Davis Kelvin; Tisch LindsayKELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): When I was the principal of Kaitāia Intermediate School I heard in the course of 3 weeks of 13 instances of sexual violence against children—not all from my school but across the Kaitāia area. In every single one of those 13 cases of sexual violence against children not one of those children was offended against by some dirty sleazy person in an overcoat jumping out from behind a bush in a park. The offender was somebody whom they knew whom they loved and whom they should have been able to trust. All they wanted was for the offending to stop. They wanted to feel safe. They did not want their family's name to be dragged through the courts or put on a register that is open to the public. They did not want themselves to be identified as children and have their character perhaps put under the spotlight. They simply wanted the offending to stop and to be safe. If this register was to be made public it would be a disincentive for people for children to report that someone in their family or some friend had offended against them. It would be a disincentive and therefore it would in fact make children across New Zealand even more unsafe. We want children to be safe but doing something or implementing something that has no research to back it up is just silly. According to the member from New Zealand First Darroch Ball we have research albeit from overseas that does not back these registers but he did not present any evidence saying Here's the evidence that says that these public registers actually work." When we walked last year from Auckland to Cape Reinga to raise awareness around sexual violence we had three mantras. We want people to speak out if they are survivors of sexual violence we want people to speak out if they are bystanders around sexual violence—so if they see something they speak out—and we want people to speak out if they are perpetrators or have harmful sexual thoughts and are at risk of actually harming. If somebody is going to disclose "Yeah I actually have really inappropriate thoughts about my grandson or granddaughter." or "I've actually offended against them." but they know that their name may go on a public register that will be a disincentive to people saying "Hey I need help. I need help. I want to stop this offending."Darroch Ball: Who says that Kelvin? Who says that?KELVIN DAVIS: Who says that? Go and talk to Russell Smith from Korowai Tūmanako. Talk to WellStop. Have you spoken Darroch Ball to anybody who actually works with offenders? You are standing up there and you are spouting off about research that does not exist and I am saying to go and talk to the people who actually work in the field who actually work with offenders who actually know what they are talking about. I will give you Russell Smith's phone number right now and you go and talk to him. These people know what is going on. They work with offenders. They work with teenage offenders. I know that this bill would not put a child or someone under 18 years of age on a register I believe. But Russell said to me: "Kelvin this is a really complex issue." There is no sort of silver bullet. There is no sort of blunt instrument that can be used because when we are talking about sexual offenders what do we label the 8-year-old child who has actually offended against somebody? Do we label them? Do we put them in this box of a sexual offender when they can actually—if you work with them early and rehabilitate them—grow up to be perfectly functioning adults. But if you put this label on them and that label sort of sticks it just absolutely makes it impossible for people to be rehabilitated. The practical application of a public register would be really difficult. In my street there are about 40 houses. What happens if a neighbour moves out and another neighbour moves in—do all 39 other households then go and check this register? What happens if the person is not an offender then another neighbour moves out—do we go and check the new neighbour? It just ends up being almost impossible to manage checking every single person who moves into your street or into your neighbourhood—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry—the member's time has expired."