Williams Poto: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6653. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): There is no more important job for this House than to keep our children safe. I for one am hopeful that the work on this piece of legislation will do just that. As a parent there is nothing that makes you more fearful than the harm that may befall your child. I know that parents whom I have spoken to whose children have been offended against in the manner that is described in this bill are incredibly emotional about what happens to their children. We have an opportunity to look at the impacts of sexual violence on our children and do something really useful about it.There have been many speakers who have talked about what the potential for this bill is. In a previous life having worked in family violence not necessarily in sexual violence but in family violence I have spoken about having run a refuge where we used to say that six women and a piece of paper was all we had to keep our women and our tamariki safe. In this regard we may be falling into the same kind of trap that a register that for all intents and purposes is designed to keep our children safe may not achieve that because we know that a register will register those who have already offended and will do nothing about protecting our children from the harm that may befall them from those predators in the community whom we know nothing about.Only 1 percent of sexual offences are actually reported to the police. We are talking about recording a small number of known offenders and doing nothing about protecting our children from the prevalence of sexual violence in our community. We know that it is prevalent. We know that from the statistics around mental health. We know from the statistics around suicide that sexual violence is prevalent in our community and I do not believe that without proper mechanisms support and therapy in place a register of known sex offenders will achieve what we want to achieve to keep our children safe.This bill talks about an arbitrary period of time that offenders will be on the register—8 years 15 years or for life. There has been no discussion about the validity of those dates. Is 8 years better than 7 years or would it be better to have 10 years? We need to actually have some real valuable information to ensure that whatever period we have people on the register for is useful.The other thing that we should be considering which does not appear anywhere in the bill that I can see is the requirement for offenders to actually get treatment. There is no point in saying that after a period of time a sex offender is no longer a risk. There needs to be a prescription of treatment and monitoring that that work has been completed by that offender. That does not appear anywhere in the bill. The bill talks about the actual criteria by which you would appear on the register—you must be over 18 at the time of the offence and convicted of a qualifying offence and it can be custodial or non-custodial. Also a sentencing judge can put you on the register at their discretion. There is nothing about the nature necessarily of the offending the nature of the treatment that that offender will take on board and then again there is nothing about his or her level of risk to children going forward that appears in this bill except for an arbitrary date.I have real concerns about who will have access to the information about people who appear on the register. We are talking about staff from the Ministry of Social Development and from Housing New Zealand. I can kind of understand what that is about—about the placement of sex offenders into the community—but I do not feel comfortable about the level of protection of that data once it is opened to scrutiny by various members of those organisations. There is also some talk that caregivers teachers and others will also have access to the names. That is one very small step away from being a public register. I do not believe that the level of scrutiny that is required to be applied has been given to that very core detail around the privacy of your information.There is very little that holds this piece of legislation to ensuring the privacy of offenders if it is opened up to many other people getting access to that information. I for one am not suggesting that we do not have a register of some sort but I would really want to ensure that there is a high level of protection around that information and that it isused only in the manner in which it should be. We know this is a hugely emotional subject matter particularly for parents and for other members of the community who want to keep their children safe. Getting access to that information could result in a terrible unintended consequence. I for one want to make sure that I would be comfortable about the storage and the access of this data.We say right in the very beginning in the explanatory note that the register will reduce reoffending against child victims. I am not sure that this bill actually will achieve that.There is quite a prescription about the reporting mechanism the terms of reporting and the restrictions around travel and they proceed for a significant period of time. I do want to refer to the concerns of the Attorney-General that these provisions are inconsistent with section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Even after someone has potentially paid for the crime that they have conducted they are still required by this bill to continue to be monitored to continue to report and to continue to have their access to freedom restricted.Because it has not really been touched on anywhere I want to refer to the opportunity to get treatment or therapy to ensure that you are no longer a risk as a sex offender. I want to refer to a report that came out of the Department of Corrections. It is quite an old report—from 2002-03. It talks about the overall recidivism rate as being 8.1 percent across the three programmes that the Department of Corrections conducted but the recidivism rate for people who completed their treatment programme was 5.2 percent—a reduction of almost half. If we do not have a mechanism in our legislation to ensure we get good therapeutic interventions we miss out on actually providing safety from at least half of the offenders who will offend again. I believe that when this bill goes to the select committee there are many questions to be asked around those types of provisions.We are supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee. I am honoured to be able to sit on the select committee and to be able to ask those questions and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.