O'Connor GregCHILD PROTECTION (CHILD SEX OFFENDER GOVERNMENT AGENCY REGISTRATION) (OVERSEAS TRAVEL REPORTING) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I move That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.I'd like to address this in three parts. Firstly I'd just like to talk about sex offending and child sex offending and my experience and what led me to bring this bill to the House. Secondly I'd just like to talk about the bill itself what the bill does and the good work done by the Justice Committee to get it to this stage. And thirdly I'd just like to explain how I believe the bill can work to ensure that it does what it's meant to do and make our victims much safer.When we think of child sex offenders often thoughts go to the stranger in the park or the chap in the blue campervan trying to pick up children near schools but they are a relatively rare type of sex offender particularly these days. The real sex offenders the real danger lies much closer to home. The vast majority of sex offenders know their victim the victim knows them and certainly more ominously the offender often knows the family and the caregivers of the family. That's where we need to direct our protection direct our laws to prevent further offending.In my years as a detective I interviewed many of these people and I found them not to be the well-organised criminals that they often are painted to be. They're often quite pathetic individuals. Often they've been abused themselves. Often they're quite inadequate and struggle to exist within mainstream society. And for various reasons they predate and victimise those most vulnerable in our society: our children the very people we really need to protect from them.Now the law is pretty well established in this area. There are plenty of offences on the statute book to deal with them and when they are located they will go to prison often for a very long time. Sadly the way these things come to light often because of the trust situation involved it can be some time between the offending and the disclosure. My own experience was often when an offender was located they had been suspected before and may have been moved to another family moved to another situation and often the disclosure would come. It was often through the schools often to a school friend and the schools would bring the information to the authorities either then social welfare or one of the agencies or police.Sadly in my early days if it came to police police would deal with it as a criminal justice issue. Often the other agencies would deal with it as a protection issue. And I have to say that it's only in recent years that the way of dealing with victims and offenders has improved considerably and I think people generally are much safer—our way of ascertaining of identifying these individuals the warning signs going off. I think we're much more professional and better at that. However we still need to ensure that we have the means and the protection to deal with it and that's where this legislation comes in.In 2016 the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act was passed. There's been a couple of amendments since but essentially the purpose of the Act was to establish a child sex offender register to reduce sexual reoffending against children and provide the Government agencies the information they need to protect our most vulnerable. A registrable offender is a person who has been convicted of a qualifying offence and has been sentenced to imprisonment or has been sentenced to a non-custodial sentence and has been made subject to a registration order. A person is not a registrable offender if at the time they committed the offence they were under 18. The qualifying offences are class 1 class 2 and class 3 offences as defined in the Crimes Act and cover a full range of offending where the victim is under 16.Of note and pertinent to this bill a corresponding registrable offender is a person who as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence has been sentenced to imprisonment or essentially would be still eligible for an equivalent child sex offender register in that jurisdiction. It's important in relation to this bill as it acknowledges the need for protections to exist beyond countries' borders. The register imposes on offenders reporting obligations on a number of pieces of information particularly around their addresses—importantly the name sex and date of birth of each child who generally resides in the same household as that in which the offender resides laid out in the Act.An important part of the Act—and again touching on my amendment—is that the registered offender if intending to be away from their registered residential address within New Zealand and 48 hours before they travel must provide to police the details of each address at which that offender intends to stay the dates the offender intends to stay at those addresses whether any child will be or is likely to reside together with the offender at any of those addresses and the date the offender intends to return to their registered address. They can leave New Zealand under the existing Act provided they provide their dates of travel and the date they intend to return.However unlike such travel within New Zealand the registered offender is currently not obliged to supply police with their intended addresses in the country they will visit or whether there will be children at the address. My bill as it's reported back requires offenders to advise the police of the names of the countries they will stay in for more than 48 hours the addresses they intend to stay in in that country the date they intend to travel to and leave that country and if they do not intend to return to New Zealand provide the details of the country they intend to reside in.I want to thank the very hard-working Justice Committee of both this and the last Parliament led by James Meager and Vanushi Walters respectively. While it was a relatively small bill it wasn't an easy one. The Attorney-General was concerned about section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Those same concerns existed when the original bill and the subsequent amendments went through and they were considered by the committee. I'm sure there'll be committee members later on who will talk about that. To their credit they have decided that the same reasons that were used in the main legislation and subsequent amendments still exist today. And while there were concerns in that area the risk to the potential victims outweighs the rights of the offender or the freedoms of the offender.A second part of the concerns dealt with by the committee were police concerns about the ability to actually monitor the bill when these offenders are overseas without any reciprocal amendments or legislation. I can say that most of the Australian states have similar legislation. The Canadians have just passed some very similar legislation and they too without reciprocal arrangements rely on as the New Zealand Police can Interpol. They can rely on the fact that most police forces have a good network of liaison officers working out of embassies in most countries and develop the sorts of relationships necessary to have the offenders checked.But an important part also is that this actually while giving protection to potential victims and victims gives protection to offenders. Offenders don't do good jail time and most don't want to go back. They've got a very low recidivism rate—again as I talked about before—because they do the programmes and also they don't want to go back. Often by the time they're found also they are older in life and the risks of offending have reduced. So the offenders by knowing the authorities know where they're going to be have been known to talk about how that was a protection that they themselves enjoyed having.I could speak for much longer and I'm sure others will but this bill and my amendment is about ensuring that for those victims potential victims—say in New Zealand in places like Napier or Oamaru—we're offering them often family members those known to the offender the same protection in places like Mooloolaba in places like Perth because that's where the real risk lies. And so I commend this bill to the House and I look forward to it going through to the committee of the whole House. Thank you Mr Speaker.