Sepuloni Carmel: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11666. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am standing up on the behalf of Labour to say that at this stage we support the bill but we do have major reservations. Those reservations are based on the evidence that we have had put before us.I do want to address something that was said by another member of the House and that is that anyone who might oppose this bill is not putting children at the centre of the debate. I think that is incredibly unfair. I think no one in this House can say that there is any party or any individual that does not care about the welfare of children—in this case in relation to sexual offences against children. There is no one in this House who does not care about that. Our job here is to be rational in our thinking to use evidence to guide our decision making because it is so easy to be guided by emotion. This is an emotional issue. This is an emotional issue for us in this House. This was an emotional issue for the people who came to make submissions. It is an emotional issue for most of the country actually. Keeping that in mind we just need to remind ourselves that our job is to make rational decisions on behalf of the country and to use an evidence base to make those decisions.Of course we support the intent of the bill and that is to reduce sexual reoffending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders by providing government agencies with the information needed to monitor child sex offenders in the community and by providing up-to-date information that assists the police to more rapidly resolve cases of child sex offending. I do not think anyone would dispute that. The dispute would come in respect of whether or not we need a child sex offender register to be able to have that kind of data information-sharing between government agencies. During this processso many people have felt misled or have been misled in some ways by the fact that the title of this bill says “Child Sex Offender Register” because the assumption is that this will be a public register and of course we know that that is not the intention. That is why New Zealand First which does think it should be a public register has put up or will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to say that it should be a public register. That is why we on our side of the House though are putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to say that it should not be a public register and that there should be no doubt that it is not a public register.One of the concerns that was raised by many of the submitters and a concern that we now have based on the evidence that we have had put before us is that a child sex offender register can give a false sense of security. Giving it some context I think we really need to look at the wider issue that we have at hand and that is sexual offending against children. If we look at the most recent statistics for New Zealand we see that one in three girls in New Zealand will be sexually abused and one in seven boys in New Zealand will be sexually abused. The sad case is that only 10 out of 100 sexual abuse crimes are actually reported only three out of 100 sex crimes will actually make it to court and only one—only one—out of 100 sexual abuse crimes in this country will actually lead to conviction. So when we are talking about a sex offender register we are talking only about the sexual offenders who have actually been convicted who can go on that register. It is only one out of 100 of the sex crimes that happen in this country that will lead to conviction so we are talking about a very small part of a huge issue that we have as a country.A recent statistic that I saw as well was that more than 23 percent of women who participated in a recent Auckland study reported having been sexually abused as children and most of those women reported that it was a family member who committed the sexual offence. The register makes us all feel very comfortable in this place it makes us all feel very comfortable in the public and as a country but actually the reality is that the people whom our children are most likely to be sexually abused by are family members or close friends of family. It is not the stranger whom we are talking about here; it is certainly not the person who has been convicted of a sexual offence because so few are actually convicted of a sexual offence. So to give people this false sense of security is concerning. We are not resolving the issues. We would not even be making a dent in the problem for those children who are at risk of being sexually offended against by introducing a child sex offender register.It was raised by several submitters that this register is going to cost a lot of money to actually administer. We are talking about $146 million over 10 years—that is $14 million a year. The agencies that actually deal with children with women and with men who have been sexually offended against—those agencies have come to us and said: “There are better ways to spend that money. There are more effective ways to address this issue.” There are more effective ways to spend that money and that is a very valid point. This is a big chunk of money going towards a tool that evidence tells us will not be effective in stopping sexual abuse against children.We did have over 100 submissions on this bill and the ones that I was actually reading up on before I came to the House today were the ones that are from the people who actually work in this sector. They are the people who work with children and with adults who have been sexually abused or who have had a sexual offence committed against them and overwhelmingly those organisations that actually undertake this work—individuals who have committed their lives to working with people who have been sexually offended against—are actually against a child sex offender register for many reasons including some of the ones that I have just stated: the cost and the fact that that money could be channelled into more effective measures to stop sexual offending against children and also the false sense of security that they are concerned it will give people.There were some submissions by these organisations that raised the fact that this register could serve to further isolate the offender and could actually result in the offender being more likely to go on to reoffend. We have to take those concerns seriously particularly when they have been raised by reputable organisations and reputable individuals in those organisations who have committed their lives to this work. I want to quote a couple of them just so we get an understanding of the thinking that has gone on within these organisations.We have got one here from the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse. To quote from the submission: “The vision of the Clearinghouse is that families whānau and relationships are healthy respectful and free from violence. Our purpose is to provide access to high quality research and information on family and whānau violence. We are committed to working towards the elimination of all forms of family and sexual violence including child sexual abuse. However we do not support the establishment of a child sex offender register. This is because there is little to no evidence that registers reduce rates of child sex offending. We believe the high level of resourcing a register would require would be far more effectively spent on initiatives which have evidence of effectiveness. Further information including references to relevant research and our recommendations are [included in this submission].” That is just one of many of the reputable organisations that submitted on this bill and have actually said to us that we need to rethink it.We in the Labour Party are in the position where we will support this bill at this stage through to the next stage. We will have amendments that we want to put up in the Committee stage and we really have to think through whether or not we will support this bill at third reading. We need to know that this is actually going to make a difference in people’s lives and that it is actually going to assist us in reducing sexual offences against children before we can support this particular bill. Thank you very much.Amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority agreed to.