Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): A couple of speakers have just made the point that this bill seeks to clarify the scope of the retrospective provisions of the primary legislation and indeed it does that. In so doing it will increase the number of people who will be subject to the provisions of this bill—the very onerous provisions of this bill. So the reality is that this will increase the blanket nature of the legislation if you like. More people will be captured by it.The bill also in the explanatory note to the amendment bill we are debating now makes the point that it creates an information stream platform so that personal information—a great deal of personal information drilling down even to people's phone numbers the name of their IT suppliers and other matters that we would normally consider private—will be available on this register. There are a number of organisations to whom this register will be available: primarily Police Corrections the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and the Housing New Zealand Corporation.It is concerning also that there is a sort of catch-all phrase in the primary legislation that says that all of that information which will now be gathered about more people than was happening up until the passing of this bill will be available to people for reasons other than the original purpose of this Act if in the best judgment of some qualified person it is appropriate to do that in the interests of public safety. There is no definition either in this new amendment or in the primary legislation about what public safety looks like.The point I would make is that there are a large number of people who will have access to the information and we are told there will be over 100 people who will be newly admitted to that rather unfortunate roll-call of people who will be named and have their information on this register. I think we can be reasonably assured that Police and Corrections have a bit of a track record in keeping confidential information confidential. It is probably imperfect; few systems few organisations are 100 percent effective in keeping confidential information private. But I have to say equally that those two organisations do it as a matter of course—it is part of their core business if you like.The Ministry of Social Development: to some extent yes it is always going to have access to people's private data—quite intimate information one could say about incomes health statuses perhaps and all the rest of it. It has perhaps not quite as good a record of keeping that information secure. When we get to the Housing New Zealand Corporation I suspect that there is no culture in that organisation of particularly protecting people's information people's data and we are talking about very very detailed information about people—just about every aspect of a person's life once they are added to this register—and of course under this bill there will be more people in that situation.The likelihood of leaks is almost 100 percent. It is almost inevitable. We did a quick calculation—assisted as I recall by the now Hon Alfred Ngaro the member who gave us some useful numbers—that indicated that in MSD alone something in excess of 10000 people potentially could have access to this information and Police and Corrections of course have very large staffs. It is almost inevitable that the information will leak. The consequence of that is significant. We know that not only the offenders themselves then become subject to condemnation through to potentially physical violence in the community but sadly so too do their families who are tarred with that unfortunate brush even in situations where families are doing their very best to take responsibility for their family member who has offended who are working very hard with that person to get them back to prevent any further behaviours of the sort that got them into trouble in the first place—trying to redeem them trying to rehabilitate them.Nevertheless when this information almost inevitably leaks the impact on those families will be significant. Children at school and women and men just going about their daily business in the community be it shopping or as members of sports teams—whatever it might be; expanding the scope of this legislation which effectively is what this amendment bill does simply means there will be that many more people and their families subject potentially to that form of abuse in the community unfortunately and that is not a happy situation. That is not based on supposition; we know from experience internationally anywhere and everywhere these registers have been incorporated. In some countries in fact they are public registers. Mostly there is an attempt to keep them private but in reality the contents inevitably do leak and that is a very unfortunate outcome for those people who are subject to them.The matter of cost has been touched on. Again with the expansion of the catchment if you like the increase through this amendment of the number of people who will be subject to this legislation—it is more and more of the justice dollar that is being spent on we are told proactively monitoring these people. There is really nothing in there that is likely to deter in fact. We know from all the evidence that the best way to spend the dollar in that area—in that justice sector; specifically in the management of sex offenders—is in treatment programmes. That is simply the reality. The amount of money we were given a year or so ago was to the tune of slightly under $150 million as a cost of establishing and running this register. That is an enormous amount of money put alongside the—I will not say trivial—very small amounts of funding and often insecure funding sources that are available for agencies endeavouring to deliver the sort of treatment to offenders that is likely to deter their reoffending and to get them back into our society with a very low-risk and even ultimately perhaps a zero-risk profile.So the so-called clarification of the scope of the retrospective application of this Act will actually increase the mischief—in the way we see it—that potentially will and very likely will directly result from the application of this bill from the provisions of the primary legislation and of this new proposed amendment. Thank you.