Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): It was interesting that the Minister the Hon Nicky Wagner sort of downplayed what we have here. The Minister who spoke just then said that this is a small change it is no big deal and there is nothing to see here—move on. If that is the case why are we passing the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill under extreme urgency? As I think I said last time the last time I remember a bill being passed under urgency in one sitting was when we passed the increases in excise tax on tobacco because we knew the consequences of not doing so would result in market manipulation.This bill is being passed under urgency in one sitting in one go because it is not an inconsequential amendment to an Act; it is absolutely serious. The fact that it has gone from the Hon Anne Tolley through to the Deputy Prime Minister just shows how serious this is. The fact that a number of Government MPs have actually lauded the Minister—and I accept that fact and I will as well—for saying that as soon as she found out about this she brought this amendment bill to the House because it was so serious. Let us not downplay what we are trying to achieve here. The Minister is a very experienced and capable politician. She knows that what we are doing here is absolutely representing what our communities want to see. There was a fundamental mistake in the original bill that was before this House less than 6 months ago. The original Act talks about conditional release. As a consequence of that terminology which is throughout the Act—conditional release"—it meant that three different types of offenders actually did not come under the auspices of this Act when they were supposed to. So what we have had to do is change the term "conditional release" in this bill to "release conditions". So what happened is that "conditional release" meant that if a person had been convicted and had served their statutory prison term before the bill received the Royal assent they would not be subject to the provisions within the Act.What we have had to do is say: "Wow we got this wrong—fundamentally got this wrong." There is a group of people—and it does not matter whether it is two 20 62 or however many; the Minister has outlined that it is over 60—who are not covered by this Act when in fact they should be. So throughout this bill the term "conditional release" has been replaced with "release conditions". What that actually means is that people whose statutory prison sentence expired before the original bill received the Royal assent on 14 October 2016 but who were released on release conditions still come under this bill.The reason this is being rushed through is that this is the will of the community. No one wants to see hear about or know that there are convicted child sex offenders in our community who may not be being monitored. The Green MP Jan Logie stood up and gave a passionate speech around the fact that this is not good and we have not got the evidence. I would disagree with that. I would say that maybe as we assess the impact of this bill we will develop a data set of evidence that says it is the right thing to do. Maybe we will find out it is not. But what I think we need to do is put processes in place that seek to protect the most vulnerable in our community and that is our children. That is why Labour is supporting this bill. It is not saying that this amendment bill is the be-all and end-all because it absolutely is not. It is not saying that we cannot do more as parliamentarians because absolutely we can. In fact mental health no matter what guise it comes under has been absolutely neglected by this Government. A total of 8500 prisoners who have an existing mental health issue enter our prison system every single year.The fact that we are actually debating an amendment bill less than 6 months after the original bill came to this House is just sloppy—it is sloppy. We are taking 6 hours or however many hours it will take to pass this bill through the House when we could be debating other stuff which is for some people more important. This is important obviously but all this remedial legislation—all this amendment stuff that we are continually debating in this house because of sloppy process—is not right. In fact I actually think it fails the expectation of what New Zealanders expect of their MPs in Parliament. They do not expect taxpayer money to be spent doing this when it should have been done right in the first place.I just want to reiterate that we are supporting this bill—Labour does support this bill. We just wish that we were not here debating this because it should have been done properly the first time. A number of other speakers have outlined a different process that perhaps should have been followed. We are all wise in hindsight but again this is not rocket science. A bill like this that was put up by the Minister of Police should have gone to either the Law and Order Committee or the Justice and Electoral Committee where officials with the competencies of understanding the complexity of this sort of legislation reside. Instead it went to a select committee that a number of my colleagues and other members have highlighted perhaps did not have the competencies to understand that the legal term "conditional release" did not actually meet the statutory requirement of the bill. So we are back here. Again this is not rocket science; this is just really sloppy process.We are supporting this bill with no ifs or buts but I just hope that in the future the Government starts getting this sort of thing right. I have no appetite for coming here debating a bill that I spoke on 6 months ago that should be out in the community. The community should be safe. The Act should be out there being implemented in a way that we intended 6 months ago. Thank you very much."