Borrows Chester: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:692] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to take a short call in respect of the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill just to restate a couple of points. As has been conceded the way in which Parliament speaks to judges and the courts and indicates to them that it wants a certain line to be taken on sentencing is to do that through legislation—we all know that. The fact is that this bill underlines society’s abhorrence at the state of affairs in our country that sees us offend horribly against young children and at the way that that offending is exploited maybe through the media and also by those who want to gain points. So although there has been a lot of talk about this sort of offending over the campaign period it is important when the campaign finishes and we come before the House to restate quite clinically and quite unemotionally that we want something to be done about this matter. 
The fact is that in this country we have a terrible tragedy whereby a significant number of our young people—not necessarily a lot of them comparatively—are set up to fail. We know they are set up to fail and there are a number of strategies we can take to be able to address that. This measure is but one of them. When people offend against children we not only have the abhorrence of child abuse and the victimisation of those children but we also have the creation of offenders further down the track. It is estimated that about 70 percent of the people who sexually abuse children were sexually abused themselves as children and those of us who have worked in the field would estimate that the percentages are much higher than that. The same thing of course relates to child physical abuse. 
Although we mourn the names that have been used in the House this morning where on the continuum of child abuse do we stop calling young people victims and start calling them offenders? When young offenders start to offend in this way—and we have seen this in respect of the Nia Glassie case—we have to accept and understand that they too were offended against. I believe that it is incumbent on every member of this House to take whatever step he or she can to rail against that bit by bit through small and large pieces of legislation. 
The Hon Clayton Cosgrove made a significant point and that is that we had consulted with the police and a number of other organisations in respect of this issue in preparing this bill. The fact is that when we are dealing with all those agencies through a day-to-day and day-by-day process those agencies expect us to do some stuff when we come to this House. They expect us to know and to take on board the information that we have been discussing over the months and years—and in some cases over the decades—so that when we finally get into a position where we can have some influence on legislation that is intended to make things better we do it. We should not muck around and come back with some fairly small and narrow pieces of legislation; we should just use the initiative and expertise we have and the confidence that is placed in us to just do it.