Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Communications) : I move, That the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill be now read a third time. This bill is an important part of the Government’s Digital Strategy. The aim of the Digital Strategy is to ensure that New Zealand is a world leader in using information and technology to realise our economic, environmental, social, and cultural goals. Ensuring that users have trust and confidence in the use of these technologies is central to achieving this goal. Unsolicited electronic messages, more commonly known as spam, now comprise about 80 percent of all email traffic worldwide. Spam clogs up networks, reduces productivity, and is often used for scams and malicious cyber-attacks. Always, spam is a nuisance. Sometimes it can be critical both for systems and personal security.

Spam continues to grow in volume worldwide and is often a channel for viruses, scams, and attacks on computer networks and systems. It has been estimated to reduce the productivity of office employees by several percent and to provide a drain on productivity that this country can ill afford. It runs the risk, further, if unchecked in New Zealand, of giving us the reputation of being soft on cyber-crime—a reputation we would wish to avoid.

Accordingly, this bill aims to prevent New Zealand becoming a haven for spammers, to promote good e-marketing practice, and to provide a basis for further international cooperation on combating spam. With this legislation, New Zealand now joins many other countries that have also enacted anti-spam legislation. The legislation enables us to join the global fight against spam. International cooperation to identify, shut down, or block the sources of spam is an important part of New Zealand’s anti-spam strategy. It also complements a number of other initiatives being undertaken by other agencies to improve Internet security and safety, working in partnership with the community sector. Here, in particular, I recognise the work of the Internet Safety Group.

The key requirements of the bill are that persons must not send unsolicited commercial electronic messages that have a New Zealand link, and that commercial electronic messages must have accurate sender information and contain a functional unsubscribe facility. Persons must not use address-harvesting software or a harvested address list in connection with the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages. The legislation applies to all emails, text, and instant messages that market or promote goods, services, or schemes of a commercial nature. A sender must have the prior consent of the recipient. This consent can be expressed, inferred, or deemed, but this is clearly an opt-in approach, consistent with good e-marketing practice as recommended by the New Zealand Marketing Association, and an opt-in scheme, as adopted by many partner Governments, including the European Union Governments and the Government of Australia.

Electronic communication offers many benefits and the bill seeks to support its use for legitimate marketing purposes where the interests of the recipient are duly respected. There is a 6-month transition period before the bill comes into effect. This gives organisations a reasonable period of time within which to ensure that their e-mail practices and databases are in compliance with the Act. It is important to underscore that this bill alone will not solve New Zealand’s spam problem, which is growing rapidly. Rather, it sits with improved technical interdiction measures, the primary locus of which will continue to be within Internet service providers themselves and major commercial networks, and with enhanced user education, so that all New Zealanders understand how to protect themselves from cyber-attack and the nuisance of spam. This bill will play an important part in providing that third leg of the Internet security treble—a sufficient and appropriate legal sanction against spammers with a New Zealand link. The New Zealand link, modelled on the Australian legislation, includes not only people within our territorial boundaries but people who attack New Zealanders and who are from countries whose Governments we are able to negotiate enforcement agreements with. The ability for us to negotiate such agreements will be an important part of implementing this agreement on a bilateral and, I hope also, multilateral basis in years to come.

In conclusion, the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill is important legislation that reflects the significant role that information and communications technologies play in our lives now and will play in the future. The bill has received widespread support within the House, the business and information and communications technology sectors, and the general community. Every person who uses a computer connected to the Internet can relate to the nuisance of receiving spam. The bill promotes good e-marketing practice and provides a basis for international cooperation to combat spam. We know that it will not in and of itself stop spam. However, it will send a clear message to would-be spammers that New Zealand is no longer a haven for spamming and it will be an important building block in the broader effort to combat this phenomenon. As such, I commend the bill to the House.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) : An aspirational bill is how I would describe the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill—it is an aspirational bill. This is very much in keeping with the present Government’s approach towards all legislation at the moment; it is aspirational. What, one wonders, is the effect of an aspirational bill? Well, it works something like this. There are three main points. There is public concern over an issue and a mounting public demand for action on the part of the Government. Legislation is introduced that has appropriate titles and ambitious objectives, and that is presented in a way that will give the impression of having a serious intention to deal with the issue, placate the public clamour for action, and even enthuse people towards participating in it. The third step is when the policy, or the bill, is carefully examined and it is found it will not actually work in the way the public thought it would. Then it is termed “aspirational”.

We have endured an amount of things being classed as aspirational in recent months. From memory, we had aspirational ideas over the waterfront and other stadia. We have aspirational policies for climate change, and so it goes on. I guess the recent proposal to alter probation controls will be termed aspirational when they do not come into fruition. The access to farms policy will now be aspirational, given that it has changed completely from what was promised initially.

In this Government bill, which was subtitled the “anti-spam legislation”, the clear thrust was to reduce the amount of spam received—at least, that was the perception amongst many of the people who are aware of the legislation.. But, no, it actually cannot do that. The reason is that most, if not all, of the spam received in New Zealand is generated overseas, and, in spite of the current discussion over how we conduct foreign affairs, be it through government or personal opinion, our legislation is unlikely to affect spam producers in Eastern Europe. So the legislation will not stop spam from coming into New Zealand from overseas. Will it prevent people from sending it within New Zealand? It will certainly apply penalties for doing so, but at present that is not happening to any extent. And so, again, we are at the aspirational stage—if anybody were to send or transmit spam within New Zealand, we would get them.

This therefore is not just an aspirational bill; it is a virtual bill. It is more virtual than real. In reality it does virtually nothing, as the Minister knows. It is legislation imported from the USA via Australia, and it has been reasonably shaped in the Commerce Committee to suit New Zealand commercial circumstances. As part of an international system of safeguards, National is prepared to support the bill as an integral part of an international strategy to reduce geographic locations that spammers might operate from, but National will not pretend that it will reduce the amount of spam received in the short, medium, or even long term on computer screens in New Zealand.

The bill, though, did raise some interesting debate. It was a good debate to have in the select committee, and I trust, Mr Assistant Speaker, you will permit me to provide a few illustrations that emerged in terms of defining and describing unsolicited information. First of all, is it unsolicited or simply unwanted? That was quite a good question to discuss. I am put in mind of question time, during which the Minister who has just spoken seems to view any questions about the matter of Taito Phillip Field as unsolicited, unwarranted, and unwanted.

In the second reading of this bill, I remember the Hon Paul Swain speaking at length about electronic mail and the subsequent release of information that was otherwise regarded as private. From my memory of that, Mr Swain seemed to support the release of private information. If only Mr Swain would be forthcoming over his activities in Samoa when he was over there enjoying the considerable and extensive hospitality provided for him and the honourable Mr Goff! Having visited Samoa frequently over a period of a decade, I can vouch for the quality of that hospitality. Previously—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. However, I come back to unsolicited information. My conclusion is that this is a virtual bill from a Government increasingly perceived as being a virtual Government. The New Zealand electorate requires more reality in its legislation.

MARYAN STREET (Labour) : It is my pleasure to rise and speak to the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill. The member who has just resumed his seat used the word “aspirational” and seemed to imply, by the way he used it, that there was something somehow wrong with that. One could wish for a little more aspiration to be evident in the policies, speeches, and contributions to this House from the Opposition, but we will have to continue to wait for something of that order.

This bill is an important start. As the Minister the Hon David Cunliffe said in his speech introducing the third reading, it is not the last word on getting rid of spam entirely, but it is a start. I make reference in particular to his comment about looking to enhance, or provoke, or produce international agreements. In the event that we cannot legislate outside of our own jurisdiction, we can at the very least make sure that New Zealand is not a spam haven.

I enjoyed working on this bill in the Commerce Committee, and I thought that the member who resumed his seat quite enjoyed working on it as well, although the support evident in the select committee was not evident in his speech just now. However, I will proceed.

There are a couple of points I would like to make about this bill. One of the things that struck me as most interesting when this bill was before the select committee was a submission we received from the Direct Marketing Association—that is, the representative group of commercial retail outlets that direct-market to people in their homes. One could characterise the people in this association as being the producers of the junk mail that comes through our letterboxes. The association did a survey of its own. My entire expectation when I went to read its submission was that it would oppose the bill and that, of course, direct-marketing through personal computers into people’s homes had to be an even more efficient way of marketing than junk mail in letterboxes.

So I expected the association to be vociferous in its opposition to this bill, but, in fact, the opposite was true. Even those that, by any normal expectation, one would imagine opposing this bill were very much in favour of it. It was because the association had done its own research. Much as people hate getting junk mail in their letterboxes, they hate getting commercial spam even more. So the association, from its own research, determined that it was completely counter-productive on its part to insist that commercial spam be regulated on an opt-out rather than an opt-in basis. I was most interested in the fact that that association thought it would be completely self-defeating and counter-productive to allow retailers to send commercial spam out across the countryside on the basis of any list they were able to harvest from anywhere.

This bill does exactly what most people want, which is to put in place an opt-in regime, not an opt-out regime. In other words, under this law people cannot receive even one commercial email seeking their custom. They cannot receive even one. If people want to receive commercial-marketing emails on their personal computers, they have to tell retailers that they wish to be on their emailing list. So people cannot get one and then unsubscribe; they have to actively opt-in to receive those emails. That was an excellent protection and gets rid of a lot of the unsolicited electronic messages that have been besieging people’s PCs up and down the country.

So having dealt with the commercial aspects of unsolicited electronic messages, the committee then went on to consider further how this regime would be policed and enforced. Members will see there is a provision in the legislation for an enforcement department to be set up within the Ministry of Economic Development that would keep an eye on this. It will be a place that is not a complaints desk. It will not be a fix-it agency, but it will be a monitoring agency that will allow, through its monitoring, this legislation to be enforced.

There are a number of constructive and creative aspects to the bill. There are also some slight amendments to it that the select committee chose to make and that, from my recollection, were agreed to by the select committee unanimously, contrary to what might have been inferred from the previous speaker’s contribution to the debate.

The other thing the select committee went on to do was to look at messages that could be considered offensive. They were not commercial in nature, but could be used for sexual exploitation purposes and for what is commonly called grooming purposes. Grooming is to be particularly noted as a practice that is used to inveigle young people into Internet and email conversations that are undesirable and that, if the young people understood their full import, would certainly be unsolicited. So it has begun to move down that path as well, in order to regulate this whole electronic environment.

Of course, it is notoriously difficult environment to regulate, but this bill is a very practical and good way of doing it. It has the support of Internet providers up and down the country. They themselves are not responsible for the things their clients do, although they do extract required behaviours in return for providing Internet services to customers. They can enforce those contracts and withdraw their services. The bill does regulate the provision and circulation, in the first instance, of commercial spam. But it goes beyond that as well. It is constructive, excellent legislation that will help the efficiency of our economy and will aid in the protection of people from unsolicited electronic messages. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) : On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the third reading of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill. We do support this bill. We believe we need to see some action on spam, as it is an increasing problem on our computers. [Interruption] I think everybody in this House—even Sandra Goudie—would agree here. The spammers need to be stopped. Even here in Parliament it is a huge problem, and I would have thought that if these messages could have been stopped, the parliamentary information technology team would have stopped them. However, the spammers can now bypass any filter and the junk emails block up our whole email system.

This bill takes an opt-in approach, which I hope the Internet service providers can use when they take some action. When I looked at the most recent figures I saw that in June 2006, worldwide, 55 billion spam emails were generated on a daily basis, which is a huge amount. Of course, 80 to 90 percent of the email traffic is spam. The bottom line is we are very tired of all the articles and deals for products we read about on our emails. Very few people would even bother to buy them off the Net. The same messages seem to come from heaps of different sources. They are totally unsolicited and unwanted and they block up all the genuine mail that is sent to everybody. They are totally impossible to block from our computers. Even if one uses the unsubscribe option it does not seem to even vaguely work, which is a real problem.

We believe that here in New Zealand we are absolutely drowning in spam and that it is becoming a totally impossible thing to try to manage. The problem does need a worldwide strategy and worldwide action because it is a challenge right throughout the world. By itself, New Zealand can do absolutely nothing. It is very unfortunate that this legislation can apply only to messages generated within New Zealand. We know it cannot apply to all emails sent to a New Zealand email address from an overseas location, which obviously we cannot control.

Sandra Goudie: Invest in Nigeria.

BARBARA STEWART: As it stands, smart operators can easily migrate to Nigeria, as the member said, to arrange for their messages to be sent from an overseas address and be totally above this law we are passing here today. However, the legislation does make it very plain that New Zealand is not a safe haven for spammers, while at the same time it also provides a basis for international cooperation on combating spam. We need to do that. This is an important bill and one that New Zealand First wants to see have its provisions implemented as far as it is possible to do so. We definitely support this bill.

Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) : Last Thursday the House witnessed a most unprecedented event. Two bills were each rushed through a stage in unseemly haste, with absolutely no debate whatsoever on their contents. The first was the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill; the other was the second reading on the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. Neither of those bills is what one would call straightforward, yet the speed at which the business of the House was conducted saw the House rising at 5.02 p.m.

In reviewing the Hansard we see that apart from the Minister of Customs speaking to her bill, and a mere four sentences from the Minister for Courts about the Judicial Retirement Age Bill, the Government was curiously silent about the matters of State before the House. One has to wonder what the state of affairs is if in only the second week of business for this parliamentary sitting programme the Government is unable to speak to the policy programme it is promoting.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member needs to address the bill.

Dr PITA SHARPLES: When we look at the Hansard record of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill we see that the Committee-stage proceedings record only that Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 were agreed to, the schedule was agreed to, clauses 1 and 2 were agreed to, and the bill was reported without amendment.

I am not someone who knows a lot about distribution lists or a great deal about the workings of Internet service providers. In that light, and with the recommendations from the Commerce Committee, I am relieved to support measures to do away with the dual regime distinguishing between promotional and commercial messages, and to instead refer to electronic messages per se. Anything that can reduce confusion and avoid uncertainty has to be good.

But even a novice like me in the use of information and communications technology cannot help but notice the unwanted invasion of junk mail offering stock-price tips, cheap loans, healthcare, miracle diets, hair restorers etc. According to a BBC report, spam now accounts for almost 70 percent of emails worldwide. That figure is expected to reach 80 percent by the middle of the year.

The Māori Party is therefore happy to support a bill that takes as its primary purpose the intention to protect New Zealanders who are accessing the Internet from any untrustworthy and unsolicited messages. We support the intention of the bill to require all commercial and promotional spam to include accurate identification and contact details of the sender; to include a functional unsubscribe facility; and to ensure that the prior consent and proof of identification are taken into account in preventing vexatious messages being sent and clogging up the system.

However, although there is no doubt we urgently need anti-spam legislation, the downside for smaller businesses may be uncertainty and higher marketing costs. In thinking about this issue, we inevitably think about the 8,397 people of Māori descent who described themselves in the 2001 census as “employers”, and the 15,975 people of Māori descent who are “self-employed, with or without employees”. We think also about the employment-related compliance costs, the Occupational Safety and Health Service paperwork, and the inordinate amount of administration that business is already taxed with. We wonder what sort of impact the recommendations of the Commerce Committee will have in the context of compliance-cost priorities particularly for small business activity.

The latest annual survey of business compliance costs conducted in 2006 by Business New Zealand—KPMG surveyed some 1,400 businesses and concluded that compliance problems and costs were still disproportionately high. The survey confirmed the trend of the last three surveys—that compliance costs fall more heavily on small businesses than on large businesses. It was reported that small businesses with fewer than 10 employees face compliance costs averaging around $3,000 per employee, whereas larger companies with over 50 employees have compliance costs of less than $1,000 per employee.

The Government has acknowledged that businesses most likely to be caught by this legislation before the House today are small and medium enterprises. Larger businesses tend to follow e-marketing best practice and as such it is likely they will suffer little impact to their regulatory routine. But for small businesses—which, after all, constitute the vast majority of New Zealand businesses—the regulatory impact will be far more severe. The Government estimates the cost of compliance for small and medium enterprises could constitute at least an extra $1,000 to $2,000, including changing address lists to develop an opt-in system, ensuring all marketing and promotional messages contain correct sender information and how to unsubscribe, setting up systems to update electronic addresses held for marketing purposes, and separating commercial and promotional materials.

The Māori Party recognises the enormous impact that such changes can have on business productivity, and acknowledges also that many businesses may not have sufficient lead time to comply. We also acknowledge that the bill will place unfair costs on Internet service providers, because even though they usually cannot do anything specific about spam, they will still have to pay for the complaints process.

I have some knowledge of the commitment and effort put forward by the Māori Internet Society, Te WhānauIpurangi, which promotes a strong Māori presence on the Internet and registers domain names such as “maori.nz”. I acknowledge for the record the initiative of Ross Himona and KameraRaharaha who have led the way in establishing an authentic Māori presence on the Internet since 1997.

But in a frantic cyber-world the hassle involved in constructing a process to deal with complaints about spam is simply not feasible. As a result, the recommendation from the Commerce Committee that further work be undertaken by the industry to combat spam as part of a multi-pronged approach is to be endorsed. Based on current estimates, if users are being confronted by some 350 million messages per month, then solutions must be considered on many different levels. The report of the committee referred to the current work being undertaken on developing an anti-spam code of practice for email services. The Māori Party supports such an approach, as well as the associated procedures for dealing with complaints and constructing appropriate software programmes and technical remedies to filter spam.

Finally, I refer to the advice of the NgātiPorou and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki writer Sally Pewhairangi in her work Internet Safety and Maori, in which she said: “The internet has a lot to offer Maori, but there are concerns of intellectual and cultural property rights, control, language, accuracy and authority, and access.” We must now add to that list, the need to abide by compliance requirements to prevent the use of unsolicited electronic messages.

The Māori Party supports the moves to create a safe and secure information highway within Aotearoa, and we will vote accordingly. But we simply remind the House again that yet another compliance cost is being placed on New Zealanders, that an administrative burden is being sanctioned by this legislation, and, as such, we have a concern that the financial burden, in our view, will fall heavily on those least able to afford it—the little people, the small-business enterprises.

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) : One really has to wonder why spammers do it and what they are up to. I look at the stuff coming through my desktop computer and I have to ask myself whether these people really think that I am going to see a title with an inflated promise and actually open that and buy something. It is highly unlikely. Of course, we now have spam filters, so every day I have to go through this big pile of things that have been filtered out by my spam filter to make sure that something I really need has not been filtered out. Now spammers have invented ways of circumventing spam filters by giving spam new subject names, like “Within my wrath of thee” or “Mark 27/2 Bryan Adams”—that is a really enticing title! That is going to get me interested. There is stuff in Cyrillic lettering. Do spammers really think that people will respond to this stuff? Clearly, they do. We need legislation like this because people do respond. People actually open this stuff and buy items or send money.

If we think of the Nigerian scams, we wonder who on earth would believe an email from someone in Nigeria claiming to be the great-nephew of some hideous tyrant who looted his or her country of $30 billion worth of emeralds, and who has just selected the recipient at random and wants to put $10 million in the recipient’s bank account to help launder it. Well, I would not! It seems extraordinary that anyone falls for that stuff, but people do. We read in the newspapers that apparently intelligent people think they are going to make money by giving their bank account details to some strangers in Africa who claim to have looted their country. People do that stuff, and it means that this House cannot legislate to stop stupidity. We have spam because the economics of it is that only one pick-up in, say, 100,000 is needed for it to be worth carrying on. It just annoys the hell out of the rest of us, decreases productivity, and uses up huge amounts of resources. I think the Minister said that 80 percent of Internet traffic is spam. That is the economics of the situation, I guess.

So we come to this bill, which certainly will not solve the problem on its own. Our ability to solve the spam problem in this Chamber is pretty limited. Nevertheless, it is important that we pass this legislation. Three things about it make it worthwhile. The first is simply a point of principle: international solidarity. In order to address spam, given the international nature of Internet traffic, an international regime that all countries will stand with has to be developed. This bill is our attempt to be part of that. That is important, because it is difficult for us to put pressure on other countries to clamp down on that kind of traffic if we are not doing something at home. The other side of that, of course, is that the bill pre-empts a move by spammers to relocate to this country as other nations start to tidy up, if such a thing should ever happen. So the bill is important in that international dimension.

Secondly, there is a small amount of New Zealand - derived spam. The fact that transitional provisions are in the bill indicates that that must be the case, so the bill is useful in that regard.

The third thing that is useful is some of the stuff in clause 25, where there is some useful monitoring and information-gathering functions so that we can start to understand better what is going on. If we are going to come up with the kinds of technical solutions that Mr Sharples and the Minister have endorsed, then we have to understand better what is coming through.

I am not sure that I agree with Dr Sharples’ comments about compliance costs in relation to Internet service providers. Internet service providers will acquire those costs in any case because it just has to be part of their business practice to deal with spam and complaints about spam. I am not sure that the bill will inflate those costs. The other side of that is the cost to us all that comes from non-compliance. So I am not sure about how strong those arguments are.

The other thing I make reference to is Barbara Stewart’s points about the unsubscribe functions in the bill. One of the difficulties with spam is that we are always told not to hit the “unsubscribe” button because we just encourage spammers by letting them know that someone is on the other end of the email address. It is a kind of weird, contradictory thing. But, again, there has to be some kind of provision. To find a viable alternative is beyond us at this time, so that is the way we will have to go.

All in all, the bill is saying that we have to do something about spam. I offer my congratulations to David Cunliffe, who has been an energetic Minister in the information technology portfolio, with movements around unbundling the local loop, the operational separation of Telecom, and those kinds of things. This is just one other example of useful movements in the information technology portfolio.

I will end on what I think is probably the single biggest disadvantage of this bill as it goes through its third reading. It specifically excludes dealing with voice traffic, including—it quite specifically says—voice traffic over Internet protocols, including Skype and all those kinds of technologies. I have mentioned it before, but with the voice spam that was pumped out of the ACT party campaign offices during the last election, I say that Parliament may well live to regret that omission.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) : It is very good to follow my colleagues Pita Sharples and Nandor Tanczos. I am interested in Mr Tanczos’ comment that we cannot legislate against stupidity. That is certainly true. But our job is to not legislate stupidly, and I am afraid, having heard the speeches, that in respect of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill we are in danger of legislating stupidly. That is why the ACT party will be voting against it.

I pick up on Dr Sharples’ speech. Dr Sharples, in speaking in support of the bill, spoke all the way through about its intentions. Its intention is to stop spam, and he said that is a good thing. Of course it is a good thing, but just legislating intentions does not actually produce a result. We can legislate all the good intentions that we like. We can have policies filled with good intentions, but that does not mean those good intentions will be fulfilled. Then, when Dr Pita Sharples talked about the practicalities of the bill, he was not talking about it in the sense of how it would stop spam; he said we had to be a bit careful because it would have costs. Of course this bill will have costs. Dr Sharples said the official advice was that the cost was something like, on average, $1,000 or so for a small business.

So we have to say to ourselves that this is interesting: here we are in Parliament passing legislation that intends well but has a cost of maybe $1,000 per small business, which is no mean amount. Dr Pita Sharples, in particular, drew attention to Māori small businesses, and so he should, but there are other small businesses. Let us take the example of a small Māori business that is struggling away and suddenly has to come up with $1,000 to cover the costs of our Parliament’s intention to stop spam. I am sure we all feel good standing up in this Parliament saying we are against spam. Well, the cost does not fall on us; the cost of it falls on the very small businesses that Dr Sharples represents here in this House.

Then we have to ask ourselves whether the cost we are imposing is worth the candle. I see nothing in this bill to justify that cost, other than politicians in this Parliament and this Government standing up and saying that they care about spam.

Maryan Street: Then read some of the submissions.

RODNEY HIDE: I love Maryan Street. Here is Labour. I know that half of its members would not turn on their computers. The thing I like about Mr Tanczos is that he knows how to turn a computer on. He uses it, and, indeed, he is like me in that he prefers to use Linux and open-source software rather than propriety software. I can tell members that I prefer to do so too. Particularly after updating to Windows Vista, Linux is a good option.

I know that Mr Tanczos knows that this bill will not actually change spam at all. It will be passed into law. I know that Maryan Street might have a great intention that legislation will somehow change people’s behaviour, but this bill will do nothing to change people’s behaviour.

Maryan Street: Grow up, Mr Hide!

RODNEY HIDE: I love Labour’s response for me to grow up. I quite like being young. I would hate to be old and miserable like members of the Labour Party are, so I am quite happy to be the Peter Pan in this Parliament. So I, as the Peter Pan of this Parliament, will tell members the problem with the legislation. How on earth does passing this bill change what a Nigerian spammer will do tomorrow? I have to say that Nigerian spammers are not sitting there with their crystal sets, listening to Maryan Street telling Rodney Hide to grow up and saying that they had better not send any more spam to Maryan Street of the Labour Government, because it passed a law against spam. No siree! Spam from Nigeria, China, and, indeed, from the United States of America will continue. Let me say that the United States of America passed exactly this legislation. [Interruption] I ask David Cunliffe, who shakes his head and says it was slightly different, whether the legislation stopped spam in the US. No, it did not.

The bill refers to people who are—I love this bit; it shows legislation in this Parliament coming up against cyberspace—physically present in New Zealand. That is interesting, is it not? How does one, upon receiving spam, work out where on earth the person sending it is physically present? It is not easy, because the spammers live in cyberspace, and the same idea of—[Interruption] David Cunliffe knows so much. His answer to every problem is more legislation, and how about we pinch property rights and impose more costs on small business? To hang about the result! I am interested in what it is costing New Zealanders and whether it will achieve the required result. I have to say that Mr Cunliffe has been an abysmal failure in achieving results in the cyber-world of New Zealand.

The best argument we have come up with for this bill is that we will—I love this bit—“send a signal”. Mr Tanczos is quite right: spammers send out millions and millions of pieces of spam. I tell members that I do not get spam; the only place I get it is on my parliamentary server. I have a home email that is far more public than my parliamentary email, and on my home email I do not get spam. Why? It is because I take precautions to eliminate it. I get more spam on my parliamentary server than anywhere. I say to Nandor that we know how to stop spam, do we not? Sure, some spam gets through, but that is two-fifths of next to nothing.

So we are passing this law to send a signal. I can imagine that the spammers in Nigeria, China, and the US—and, indeed, wherever, because we do not know where they might be—are all shaking in their boots because a signal has been sent. The signal was received that Maryan Street and Labour—and, indeed, 119 MPs in this House—voted to intend to stop spam and say it was banned. It will not make one bit of difference. In fact, all around the world they say that what we will have is a multilevel approach to dealing with spam—sort of like a UN in cyberspace. As more and more countries pass more and more anti-spam legislation, has anyone noticed what is happening with spam? It is going up. So the legislation ain’t working. The answer is not more knee-jerk legislation. The answer is to follow the ACT party, get oneself up to speed or employ someone who is up to speed, and engage in some anti-spam software, which in my experience certainly works in New Zealand. That works far better to send a signal than any legislation that this Parliament can pass. This legislation will just mean more red tape for business, Internet service providers, and people in New Zealand.

In a way it demonstrates why we need a regulatory responsibility bill. What we need in this process is some openness, some transparency, and some accountability for the laws that we are passing. Quite frankly, I am shocked that in this day and age this Parliament is standing up and passing legislation simply because of good intentions. I know that the National Party can see through that. I look forward to those members joining the ACT party and voting down this bill. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for your time.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister for Information Technology) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek clarification of a potential point of misrepresentation in the member’s speech. He may wish to clarify it. My sense is that he was opposing the “anti-scam bill”, not the “anti-spam bill”. Would the member be able to clarify that?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That should not have been raised by the Minister.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption] Chris Carter can interrupt all he likes.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a point of order only. There will be no chit-chat.

RODNEY HIDE: I just want to respond to David Cunliffe’s vicious attack in his point of order, and to ask whether we could have 5 minutes silence while I recover.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is tit for tat.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) : I always thought that members had to stand while they were giving their speeches. I was looking as hard as I could at the previous speaker, Rodney Hide, but I did not see him standing once. However, maybe he will grow into the role. My attention was particularly drawn by his comment about the Minister David Cunliffe, whom he had just praised as being an abysmal failure. When a leader of a party takes six members of Parliament into an election and comes out with two, one has to wonder what definition of success that might be. Then, when those two—

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If we look through all the Speakers’ rulings and the Standing Orders, there surely has to be something there about a member who won his seat being lectured about failure by a member who lost his seat.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: But it is worse than that—[Interruption]

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: When the member raises a point of order he will please wait for the Speaker to acknowledge him before going into it. And it was not a point of order.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: The member was, in fact, standing, so perhaps that should have been acknowledged a bit earlier. It is sometime difficult to see with that speaker.

This spam bill, as the member mentions, would keep the activities of electronic messages relevant in this country—unlike that speaker, who returned to this Parliament with two MPs. Those MPs spent most of last year either learning to dance or training to be soldiers. Of course, I guess those are some of the great tragedies of the ACT party.

But I want to speak on the third reading of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill. [Interruption] Go on. Keep them coming. The member is not prepared to speak on the bill. Why is that? It is because the enforcement procedures in this bill are designed for the member’s party. This bill could have been written after the drafter read a book that was published before the last election, a book that harks back to T S Eliot, and a book that everyone in this Parliament read with some eagerness: a book called The Hollow Men. The point about that book is that it would have been described as a civil event, as described in the enforcement provisions of the bill.

Let us see what a civil event is, as found in clause 11. This clause would apply entirely to the emails from an exclusive religious sect that offered the National Party $1 million to help it win the last election. Despite the gift of $1 million the National Party just could not manage it—even with that $1 million bonus. This bill would have helped John Key to recognise spam email, about which he said: “I might have opened it, but I didn’t smoke it.” Of course, an email offering John Key $1 million would be chicken feed. He would not be bothered by such a small amount as $1 million. But if he had bothered to read the email from a sect that does not vote, with its offer to win National an election with $1 million, and to get the troops out in the electorates—[Interruption] I tell Mr Finlayson to raise his point of order at the end of the matter. He should read the Standing Orders.

Christopher Finlayson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Speaker’s ruling 112/8 states: “Members must confine themselves to the main purposes and contents of the bill; they must not deal at length with matters not provided for in the bill.” The drivel the member is speaking clearly does not come within third reading parameters.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I do not need any assistance, thank you, Mr Hide. [Interruption] No, I am not. The key to the matter is probably the phrase “at length”, and that is a judgment I would make. The member is using references by way of example, but always referring to the bill.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a new point of order, Rodney Hide?

Rodney Hide: Indeed it is. I think the point to be made here is that we should allow Mr Fairbrother to continue his speech without interruption—that is why I was wanting to get in on the point—because it is a really great exposition as to why one should not have a drink over dinner.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a reflection that should not be made, but, then again, nor should Mr Fairbrother have reflected on Mr Hide’s height.

RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER: He is a man of considerable stature, from some angles. But if Mr Hide is worried because he had a drink over dinner and cannot make sense of this speech, that is his problem.

Under clause 11 a recipient of an email offering $1 million on a promise to win an election would understand immediately who had sent the email. There are four prerequisites. First of all, the message must clearly and accurately identify the person who authorised the sending of the message. Well, who in this country would offer $1 million, over and above election spending, to help to win an election if he or she were not readily identifiable? Of course, when that email says “We are working with you to win the campaign.”, then clearly the provision of clause 11(a) is satisfied: “the message clearly and accurately identifies the person who authorised the sending of the message;”. So National members would welcome this bill, because it would help them to identify unsolicited electronic messages. But clause 11(b) does more than that; it states that the message must include “accurate information about how the recipient can readily contact that person;”.

Let us look at those emails in The Hollow Men, and at the information that was included therein. First of all, they included the names of certain individuals. That fact would help to identify them. Secondly, one email said that the Exclusive Brethren wanted to overthrow the Labour Government, and National was the only option it had in order to do so—pathetic though it was. It would do that, in working with National, by advancing the party or by giving it $1 million over and above its election spending cap. So it was quite clear that the message accurately identified how the recipient could contact that person. Though we may read an email, or open it but claim not to have read it, we would know, if we had read it, how to contact that person. So clause 11 would have helped the National Party to identify the spam emails it received before the last election, which are a subject of that book, The Hollow Men.

The third provision in clause 11, at paragraph (c), states: “the information referred to … complies with any conditions specified in the regulations;”. Well, there we have a bit of bother because we do not quite know what that is, the regulations not yet having been passed. But paragraph (d) states that “the information referred to … is reasonably likely to be valid for at least 30 days after the message is sent.” We can just take ourselves back to page 83, or thereabouts, of The Hollow Men. The particular email that referred to $1 million for the next election was sent, as I recall it, within the 30-day period.

So we have a bill now that the National Party has been mute upon during the third reading. National members have been mute, because they know that this bill is being passed to handle their unread correspondence by email. We also know that they could then send off somebody to a District Court to get a search warrant. In relation to a search warrant, clause 48(1) states: “An enforcement officer may apply for a search warrant to search a place or thing.” The enforcement officer must have made reasonable inquiries. We all know from the common law that that officer, under clause 48(1A), does not personally have to make reasonable inquiries; it is sufficient for another colleague, or for someone whom he or she has sufficient reason to trust, to have made those reasonable inquiries. So the body set up to enforce the provisions, which were so scoffed at by Mr Hide, gets real teeth under clause 48, because its personnel, working collectively, can make those reasonable inquiries described in clause 48(1A).

Once the application is made, the District Court has the discretion to issue a search warrant, if there is reasonable grounds for it to believe that a civil liability event has been or is being committed. Of course, that takes us back entirely to the book The Hollow Men and to clause 11, because we know that the people in the National Party who claim to have opened the email but not read it would take some protection in saying they did not know who it came from. That is despite the fact that the sender was offering them $1 million within about 30 days, in order to try to buy an election.

This bill is very, very important, because it sets a benchmark for proper behaviour on the Internet, and with electronic messages—emails. No longer will members of the party opposite be able to stand in this House, or appear in the press, and say they did not know where something came from. If they were to say that, then they would be duty-bound to lay a complaint and to have the matter followed through. Did they want to lay the complaint? Did they want the matter to be followed through? Did they want to reveal that they knew all the time who had sent the email offering $1 million? Did they want to know who the campaign manager in Napier was dealing with in the Exclusive Brethren to get the troops out, in order to grab votes that would not have been there for the National Party otherwise? Did they want to know who was organising the telephone banks, and who was ringing up and passing off messages of unreliability? A “brother” of unsolicited electronic messages is a telephone call from the telephone banks of those people, who claim to be Christians but who hide behind anonymity, and the emails that this bill is designed to put an end to.

This is a very important piece of legislation. It will put an end to such rubbish as bedevilled the last election. And the election in 2008 will see Labour returned with a victory, because the emperor on the other side will be found to have no clothes.

RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) : I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Through you, Mr Deputy Speaker—and I am sure I have the support of the House—may I invite Mr Russell Fairbrother, if he is up to it, to seek leave to speak for a further 5 minutes? We heard from him, in relation to the ACT party, that I had learnt to dance and Heather Roy had learnt to be a soldier and defend the country. What we did not hear was what he had achieved—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hide—

RODNEY HIDE:—other than to lose his safe Labour seat—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order !

RODNEY HIDE: I think he should stand up in the House and say what he has been doing for 2 years. [Interruption] Oh, he does not want to. He has got nothing to say.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That was not a point of order, and by following what you were saying you were actually interjecting on your own point of order. But I will not do anything about it.

Rodney Hide: That’s why we love you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.