Davis KelvinKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): The Labour Party—let us get it out there from the start—does support this bill. We will do whatever we can to protect children from sex offenders. But our concerns still remain about why we are back in the House now just 6 months after the initial Act was passed. We believe that is unacceptable. We also believe the time frame that we were given to respond to the amendments is unacceptable.But that said it is important—I agree with the Minister of Police—that we do sort this out although the debate in the Committee stage did leave a few unanswered questions. I would just like to thank my colleagues for posing those questions because it is our job to hold the Government to account and there are some questions as to why we are standing here now in urgency debating this. As the Minister said the bill relates to a relatively small number of offenders and again I agree with her. Any number of child sex offenders is a number that is too big. But we are talking about 107 offenders I believe who sort of slipped through the gaps that the original legislation left and we are now closing those gaps up. Some of the questions that we had during the Committee stage of this bill—and the Minister said this is about release conditions and yet the words release conditions" were left out of the original bill.For those people who are listening release conditions and standard release conditions in the Parole Act of 2002 are for example offenders reporting in person to probation officers in the probation area where the offender resides or an offender notifying probation officers of his or her residential address. They are not to move to new residential addresses without prior written consent. If they do move the offender must report to a probation officer in the new probation area not later than 72 hours after the offender's arrival. The offender may not reside at an address that a probation officer has directed the offender not to reside at. They must not engage or continue to engage in any employment or occupation in which the probation officer has directed the offender not to engage in or continue to engage in and they are not to associate with specific people or classes or people such as gang members. So those are just examples of the standard release conditions for those people who are listening in to the debate. But the point is that something as essential as identifying the release conditions should have been included in the original legislation in the first instance. It is not something that we should be debating at this stage. It is quite fundamental you would think to have been included the first time around.There is also a bit of a gap between the convictions of these offenders and the sentencing. As we know a conviction happens first. There might be a gap of a few weeks or months before an offender is sentenced. It sounds like that gap was another loophole that people slipped through.Then there was the issue of "conditional release" compared with "release conditions". I have already spoken about release conditions which are something that an offender has upon release from prison—the conditions that they must adhere to. This is a different situation from conditional release. Conditional release to me assumes something that is going to happen before they are released.As Clare Curran first raised—she spoke about corresponding registrable offenders; in other words people who have been convicted of an offence in an overseas jurisdiction. We have a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders. Clause 5 which amends section 8 is one of them and clause 7 in Part 2 which amends schedule 1 of the principal Act by adding new clause 1(3). There are a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders—people who have committed offences overseas and yet when I asked the Minister in the Committee stage whether there were any people who had been convicted of child sex crimes over in Australia had spent time in detention centres and had been deported to New Zealand the answer was that none of the 107 people whom we are talking about in this debate were convicted overseas.It begs the question as to why there are a couple of clauses dedicated to something that does not exist. So what is the problem that we are trying to solve? There does not appear to be a problem but it has been thrown in here anyway and yet when we tried to get an answer to those questions the Minister did not reply. She said that this does not apply to any people deported from Australia. That is the exact question we are asking. Why have people been missed out? Why are there these two clauses dedicated to a problem that does not exist? It raises the question again about how the Government got this part wrong? Maybe there is an answer and maybe in this third reading some of the Government members will stand up and explain to us why we are debating clauses that are irrelevant and that do not apply to any people.It is right that this bill is going through the House. It is also right that the Opposition parties around the House challenge the Government on this—firstly on why it got it wrong in the first place just 6 months ago. What was the situation that made the Government realise that we need to fix something? Why is it that we are trying to fix some problems that do not exist? It calls into question what is going wrong over there on the Government side. Oh no offence to my colleague Nathan Guy who has just walked in.What is happening here that we are having this debate now under urgency? What are the problems in terms of the corresponding registrable offenders that we are trying to fix? We understand that there were gaps. There were these 107 people who sort of slipped through that little window. As I said earlier or as has been said through the debate there are three groups of people whom this actually applies to. I will just read out who those three groups are: child sex offenders serving short-term sentences of 2 years or less imprisonment who had reached their statutory release date before 14 October 2016 had a sentence expiry date after 14 October 2016 and were subject to release conditions at 14 October 2016. That is one group.The next group is child sex offenders on long-term or short-term sentences of imprisonment who reached their sentence expiry date before 14 October 2016 and were on release conditions at 14 October 2016. The third group is child sex offenders who have been convicted of a qualifying offence before 14 October 2016 and were sentenced to imprisonment after 14 October 2016 or were sentenced after 14 October 2016 to a non-custodial sentence and ordered by the court to be placed on the register.To those people listening out there it all seems just a bit too technical and jargony but I guess the reality is that we have to keep our children safe from people. Offenders will be on a register and they will have to provide the Police and the Department of Corrections with access to personal information that allows those organisations to proactively monitor an individual child sex offender's risk of offending while in the community and act accordingly to address that risk.The Labour Party agrees that that needs to be done. We do not like the process by which it has been done. We do not like the bungling of the 14 October 2016 legislation but we are glad and are happy to take our part in making sure this legislation hopefully is right this time around. Kia ora."