Doocey Matt: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDoocey Matt: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6638. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is important for me to speak in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill at its first reading. I would just like to commend the Minister for Social Development the Hon Anne Tolley for all the work she does in the space of protecting children and vulnerable children. I would not say necessarily that it is a pleasure to rise to speak to a bill around child sex offenders but I think as the father of a young daughter—and many people in this room are parents grandparents uncles and aunties—and for people throughout the country that it is something that we will join together in support of in making this country safer. It is a bill that is focused on offenders who are over 18 who have committed crimes on children who are under 16.Child sexual abuse is a crime and this Government is tough on crime. It is tough on the causes of crime. When we look at crime in New Zealand at the moment we do have one of our lowest crime rates since the 1970s. I think our Better Public Services target around crime of around 20 percent has already been surpassed but as this bill demonstrates there is always more to do. That is what this Government is committed to and what this Government is focused on doing. Look at the work we are doing around children and vulnerable young children. Look at the release of the State of Care 2015: What we learnt from monitoring Child Youth and Family report from the Children’s Commissioner and the response of the Minister and the Government in looking at the modernisation and the overhaul of Child Youth and Family Services as well as Children’s Teams to work with some of the most vulnerable young children before they go into care and even things like raising the age of free GP care up to the age of 13.This bill is about establishing and creating a register that will collect information—things like names and addresses of child sex offenders. It is also about building a risk-based multi-agency management framework. I think that if we look at that sentence around the risk base and unpack it for a minute obviously child sex offenders pose a risk to people in the community and it is about understanding that risk and thinking through how that might play out in a community. The phrase “multi-agency” is about ensuring that all the agencies are working together and are joined up and that might be the police the Department of Corrections and you could imagine the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand understanding that a child sex offender could be living in a house under their oversight with a new partner and children.When we look at the regulatory impact statement it is interesting that when we benchmark ourselves internationally and look at the research and evidence it is very much a growing field. It is a field that is still developing evidence around the use of a risk register as well as long-term monitoring of child sex offenders. We can look at a piece of research from the UK in 2011. It was around the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements or MAPPA which was introduced by the British Government in 2001. What it identified from its research was that there was a reduction in reconviction rates amongst sex offenders between 2001 and 2014. That is when they compared that with a cohort of 1998 to 2000 albeit that the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements was introduced in 2001.So what Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements evidenced was that through risk-profiling as well as risk management of the offenders it was able to understand how it could cause a reduction in reoffending. Let us be clear: any reduction in reoffending is beneficial. If you look at some of the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement you see that there are some references around child sex offenders those who are serving or future ones having less privacy of personal information through this bill. Depending on the severity of the crime of course some people will go on the risk register for 8 years some child sex offenders for 15 years and some for life. By being placed on this register there will be less privacy of their personal information but I think that is tough. At the end of the day we are putting children first and that is what we need to do. I think this bill puts children first. I take the comments of the previous speaker Jacinda Ardern about public disclosure and how that probably does not do the children any good itself but I think that collecting this information and having a multi-agency response and monitoring are the right things to do in looking at recidivism and in looking at reoffending to ensure that we are managing right some very high-risk criminals and putting young people safely in our communities.So when we look at the three types of information sharing that this bill is talking about for child sex offenders when they go on the register it is about facilitating more personal information which police and the Department of Corrections can collect and discuss within themselves. It is also about ensuring that additional personal information can be shared with Government agencies such as the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand. But it is also about allowing the police and the Department of Corrections if they feel it is right to disclose personal and private information to people outside of those Government departments if they feel that a child sex offender is at risk of reoffending.This bill creates a decision-making power for the courts and that was clearly stated in the departmental disclosure statement. It has about four categories. If a child sex offender is found guilty of a qualifying offence but is given a non-custodial sentence a court may make an order for a child sex offender who poses a risk to the lives or sexual safety of a child or children or other offenders who have received a custodial sentence and they will automatically be put on this register. But there is also another category which the previous speaker alluded to and that is New Zealand nationals who commit these offences overseas and then are deported at the end of their sentence. I know that in my electorate this has occurred recently and there was fear and concern in the community that there was no oversight of this person who was coming back from another country and reintegrating in a community in New Zealand. So I think this will allay some of that fear for the local community and they will understand that police and the Department of Corrections will have oversight of this child sex offender.I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.