Clendon David: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6643. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would like to just begin my comments by saying—not wishing to labour a point already well made by our Labour colleagues; and there is a terrible pun in there that was unintended—that the matter of the Minister’s choice of select committee does seem peculiar. I do not wish to impugn the Social Services Committee in any way—I am sure that it is a splendid committee.According to the advice on our very own parliamentary website however “The Social Services Committee considers matters relating to housing senior citizens social development veterans’ affairs and work and income support.” and I struggle to see how the content of this bill fits under that umbrella of issues to be considered by that committee. It is not a matter of academic interest; it is a genuine concern that committees build up a level of expertise and experience in their area around specific matters of interest. The Law and Order Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee are accustomed to working on legislation around offending around courts around corrections and with police and I really am puzzled as to why you would not send it to one of those committees. So be it.The Greens are supporting this bill going to the select committee at least essentially based on the reality that we are willing to engage with any proposition that is aimed at protecting children. It is fair to say I think that most forms of offending against the law will find a level of tolerance in some parts of society. With traffic offences some drug offences and breaking the rules around tax you will find a cohort of people who are willing to tolerate and even participate in some of those things. Sex offending against children is abhorrent I would argue to all New Zealanders. It is something that none of us can tolerate nor should we and so any mechanism that might reduce the risk to our children is something that we are willing to engage in.We will engage in this process in good faith and we will endeavour to keep open minds but the first most important question is: will the establishment of a child sex offender register make our children safer? That is the evidence and the information that we will be looking for in the select committee. We will be wanting to hear the evidence of experts and we will be wanting to engage with the research to be persuaded that actually that is the case because such evidence as there is seems at best ambivalent about whether these registers actually do any good in the real world or whether they are simply a means of appearing to do some good. As I say we will engage with that in good faith and we will be interested to see what the outcome is.Having said that even if that primary question about whether a register could potentially protect children is answered to our satisfaction we would still have some fairly significant concerns about this bill as drafted. Not least of all are concerns around the matters described in the section 7 report from the Attorney-General that indicates that the bill as drafted is inconsistent with sections 9 and 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act around disproportionately severe treatment.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Doesn’t listen to anything I say. No one listens.DAVID CLENDON: Ha ha! I may quote back to the Minister on that comment but for the moment it is double jeopardy and the finding of the Attorney-General is that this bill is inconsistent in a way that cannot be justified. That is a very serious matter. It is not a nuanced commentary; it is quite clear-cut and it is quite black and white and that is something that will have to be attended to and remedied.The main thing about this matter is that once a person is on the register for some offences then there is no going back—it is for life. There is no possibility or no acknowledgment of reform. A person may over time step away from offending and their risk profile could drop to zero and yet that person would for ever be on the register. I think it is important to recognise that the register—OK a name on a piece of paper—is actually a great deal more than that.The Minister did indicate some of the implications of being on this register. It includes name date of birth address names of any children living at an address or where a registered person may be living details of any club or organisation with which they are affiliated that might also have child participation—and if you think that one through that would include organisations like Forest and Bird. In fact it is hard to think of any social club or group where children might not be involved. Also included are details of motor vehicles all and any phone numbers details of service providers for phones details of internet service providers and details of login names usernames and passwords. This is an incredibly intrusive list of requirements. This is an extraordinarily comprehensive array of information about a human being. It is almost zero privacy and the significance of that I will come to when I mention the security or otherwise of such a register and our ability to keep such a register private.The fact is that if a person chooses to travel from their place of residence they must give 48 hours’ notice and they must indicate where they are going to be staying and the names of any children who might be at that address. And somebody might be obliged to do this for 8 years 15 years or for life—long past the point at which they may represent a risk to society or particularly a risk to our children.The cost of this legislation or rather of maintaining such a register has been commented on. It is in the many hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of that burden we understand would fall on the policing budget which is already inadequate. The police are already underfunded to the point where they are struggling to provide an acceptable level of service despite their very best efforts and despite their very successful attempts to find efficiencies to find ways to do more with less. Nevertheless the cost of this legislation in terms of its implementation would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and that is OK—if that is going to actually protect our children then yes. The price ticket is not irrelevant but it certainly becomes a matter of less importance.But the worst-case scenario is that if we put this thing in place and it does not work we have spent a great deal of money that could have otherwise been spent on provisions and on mechanisms that would help protect our children—everything from education through to treatment through to social mechanisms that might be a much better use of that money than spending it on something that may or may not work.I mentioned the matter of privacy and Carmel Sepuloni I think outlined some of the dilemmas there. It is very difficult to have any confidence in the fact that a register of this nature would remain confidential—private—given the number of agencies that might potentially have access to it. We have rather a poor history in New Zealand. I will not sheet responsibility home to any particular Government or any particular time but we do not have a particularly good history of keeping secrets. Once databases and their information are in the domain of the public sector it is very difficult to guarantee their long-term security. That would be an extraordinary invasion given as I said that people’s log-in details their passwords to get into their internet accounts and their emails would be part of the information that could be accessible and indeed could be accessed by people who ought not to do that.Clause 39 of the bill as it is drafted would be something of a deal-breaker for the Greens. It says that the guidelines which will be prepared by the commissioner etc. “may authorise the use of information contained in the register for a purpose other than the purpose for which the information was obtained” with the criterion being “if an authorised person reasonably believes such use is necessary to … prevent or reduce a threat to public safety …”—end of story. It goes on to talk about particular concerns around protecting children but the bottom line is that this information could—at the whim of an authorised person—be used for any purpose on the grounds that it might prevent or reduce a threat to public safety. I would be less concerned if “public safety” was defined anywhere in this bill. It is not. One could draw some exceedingly long bows and provide this information on the flimsiest of excuses based on the wording of the current clause 39. I do not think that is acceptable. I do not think we could be part of supporting that and I hope the select committee attends to that particular provision.The point has been made that the bill is intended to be retrospective—that it will apply to people who have been convicted before the passing of this legislation. We would have some serious reservations about that and Jacinda Ardern in her contribution highlighted a couple of potential pitfalls where people may be captured under this legislation when in fact it was never the intention of the legislation to include those people within it.So as I say—going back to where I began—we will certainly engage with this in good faith. We will look at the evidence we will listen to the research and we will seek out good information and make a decision as to whether or not we think a register would actually protect our children from this most heinous of crimes—sexual offending against them—and our actions from that point will be dependent on the information that we receive. Kia ora.