Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): The numbers articulated by the previous speaker Ms Williams are as confronting a case for this bill to go through as any comment I think that has been stated in what has been a very thoughtful first reading. I just want to add probably my only intervention on to this and add to comments that were made by Mr Brown around the question about the individual who was the subject of the Supreme Court hearing. But before I do I'm struggling with the range of emotions that bubbled up listening to Golriz Ghahraman. I understand the Greens' stand on principle mostly but I also know that in the last 3½ years Green Party whakapapa has been set aside in the interests of pragmatism coalition agreements and other matters where somebody standing in the shoes of a Minister might need to act differently from when they would as a member of the Green Party. The waka jumping legislation is a very good example of that. I'm overwhelmingly disappointed that we can't have some unanimity across the House on this very important point because there are times when points of principle matter more than the rule of law because we are the lawmakers. If the rule of law is wrong we change it.Now this is a much more vexed issue—and I think that was the word the Minister was looking for rather than vexatious". I don't think she was referring to that in the context of the court discussion. I'll be very careful in my words around the courts because there is a strong convention that this place doesn't critique court decisions. But I do want to remind the House that when we were here I wasn't the police Minister; Paula Bennett was the police Minister when we changed this in 2017. I want to quote her from her first reading speech: "The principal Act does not make it sufficiently clear that registration applies to all offenders who are sentenced after the commencement of the Act regardless of when they were convicted. Sixty-seven offenders had been convicted [at that point] but not yet sentenced when the Act came into force."Now it is absolutely clear to me what the intention of this is and obviously the Supreme Court was split on that point. Section 6 of the Sentencing Act now just simply will not apply and to the degree that this is a form of punishment as articulated by Golriz Ghahraman I don't actually see it like that. It is part of a consequence of being convicted of heinous crimes. But actually the registration is not—it's not public. It's not something that we can go and look at and the police will use. So in that sense it's not a punishment per se but to the degree that it is here is my question for the Minister and I'd like her to—and Simeon Brown would also like her to—address this in the second reading. If this is a belts-and-braces fix because of the Supreme Court why would we then provide an exemption for one person the person who as Ms Williams has just told us was in possession of 1800 hideous videos 1200 still images of victims from who knows where?I don't understand. If we're patching it up why aren't we patching it up for everyone who was in this situation regardless of the fact that this person took the case all the way to the Supreme Court? We know this was wrong. We know what our intention was in 2017. And I'd really like to hear the explanation as far as the Minister can give it but I do think the legislature is required to at least understand why we're effectively passing a law that sets aside a punishment. Now we've done this in Parliament in my time but on incredibly rare occasions: World War I deserters iwi wrongly imprisoned and convicted in the 19th century—I can't remember the fellow's name; perhaps Mr Henare may remind us. They were the right things to do even though effectively we were expunging punishment. I don't feel comfortable at all supporting a bill that does that for a child sex offender. So this is troublesome. There may be a reason but in the absence of that I think when we come to the committee of the whole House something might need to be done about it. On that note I do join with members mostly across the House in strongly supporting this bill."