Sepuloni Carmel: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6640. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am standing to speak to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. As my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out we will be supporting the bill’s referral to the select committee. We are concerned about the fact that it is coming to the Social Services Committee. I do not mind considering this bill being on the Social Services Committee but we do wonder whether or not because this is a criminal justice issue the bill should actually be sent to the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee.I just want to acknowledge that across the House every single one of us would recognise that this is a major issue. I think it is important to look at a few of the facts that we see in the regulatory impact statement—facts that we should all be concerned about. Child sexual abuse is a serious problem in New Zealand. In 2012-13 505 offenders were convicted of 1819 sex offences against children up by over 20 percent from a decade earlier. We heard earlier from the other side that crime is down but when we hear those statistics and see that sexual offences against children are up by 20 percent from a decade earlier then we should be concerned. In 2012-13 the Accident Compensation Corporation had 779 sensitive claims lodged for sexual abuse against children under the age of 16 years. These are just the cases that actually led to a conviction. We know because of the research that there are thousands of cases of child sexual abuse out there every year that do not get reported let alone lead to a conviction. Child victims of sexual abuse are amongst the most vulnerable victims of crime and the resultant harm is often very serious and long-lasting. These are things that we can agree on in the House.My concern—and I will be asking questions about this when the bill comes before the select committee—is actually around the rehabilitation side in respect of sexual offenders. I am really interested to know—and I will be really interested to know and will be digging down on this—how successful the rehabilitation programmes that we have in place are particularly the ones that are run in our jails what the results are and what the research there is. What do we need to know as parliamentarians about this and what do the public need to know? Where do we need to be investing more funding and more resource in if the rehabilitation programmes that we have in place are not successful?I was recently quite disturbed by a case in west Auckland where a person was caught by the police in the library sexually offending against a child. Not only was that disturbing but what was particularly disturbing was that that particular person was working in the capacity of a social worker for a social service in west Auckland and had committed a similar crime 25 years earlier. And yet that person was still able to work in that position of social worker and was able to reoffend. I am going to go down the track of talking about the need to have a qualified and registered workforce working with our children as my colleague Jacinda Ardern alluded to before and I am going to take this opportunity to bring up the fact that a report that recently came out highlighted the need to have a more qualified workforce working with vulnerable children.Tomorrow in the House we have a members’ day and my bill the Social Workers Registration (Mandatory Registration) Amendment Bill will be coming up. It is about moving towards the mandatory registration of social workers. I bring this up because I am reflecting on that particular social worker in west Auckland who sexually offended against a young child in the library and who was working for a social service at the time in the capacity of a social worker. Unfortunately all too often the people who are committing these offences are either family members or people in trusted positions. So I think we have a moral obligation as a Parliament to make sure that we are holding to account the people who are in those trusted positions or working with vulnerable children. I am hoping that tomorrow the National Government will consider supporting my member’s bill to make social worker registration mandatory.We are not opposed to certain types of information sharing between departments—in this case it would be corrections and police—but there are concerns though about how information will be shared. Anne Tolley has said that in some cases where there is a significant threat to the safety of children information from the register may be released to a third party such as the parent or guardian of a child or a teacher or caregiver responsible for a child. My concern with that is that the National Government’s speakers on the bill have said that on the one hand this will not be a public register. The register will not apparently be public but will be available to authorised police corrections staff and authorised staff from relevant agencies such the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand.Then though we have Anne Tolley the Minister for Social Development saying that where there is a significant threat to the safety of children information from the register may be released to a third party such as the parent or guardian of a child or a teacher or caregiver. I guess that we are just seeking clarification on that because actually if that information is going to the third party such as the examples that have been given here then it actually is going public. So on the one hand to say that this register will not be public and will be going toonly these agencies and then on the other to say that in some circumstances it can go to a third party—including the guardian of a child or a teacher or caregiver—it then becomes really blurred. Is this a public register or is this not a public register? If it is a public register then the Government really needs to name it that and be very transparent about that. At the moment I am a little bit concerned that it is a little murky.I just want to point out the fact that there should be a mechanism for review to be removed from the register if offenders have not offended in a very long time. This has been brought up but this is something that we will need to discuss at the select committee. There are so many issues digging down on this that we are going to have to have discussions about at the select committee which does take me back to my concern as to whether this is well-suited with the Social Services Committee or as my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out earlier whether it would have a better fit with the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee given that this really is a criminal justice issue.It is important to manage any risks to children and the community posed by convicted child sex offenders who have come to the end of their sentences or are serving non-custodial sentences. We do accept that this bill will allow for the tracking of convicted child sex offenders in the community to be used as a tool to try to prevent reoffending. If it does assist with preventing reoffending then of course we will support this. But we do need to acknowledge that this is not a silver bullet with regard to the very serious issue that we face as a country with child sex offenders and sex offences committed against children. There is much more that needs to be looked at. This is one possible way in which we can try to mitigate the risk but it definitely is not the silver bullet to resolving the issues that we have in this country with sexual offences against children.