McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Mr Speaker thank you. I'd like to start off by acknowledging the work that the Minister has done on this piece of legislation as well as talking with us across the House so that we can all work together as best we can to put through this law. We do appreciate that. I'd also like to acknowledge the work that the New Zealand Police policy team which I know is a small but very active team have done on this piece of legislation.ACT are renowned for not supporting matters that come before this House under urgency. We need to have a good reason and criteria for accepting it. We will support urgency if there is good reason in our mind to support it. And generally speaking we don't support retrospective law either but as our supporters would expect of us we should take every bill as a bill on its own and make sure that we can produce and stand in front of the House in agreement as a party as to how we will go forward. This case meets our criteria for urgency: there is immediate concern there is very good reason for it and it is in the public's interest; it's actually in our children's interest.The purpose of the parent 2016 legislation is and I quote to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders". So the Act's intent of course is to ensure that high-risk offenders are on the register so that the authorities can keep an eye on them keep an eye on their whereabouts and how they are interacting with society and the purpose of it all is to keep our children safe. The reality that we're seeing is that there are more and more victims coming forward with some horrendous stories about things that have happened to them in the past and it's been dealt with in the future. The register therefore is meant to capture the offences that have been committed in the past but are not before the courts until later.The Supreme Court doesn't think that the legislators made it that clear—that those convicted in the present for crimes committed in the past should not be placed on the register for the designated time frame. So there's an essential element that was missed in writing this law and as the Minister said before the House doesn't always get it right with our laws and I'm going to add to that: especially the rushed ones. There are unintended consequences that often are caused when urgency occurs and the position now for all of us is to fix this so that Parliament's intent can actually be realised. And I expect that the confusion around section 11 that's been proposed will have something to do with the Supreme Court's ruling but I too look forward to clarification on why section 11 is in there once we come to the committee of the whole House.So while we too don't agree with retrospective laws we need to make a mature assessment of what Parliament is here to do and that's to make good laws for New Zealanders and we are not prepared to trade off our children's safety and their futures against an error in legal writing. These are clear issues where we have to decide what is more important in regard to this law: our children or allowing an error in law to continue. We choose our children and in doing so commend this bill to the House."