Thank you.
I think you're aware that the government is broadly supportive of the intentions of the bill and broadly supportive of updating these acts to ensure that they're not stuck in a previous time that's almost a generation ago now in the way parliaments are so quickly adapting.
We will, however, be proposing some amendments to make sure that it fits the machinery of government, that we don't have duplication and that we don't cause conflict between bills. We want to make sure that there's not undue red tape because, if we have our officials only reporting and doing stuff, they can't do their work, which we need them to do. We'll want to make sure that, at its core, the people whom this bill is meant to protect, human rights defenders, are protected and not put at risk. That will be the substance of our changes.
In the bill, you use the term “prisoner of conscience”. We tend to use the term “human rights defender”, because prisoners of conscience may or may not be human rights defenders. Could you explain how you maybe see those two terms as different?