Dr Pita Sharples, Speech
te-pati-maori
Wed Feb 28 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Dr Pita Sharples, Speech
Wednesday, 28 February 2007, 10:09 am
Press Release: The Maori Party
Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill
Tuesday 27 February 2007; 8.30pm
Dr Pita Sharples, Co-leader of the Maori Party
Kia ora Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker, last Thursday, this House witnessed a most unprecedented event.
Two Bills were rushed through, at unseemly haste, with absolutely no debate whatsoever on their contents.
The first was the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill.
The other was the second reading of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill.
Neither of these Bills is what one would call straight-forward.
And yet, the speed at which the business of the House was conducted saw the House rising at 5.02pm.
In reviewing the Hansard, apart from the Minister for Customs speaking to her Bill, and a mere four sentences from the Minister of Courts about the Judicial Review 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 that they are promoting.
And so when we look at the Hansard record of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill, all that the Committee stage proceedings record are Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4: agreed to; Schedule agreed to; Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to; and the Bill 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.
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In this light, I am relieved to support with the recommendations from the Commerce Committee to do away with the dual regime – distinguishing between promotional and commercial messages and instead referring to electronic messages per se. Anything which can reduce confusion and avoid uncertainty has to be good.
But even a novice like me in the use of information and communications technology, can not help but notice the unwanted invasion of junk mail offering stock price tips, cheap loans, healthcare, miracle diets, and hair restorers.
According to a BBC report, spam now accounts for almost seventy percent of e-mails worldwide. That figure is expected to reach eighty percent by the middle of the year.
The Maori Party is therefore happy to support a Bill which takes as its primary purpose the intention to protect New Zealanders accessing the Internet from 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 prior consent and proof of identification are taken into account in preventing vexatious messages being sent and clogging up the system.
However, while there’s no doubt we urgently need anti-spam legislation, the downside for smaller businesses may be uncertainty and higher marketing costs.
And in thinking about this issue, we inevitably think about the 8,397 people of Maori descent who described themselves in the 2001 Census as ‘Employers’; and the 15,975 people of Maori descent who are ‘self employed, with or without employees’.
And we think about the employment-related compliance costs; the OSH paperwork; and the inordinate amount of administration that businesses are already taxed with.
We wonder what sort of impact the recommendations of the Commerce Committee will have in the context of compliance cost priorities for particularly small business activity.
The latest annual survey of business compliance costs conducted in 2006 by KPMG-Business New Zealand, surveyed some 1400 businesses, and concluded that compliance problems and costs were still disproportionately high.
The survey confirmed the trends of the last three surveys, that compliance costs fall more heavily on small than large businesses.
It was reported that small businesses with less than ten employees face compliance costs averaging around $3000 per employee; whereas larger companies with over fifty employees have compliance costs of less than $1000 per employee.
Mr Speaker, the Government has acknowledged 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 unlikely that 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 one to two thousand dollars extra, including:
· Changing address lists to develop an “opt-in” system;
· Ensuring all marketing and promotional messages contain correct sender information, and how to un-subscribe;
· Setting up systems to update electronic addresses held for marketing purposes, and separating commercial and promotional materials.
The Maori Party recognises the enormous impact that such changes can have on business productivity; and acknowledge 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 can’t do anything specific about spam, they’ll still have to pay for the complaints process.
I have some knowledge of the commitment and effort put forward by the Maori Internet Society, Te Whanau Ipurangi who promote a strong Maori presence on the Internet, and register domain names like "maori.nz".
I want to acknowledge for the record, the initiative of Ross Himona and Kamera Raharaha who have lead the way in establishing an authentic Maori 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 Select Committee referred to the current work being undertaken on developing an anti-spam code of practice for email services. The Maori 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, Mr Speaker, I want to refer to the advice of Ngati Porou and Te Aitanga - a - Mahaki writer, Sally Pewhairangi, in her work on 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 Maori 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; an administrative burden being sanctioned by this legislation; and as such, 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.
Ends
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