Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I spoke on the original legislation when it came to the House and I can recall the fulsome debates that we had—and some of them have been relitigated in the House tonight. But there was lots of debate around the necessity for a register and the cost and as parties we were able to articulate our particular positions and why we thought it was important or not to have a sex offender register.I also recall that at the time many of us were quoting a very real experience that was occurring in our community in that there was a sex offender who had been released into the Māngere area. This was used as an example to demonstrate the absolute heightened sense of fear and insecurity that those parents felt about the location of that person within their community—within the vicinity I think of a school or a preschool at the time.I bring this up because there is nothing that is more important to us as members of Parliament than ensuring the safety of our people. Public safety has got to be one of the most paramount areas of concern to us and the safety of children is at the top of that particular list. We must ensure that we debate these matters to the satisfaction of the people of New Zealand so that they feel comfortable and confident that their legislators are getting this absolutely right.We have heard that the primary legislation as it was passed has meant that there are in effect potentially 107 sex offenders who are not eligible to be on the sex offender register. That must cause a great deal of anxiety for some communities—those communities that expressed concern during the discussion of the primary piece of legislation—and we cannot ignore those concerns. We cannot dismiss them despite the fact that we are back in the House to fix that up because it actually speaks to the original angst that sat behind the legislation and was expressed by many parties in the House.So what is it that we are actually doing here today? We are here to fix up that piece of legislation to incorporate those people who were originally missed out of the original legislation—those sex offenders serving a qualifying sentence who are still subject to conditions or requirements relating to that sentence or were yet to be sentenced for a qualifying offence under the Act. The date of the Act—14 October 2016—is an important feature of that because there were people who were sentenced prior to that date and people who were sentenced after that date who were not captured by the original legislation which is why we are here today fixing this up. So I just want to reiterate my first point which is that this is about public safety and ensuring that we capture those 107 offenders who are not currently on the legislation as we are required to do.The second point I want to make is that we have argued and debated already in this first reading about why we are actually here in the first place fixing up Government legislation and whether the Social Services Committee was the most appropriate place for the legislation to be examined. That may or may not be the case but it does speak to the requirement that we have to examine very closely each and every word nuance and piece of text that this legislation is seeking to correct because it could have the impact of detaining somebody—you know restricting somebody's freedom restricting their ability to be active in the community as this piece of legislation will do.So we must actually call upon ourselves to examine how we examine legislation whether it is in the select committee process or when we are examining legislation as part of the Committee of the whole House. We should actually take some responsibility to ensure that we look at legislation really closely—that is our job—but it also speaks to the suitability for the Minister for Social Development actually being responsible for this piece of legislation because the original primary legislation actually had three components to it. Not only was it about social development but it was also about the sharing of information between Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development and it was also about the impacts of justice and the requirements for the police to monitor people who are on the register. So my point in that is that there were three primary agencies who were involved in the development of the legislation and I do agree that perhaps the examination should have gone to the Justice and Electoral Committee or to the Law and Order Committee. There is a significant aspect of the bill that sat in that jurisdiction but there were also the implications around social development and housing within it.I just want to finish by making a point about urgency. Now that we are in urgency wanting to correct this piece of legislation we should actually take the time to make sure that we get this piece of legislation absolutely right. I know there was some talk about truncating the process. We will not be able to actually allow members of the public to examine this. I guess in many ways that is kind of appropriate but I just want to go back to my previous point—that in the examination of the primary legislation something was missed. Not only was it missed not only are we doing a tidy-up but we are actually inserting clauses that were missed completely. So it is absolutely critical that we take the time during the Committee of the whole House on this piece of legislation to make sure that we get everything in there that we should so that we are not coming back here with other people—107 sex offenders; I find that number actually quite staggering considering the requirement of the primary legislation. But I am hopeful that we will actually examine this legislation fully and that we are not having to come back and do another fix-up in the future.