Williams Poto; Rurawhe AdrianCHILD PROTECTION (CHILD SEX OFFENDER GOVERNMENT AGENCY REGISTRATION) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): I present a legislative statement on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): I move That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. First some acknowledgments. I would like to thank the officials for the hard work that they have done to get this bill to the House. I would like to thank the parties across the House and in particular the spokespeople who worked with me to ensure that their caucuses were able to have line of sight of this particular legislation. But mostly I would like to thank the more than 14000 police staff who work every single day to keep us and our communities safe. On 9 February the Supreme Court made a decision that meant that offenders who were on the sex offender register for whom offences had occurred prior to the passing of the 2016 legislation but who were sentenced after that bill was enacted were no longer on the register. The retrospectivity of the legislation that we had passed as a Parliament was no longer applicable. The effect of that decision meant that nearly 600 offenders who were on the register were deregistered or in the process of being deregistered. What was really clear was the intent of Parliament when we passed the original legislation was that they would be included. However the Supreme Court made it clear that the clarity of our legislation was not sufficient to ensure that that was the case. Sometimes as parliamentarians we don't always get it right but this bill is to actually give life to what we intended back then in 2016 with the primary legislation. Our primary role as parliamentarians is to keep our community safe and most importantly to keep our children safe. One of the things that this does is to ensure that those people who need monitoring because of the fact that they have been charged with an offence under the legislation—we want to make sure that they continue to be safe. The impact of sexual abuse particularly on children is a devastating thing and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen to our tamariki. The reason for having a register is to ensure that police are able to monitor those people to make sure that they know where they work that they are clear about whether they work with children or not and are clear about their plans for travel and that they know their names their addresses and suchlike and without that we cannot be sure that appropriate monitoring is in place. The other thing that I need to say about that is that this is not a public register; it's a register that is just for the use of Government agencies to assist in the monitoring. Now there's a reason we need to proceed with urgency. Because as I say those nearly 600 people have in effect been deregistered the police will no longer have line of sight of where they are. So if we can proceed with this bill under urgency we are then able to pop them back on the register and then the police will be able to continue to have that monitoring function. But the use of urgency shouldn't be taken lightly and I want to thank my colleagues from the Green Party for raising these issues with us. When we had our consultation across the House I knew that this would be a matter of concern for them. I just want to thank them for their consistency. We understand your position in the Green Party and we thank you for your consistency but we thank you mostly for engaging with the process and in the discussion. There has been some discussion about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as section 7 is applied here and I want to make it really clear that what we are indicating is there is sometimes a trade-off between the application of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and safety. I don't think there is any stronger imperative than to ensure the safety of our children and we want to make sure that the police are able to get people back on the register. I just want to make some final statements because this is not a piece of legislation that requires a lot of discussion. It's fairly clear what we need to do but I do need to say that we are part of a justice system that allows people to take appeals and have reviews and that is what has happened in this case. This particular person took this matter to the High Court. When that was not successful they took the matter to the Court of Appeal. When that was not successful they took it to the Supreme Court and even there there was not unanimous decision-making on that. The Supreme Court ruled three to two. So this is an issue that we know is vexatious I guess and sometimes as politicians we don't always get it right. But what I want to say today is that today is the opportunity for us to correct this and to make this right. I commend this bill to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.