terms of that ability to be able to disclose information that's in the public interest. And it basically goes on to clarify that investigative journalists include people who only publish books because I think that's just reflecting the whole ability to sit down and weigh up the evidence multiple sources doing that in a very in-depth and thorough way and the importance of that.But a few of the other areas that I think were felt to be needing clarification were around making sure that the judge is clear on those situations where there's a production order that's being applied for that a journalist may be involved. And so what basically this bill does is it puts in place a requirement that if somebody's coming to apply for a production order then they must clearly identify to the judge if they have reasonable grounds to believe that that person is a journalist. I think then that's really important that the judge can weigh that up in that context. And also if police are there with a production order they need to make sure that the journalist basically is aware of their rights and has time to consider that. So this is a really important bill that fills in some of that finer detail and will go further in terms of protecting the freedom of the press and I'm very happy to commend this bill to the House."