Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. What a night rising to speak to this bill for a second time and there will be a third time. I do want to acknowledge that we're doing this in urgency and the colour that that adds to the breaches of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the rule of law that this bill contains.But first I do want to hold at the centre of this debate the intention of us all across this House and in particular the Minister of Police who's brought the bill to the House because I know that we all do care deeply about the welfare of children in Aotearoa New Zealand and we do wholeheartedly hope to address the absolute plague of child sex offending which we know occurs in very very high rates and that at any rate would be unacceptable in our nation. We do want to protect children and I would suggest that that should be done through legislation and lawmaking that is evidence based that we know will be effective and that we know will not undermine the legitimacy of the lawmaking process in the way that legislation like this does unfortunately do. I don't want to traverse again my first reading speech—I know there'll be another one yet to come—but I do want to acknowledge and point to the finding of the Supreme Court. We all have I think in pointing us to the breaches of the bill of rights Act both in the minimum standards of criminal procedure and in the ban against retrospective penalisation of anyone—we hold a lot of power in this House. We can sanction members of the public in the most severe way through the criminal justice system. So we have a responsibility to uphold the fundamental human rights that are contained in both the bill of rights Act and our Human Rights Act and the principle of the rule of law that tells us that law has to be knowable has to be transparent before it can apply to members of the public and this bill absolutely breaches that fundamental principle. It will apply to people who have committed an act before the main legislation came into effect. We're making that clear. And we've heard from our Attorney-General in what is an absolutely clear and damning report that this legislation does not justify the breach of fundamental rule of law and human rights contained in the bill of rights Act. We've heard from the Attorney-General who has done the weighing-up exercise. We know all of our human rights can be encroached upon if it's necessary for the safety wellbeing and rights of others and this bill has not met the standard because child sex offender registries have not been shown to work. It has been found to be a punishment. Because we're not talking about as I think members of the Opposition seem to believe a registry that the police can refer to. The police have access to convictions. The police already know if you're a convicted sex offender; the conviction doesn't disappear. We're talking about a registry that's accessed by other agencies that will apply to—Housing New Zealand case workers may have access to it. It may come into your Ministry of Social Development file. So we're talking about much broader access than that and we're talking about something that both the Supreme Court and the Attorney-General agree constitutes further punishment than what the Sentencing Act has sentenced someone to. We're talking about going beyond what sentence a person has already served. We're talking about the idea that rehabilitation after a sentence of imprisonment after the rehabilitation programmes the courts have already sentenced someone to then applies and undermines any idea that our justice system can be fair that a sentence can be finite that a case can actually finish and a person can rejoin society. But leaving all of that to one side we as a Parliament have a duty not to be marred by prejudice by the weight of the incredibly sad issues that we're dealing with with this piece of legislation. And to undermine not only fundamental human rights not only the rule of law but the idea that we would only pass law that's actually based on evidence and is going to be effective to address the problems that we're seeking to address—this isn't that kind of legislation. It's a knee-jerk dog whistle. It was when it first came in as the substantive Act and now we're going further than that and breaching further rights. We can't apply human rights and principles only when it's convenient and drop them when there is emotion involved and when it does make us look good. We're lying to victims I would suggest when we say that this is going to protect them against the horrors of child sex offending. There are things we know we can do. We can apply the resource—the millions of dollars that it takes to monitor this registry—to doing the things that we know will actually prevent harm to children. We know that that work has already begun with a record commitment to combating domestic and sexual violence in the last Government. I was proud to be a part of that. I know that the Minister of Police the Minister of Justice and ministries across Government are all involved in that work and are excited about it. I know that the work will support front-line organisations that will support Māori and Pacific communities who are disproportionately impacted by this type of offending to lead in what will in fact heal our society and prevent this kind of offending against our children. That should be the focus. So this isn't a good bill. It isn't the kind of lawmaking that we should commit to or set a precedent for in this House and I do oppose it on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.