Doocey Matt: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDoocey Matt: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11626. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I am rising in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill in its second reading. It will probably come as a surprise to many people that this country does not already have a child sex offender register. It would be a register where offenders over the age of 18 offending against children under the age of 16 would be registered. For me as an electorate MP it has already happened in a small town where the fear starts and there are allegations that there is a sex offender living in the town. It does surprise people when they talk to the authorities that there is no central register and I think people look to us and to the authorities in those times to ensure that they are understanding where people are living tracking offenders and understanding how they can manage the risk a lot better.Over the course of this call today I want to touch on three areas. No. 1 is a bit more about the bill. No. 2 is some of the issues that we had to address during the select committee stage. No. 3 is some of the changes that we are now bringing back to the second reading.I just want to acknowledge the chair Alfred Ngaro and all the members of the Social Services Committee who I think did a very good job and stayed reasonably objective. The committee was constructive. It is quite an emotive issue and at times we could have fallen down the hole of trying to debate punishment versus treatment and how this register will support that. In my own view it probably fits somewhere in the middle of that continuum. But at the end of the day this is only one tool that will support the management of sex offenders better.It was interesting; we encountered the impact that putting people on a register has on human rights. We know that child sex offenders will be put on the register for—depending on their offence—8 years 15 years or life but the impact was around their privacy of personal information. Personally I thought: “Tough.” We had Jian Yang who introduced a member’s bill that would stop child sex offenders from being able to change their names. We had to take advice and we were not around human rights issues able to implement that but there were some changes made in this bill because of that bill. It did surprise me—fair to say I thought it was a bit PC gone mad but there it is. We will be talking a bit more about how some of those amendments were implemented into the current bill.What we know is that this register will be very prescriptive. There will be three types of information sharing. There will be one as you would expect between police and the Department of Corrections sharing information about how we can make our children and our families safer and how we can manage these offenders as well. There is also an avenue for sharing information—I think quite rightly—between Government agencies like Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development. A third avenue is for third parties where information will be able to be disclosed to people on the ground around offending history but that comes with a restriction where they are not able to go on and disclose that information to others. Basically it is very prescriptive on the register—three types of information sharing.As has been alluded to by the previous speaker Jacinda Ardern this is a field that is developing. Research is about understanding how better we can mitigate or manage this risk and treatment as well which I know a lot of people will be sceptical of. But as we move further into this field and the research evolves—I mean when you look at some of the language that was spoken to us about the child sex offender register being a risk-based multi-agency management framework it sounds like quite a bit of jargon. But it is about understanding the intricacies of using a tool like this and gathering the information we need about personal details travel details addresses and movements of sex offenders and then how that informs supervision packages treatment approaches and court orders that these sex offenders will be on.When we looked at the cost-benefit analysis it showed that the potential benefit of this bill was preventing up to 34 child sex offences and I think we have also got to use the Pareto ratio where possibly only 20 percent—Chris Bishop: What?MATT DOOCEY: The Pareto ratio. Only 20 percent of these offences will be recorded; 80 percent possibly will not. Exponentially there is a real capacity to understand how this can go forward. There is also a clear link for child sex offenders to recidivism and other crimes and how that will play out as well.I just want to quickly touch on some of the changes. The first one was around when a child sex offender on the register would have to declare they were travelling. Currently in the bill they would have to declare children residing at the accommodation address but of course at a public house or accommodation if there are children there the child sex offender would not be able to name them. So the recommendation as changed is that they would have to declare children who were residing with them.There is also a change around when the information that child sex offenders give to the register is not correct. That will be recorded as well—again building up a bigger picture of offenders in order to manage them.Just to finish off coming back to the change of name it was agreed and an amendment has been put forward that with approval from the Commissioner of Police an offender will possibly be able to change their name. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.