Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeChild Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11656. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 1 June.JONO NAYLOR (National): Talofa lava. It has kind of quietened down a little now really has it not? I have got some oxygen to use up. It is a great pleasure to rise and talk on this the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. I think we have got to remember the paramountcy of this bill is the protection of children from recidivist offenders. That is the primary reason this bill is here and the idea is that by having such a register we can ensure young people will be as safe in our country as they possibly can be.Over the course of the Social Services Committee process there were a wide variety of submissions. Some people of course were submitting suggesting that the register should be publicly available others were concerned there was an impost on human rights for those who would be subject to these reporting conditions for the rest of their life and others felt it was an ongoing punishment for people who had already served their time. The select committee weighed this up pretty carefully and I think it was a good process. We were able to look at the pros and cons of all those things and we were able to make a couple of changes which I will touch on in just a moment.I think the important thing to convey to those people who were adamant that it needs to be a public register I think what we can say is that by having this register which is being held by the police and will be available to certain other agencies as required we can still give the public some confidence that these people are known to the authorities that they are at least being monitored to some degree and that it does not need to be publicly available. I think we have got the balance about right in that.Just coming to some of the changes that were made in the select committee process there was a bit of concern that for some people this is to some degree a life sentence—that they would not ever be able to be rid of these reporting standards. So there are some changes that are being brought forward that are now a part of the bill and will allow for those who are on this register to be able to apply for suspension of those reporting conditions after a period of 15 years. I think that seems an appropriate balance. It gives them an ability to apply and if they have been compliant and have been showing there is very very low risk of them reoffending then it enables those people to come off the requirements for reporting and I think that is a good balanced approach to it.I think the other thing that has come through and again was running parallel to the process of Dr Jian Yang’s member’s bill which we managed to sort of incorporate in part into this bill now was that if somebody is on this register and wants to change their name they will need to apply to the Commissioner of Police before they go off to the Department of Internal Affairs to change their name for any reason. Again that provides a certain level of protection going forward. I am pleased to endorse the bill. I think it has come out of the select committee process in better condition than when it came in. I think it is going to be a bill that is going to be useful to the people of New Zealand. It is going to I think help promote a greater level of safety from recidivist offenders and I commend the bill to the House. Fa’afetai.DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would agree with the previous speaker Jono Naylor on one point he made which was that the bill has come out of the Social Services Committee in somewhat better shape than it went in. However the Greens initially supported this legislation to the select committee with some reservations because I guess sex offending against children is universally abhorred. It is one of the most offensive forms of criminal activity possible. There has been talk of registers and their merits or not for some time. We went into that process with an open mind to investigate the evidence and to see whether in fact there is value in establishing something like a child sex offender register in New Zealand.Our conclusion is that there is no value in that proposition. We will not be supporting this bill in future readings. We are basing that on the evidence we heard at select committee. It was a good committee. There were one or two changes made that have improved the bill from the initial draft. But overall we simply do not see that there will be a sufficient return on investment if you like—and I mean that in a general not only in an economic sense—in establishing something like this. There is overall a distinct lack of evidence that these registers actually do anything to make our children safer. There are a lot of economic and other costs along the way.The bill as it is drafted proposes an incredibly intrusive regime for people who may indeed have offended. We are concerned obviously about the section 7 Bill of Rights Act report. The concerns outlined in that section 7 report still stand. The bill does impose a disproportionate punishment. Yes I acknowledge that there is now the possibility that after 15 years a person might apply to have their name removed from that register. That is a small step. But still overall the punishment if you like is disproportionate. I mentioned the intrusive nature—everything down to people’s log-ons and passwords for their internet accounts their email accounts and the like would be open to inspection by all and sundry. And I do mean that. It is a point I will come back to in a moment.The Human Rights Commission was one of those that noted that the bill would be very costly. The regulatory impact statement document in the figures given by the officials indicates a cost of about $146 million over 10 years. On balance it is very hard to see how simply creating a list of names is going to give better value for $146 million over that period than would investment in such things as education programmes—educating families and their children on how to keep our kids safe—and treatment programmes.Despite some assertions to the contrary sex offenders can be rehabilitated. They can and often do change their behaviours. So investing $146 million in essentially creating a list of names with potential for significant negative knock-on effects we simply do not see as a smart way to spend scarce public sector dollars. The Council for Civil Liberties agrees with that point of view. It describes the bill as establishing a very harsh regime with very little justification while making no economic sense. The Law Society similarly expressed the view that the bill infringes on civil rights and freedoms and it made a positive alternative proposition that the very admirable intent of the bill which is to improve the safety of our children from potential offending of this sort could be achieved by allowing judges and indeed parole boards to impose a registration and reporting requirement in individual cases where the risk profile is seen as being so high that such a regime would be appropriate. I think that would be a much much better proposition a much more targeted proposition and a more effective and appropriate proposition than this sort of shotgun blanket approach that simply registers people for an offence and in many cases puts them on that list for life.I mentioned that the select committee had made some changes that we saw as being positive but not sufficient to make this legislation overall acceptable to us. The legislation names a number of agencies that would have access to the register. They include Police and the Department of Corrections and that would seem entirely appropriate. Both of those organisations are accustomed to routinely dealing with confidential information—confidential databases if you like. Then we get down to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). I am not sure how many people work for MSD but I suspect it is a large number. In the likelihood—Alfred Ngaro: 10100.DAVID CLENDON: Sorry?Alfred Ngaro: 10100.DAVID CLENDON: 10100—thank you Mr Ngaro; a man on top of his numbers clearly. That is a large number of people we would be relying on to keep a database confidential.Similarly Housing New Zealand—people in that organisation I suspect have no particular culture or experience in maintaining the very strict confidentiality of highly sensitive database information or material or whatever you call it. My point being of course that you would have many many thousands of people in fact with access to this database. The likelihood of its leaking—it is almost a certainty that all or part of that database of that register would quite quickly enter the public domain.The knock-on effect of that we know could be entirely negative. It could lead to what somebody last night referred to as vigilante action against people. We know from the evidence we saw at the select committee that for want of a better word “outing” people publicly drawing attention to people who may be back in the community and trying to live proper and decent lives making them the target of suspicion fear and often aggression is more likely to lead to them reoffending than if they are simply left to get on with their lives with appropriate positive support from within the community.Again we would be much better to restore and dramatically increase funding to projects like the Circles of Support and Accountability. We saw the Bond Trust recently which has a good record of working with paedophiles post-release and ensuring that they are protected in some cases from themselves and that other people are protected from them. It is doing that in a very positive low-key way. That funding of dare I say a trivial amount of $25000 has been withdrawn despite the fact that in the UK as we speak the funding for similar entities has been dramatically ramped up because it has proven to lower the likelihood of people—sex offenders specifically—reoffending. So you have got to pose the question: why are we spending many millions of dollars—$146 million—over 10 years on a project that is unlikely to result in improving the safety of our children when we are taking away small amounts of money from a project that has a track record of protecting those self-same children?Something that sits behind this legislation I believe—and we saw it spelt out very graphically in some submissions—is the proposition that sex offenders cannot be rehabilitated cannot cease their behaviours. That is simply patently untrue and we have good evidence that in fact there are many examples where people have offended against children but then have gone on to regret their actions to seek treatment and to remove themselves from that risk profile. There is no evidence to suggest no solid evidence to say that a register will deliver the outcomes that it seeks to achieve. We know there are alternative mechanisms for reducing the risk that certain offenders represent.I recently had a conversation with a fellow who works in this area as a support person for some serious and high-risk sex offenders. They know very well what does work and what can work. At every step they are running up against bureaucratic and economic barriers to implementing the programmes that we know do work. Although this is certainly well-intentioned legislation—anything that protects our kids from predators from sex offenders has got to be seen as a good thing—we have absolutely no confidence that this legislation will deliver positive outcomes and for that reason we will not be supporting it.DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I think that about 90 percent of that speech by David Clendon if not 99 percent of it was talking about the offender. If we continue to address this piece of legislation and this problem of child sex offending starting with the offender at the centre and as the foundation of the conversation we are going to get it wrong. We are going to get it wrong not only for the previous victims of child sex offending but also for the potential future victims of child sex offending. We will be supporting this bill because we do agree that at a minimum there needs to be a register. As we have heard not only today but also yesterday throughout the second reading speeches it is a complex and wide-ranging topic in that it encompasses quite a few issues. It is not a simple straightforward one-dimensional issue and that is why we see across the House the varying degrees of agreement or disagreement in opposition.There are a number of issues that New Zealand First has with this legislation and the way that it is implemented—the way that it is written. We have got some concerns and obviously we have got some opposing views as well. The main one for us is that New Zealand First believes that this register should be made publicly available. We have introduced a Supplementary Order Paper that will be discussed further through this process but we believe that it is absolutely essential that in order to put the protection and safety and rights of the children at the centre of this conversation the register needs to be made public.This is not a new groundbreaking piece of legislation. We have registers around the world that work and we have got evidence that shows that they work. Not only are there restricted registers but also there are actually countries that have publicly available registers. So we have 19 countries around the world that have fully functioning working registers right now and seven of those are either publicly available or have variations of being publicly available. A further 12 countries are considering using registers and are in the process of putting legislation through the House just like we are to create a register. This is not new. It is not groundbreaking legislation. Nowhere in those 19 countries that I have mentioned—they include Australia Canada the UK and the United States—is there any evidence that a register does not work. There is no evidence anywhere in those countries that states that it does not work.We heard the advice of the Green member who spoke who said that because there is no evidence that it does work we should not do it—because there is no evidence that it does work we should not do it. The only reason why you would choose to oppose it based on that fact is if you were leaning in favour of the offender. If you had any doubt whether a public register a register itself works—if you had any doubt—then putting the children first you would ensure that you put that register in place. If you have any doubt and the member is wrong and you do not put that register in place—and that member was wrong or that idea or concept was wrong—then who will suffer? It is the children. That is the stance that New Zealand First is taking. We need to ensure that we take that step not only to make a register but also to make it fully public.One of the issues that we have like I said in my opening statement is that this is not one-dimensional. It is not a simple concept. There are wide-ranging issues. But what some of the parties in this House are doing is they are literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They are throwing out the entire concept of having a register or the possibility of making it public because there are some issues that surround it or that fall out of having a register or of making it public. Anything that we have heard from some of the members who have spoken previously is only anecdotal; there is no actual evidence that it does not work. Those were the member’s own words—there was no evidence that it works. That was it.We have heard arguments today that have been about the offender’s rehabilitation or the ability for an offender to rehabilitate about reintegration and about issues with vigilantes. We have even heard about the offender’s human rights. But we have heard very little about public safety and the protection of our children which should be at the centre of this conversation. That is a fact—that is a fact. There is a need for a register. What needs to happen is that there needs to be—if the Green Party or other parties in this House want to concentrate on or invest in rehabilitation and reintegration and all of those things that the Green member talked about that is fine. But that does not mean that you throw out the entire concept of a register. That does not mean you throw out the entire concept of making that register public. That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.This conversation has turned into a perpetrator’s rights versus children’s rights. That is what has happened—the protection of the human rights of the perpetrator versus the right to protect children. We have heard about the issues that have come out. I have got some articles about things that have happened recently very recently that prove there is a need for a public register. We have had—and this is only in the last few months—a number of them: “Recidivist South Canterbury sex offender imprisoned.” He appeared on representative charges of indecently assaulting a female between 12 and 16 and this is a recidivist child sex offender. The judge said “You were convicted in 1991 of very similar offending. I assume it was a less frequent series of assaults.” and his major quote was “It is inescapable it is part of your character.”—it is part of your character.That is why we have got hundreds of convicted child sex offenders being released into society every year and we do not know where they are. In fact I have got the statistics here about just how many. I will be interested to see whether members in this House know just how many child sex offender convictions have occurred in the last 10 years. The number is 4000. In the last 10 years there have been 4000 convictions for child sex offending. That is 400 a year. That is more than one a day—more than one a day.If we are talking about an issue with name suppression there is a misapprehension out there in that people think that there is a huge number of child sex offenders who get name suppression. In fact only 10 percent of child sex offenders get name suppression. The vast majority of child sex offenders do not get name suppression. If we are talking about the reoffending rates of these offenders these criminals we are talking in the vicinity of—because there have been quite ranging numbers and percentages of reoffending rates—around the 20 to 25 percent mark. That means that over the last decade of the 4000 offences there have been a thousand offenders who have been reoffending.I have an article here that actually takes the views the comments and the point of view of the victims. The headline says “Sex offender register should name paedophiles …” and the article says: “Sex abuse victims say a child sex offender register is needed and they want it to go one step further by making the names public.” These are the victims. These are the victims’ voices which it seems no other party in this House is listening to. A victim says: “name suppression protects the perpetrator and not the victim. It hasn’t protected me as a person at all. I live a life sentence they serve—if they do get convicted a few years and then they get out and then they can freely travel wherever they wish and continue to do it they just get smarter. … The Law Society does not support a register and argues the bill before a select committee in parliament takes a blanket approach treating all sex offenders the same. It says the proposed register should be re-designed so that it is aimed only at serious child sex offenders who are likely to re-offend. … Helena Watson said encouraging silence feeds their ability to reoffend.”What an action of not creating a public register does is it is feeding those offenders with the ability to reoffend. At the basis and the heart of this is giving the ability to parents in the community to know where these sex offenders are to know who they are and to protect their children. That is why New Zealand First is putting through a Supplementary Order Paper to ensure that this register becomes public. We are standing up for the victims we are hearing the victims’ voices and we need this register to be public. We will support this bill and we look forward to discussing it in its further stages. Thank you.ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. There are some comments that were made in regard to the whole aspect of the register and its importance. I want to just say that the purpose of the register is to provide the authorities with another tool. It does not just exist on its own; there is a list that people will look at and then make a judgment and create some analysis.Just to provide a little bit of background information what has happened previously is there has been the role of information sharing between different agencies. That has played quite an important role especially with Police and with the Department of Corrections. In fact back in 2012 this role was significant because it was at that time that they were able through that information sharing to identify a convicted sex offender who was actually a teacher at a school. Without that information sharing that would not have happened. That was critically important. It highlighted the need to have the analysis to have good data and good information that allowed them to be able to make a judgment call about what needed to happen in that case.In 2013 a collaboration between Police and corrections meant they set up what they call the CISO—the Centre for Impact on Sexual Offending. That was set up particularly so that there could be both the analysis of the information and the ability to form what they would call a product of intelligence that allowed them to give to the individual a profile around a particular offender. That was critically important. Out of that analysis they were then able to have individual profiling which allowed them to be able to then make an assessment about the risk factor of that offender. The purpose then for this bill and for this register is to fit into that context.So firstly the Centre for Impact on Sexual Offending will become the administrator of the register. Secondly it adds to the analysis because it gives regular up-to-date information. Currently there is no legislation framework that allows them to be able to do that. In order to be able to minimise risk you have to have what they call an appropriate risk management framework. So this fits into a framework. It is not purely a list that exists on its own; it has an administrator it has two key stakeholders—the Police and corrections—working together. They have the analysis. What the register will do is give them up-to-date information that enables them to make an assessment at that point in time. Their role is to both monitor and manage the risk. That is the reason for the register; that is the reason why it is actually absolutely important for us to have this register inside that framework to truly make a difference to reducing the risk of offending and at the same time too—I would agree with the member David Clendon—to be able to then provide other forms of rehabilitation that may be appropriate to the offender. That is the reason that is there.Mr Clendon also made comment around the $146 million. We all had the inquiry and the information that we wanted to be able to ask as to how when we think about the cost-benefit analysis almost two-thirds of that $146 million is already consumed in current roles of responsibility already there. So we are not talking a huge amount of extra fund that is going to be used to administer this register that is being proposed at the moment. That is critically important.We also feel that that is important because again it enables them to be able to have this up-to-date information as well.We had 135 substantive submissions and 98 of those submissions talked about the need—and I take Mr Darroch Ball’s comment—for making the register public. There was concern because they felt that the public needed to have the information—in fact many submitters talked about the right of the public to have that information—so that it could give them the ability to be able to assess their own risk and their own challenges that they had in their own communities. You would have to say there is some merit in that submission and in the advocacy for that.There was some comment that there was no evidence. There is evidence and it was presented to us. There is a 2011 study by Prescott and Rockoff from Columbia University in the United States which was substantive enough to identify two things. The first thing that it identified is this: there is little or no evidence to demonstrate that making the register accessible to the public improves public safety overall. So here is the evidence. The fact is they were saying that there is no evidence to say that by making it public it was going to be able to reduce the offending that was in there. But here is the thing that I think is actually really important too: inside of that it said that we find that the evidence that the registration reduces the frequency of offences by providing law enforcement with information on sex offenders. There is evidence; it does prove the importance of the register—No. 1 to be able to have approved accredited providers that will ensure that those key stakeholders have that information.We did ask the question to ensure that that information would not be able to be breached or leaked out into the public to ensure in a sense the confidentiality. However the balance is this: do we have the right information to create the right analyses so that the monitoring and the managing of high-risk offenders could be put in place? We think that is important as well.The last thing I want to say is that this Government has also passed other forms of legislation such as the public scrutiny information that is there that is provided—it is the public protection orders and the enhanced extended supervision orders that are also in place. When there are high-risk offenders this form of legislation will ensure that the enhanced extended supervision orders are actually still behind the wire. It means there is accommodation that is there. That is another tool along with the register to ensure that we both monitor and manage high-risk offenders that are a risk and could be a risk to our communities. At the end of the day it is about keeping our children and our communities safe. I commend this bill in its second reading to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.JAN LOGIE (Green): Talofa lava Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is opposing the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. I just want to put on record at the beginning of this speech my discomfort of hearing our opposition characterised as not centring on the needs of the victims and not being concerned with the needs of victims. Green Party members are passionate advocates for survivors of sexual violence. I am on record many times talking in this House of the number of people whom I know personally who were offended against as children; of the many more women and children I have worked with as a volunteer in specialist sexual violence services and Women’s Refuge; and of how passionate I am about sorting out the system to ensure that they get the support that they need that we have a functioning justice system and that we have the appropriate treatment for those who offend so that they will not offend again. To suggest that we do not care about this issue and the survivors of sexual violence is blatantly untrue.We oppose this legislation for many reasons but the heart of our opposition is actually based on a real commitment to reducing the prevalence of sexual violence in this country and to making sure that survivors and perpetrators both get the right help so that we can reduce violence. START a very well-respected Christchurch-based NGO—it has spent years supporting children in particular as well as adult survivors of sexual violence—did not support this bill based on the experience of its work. It brought forward to the Social Services Committee a US-based study that found “no support for the effectiveness of registration and community notification laws in reducing sexual offending by: (a) rapists (b) child molesters (c) sexual recidivists or (d) first-time sex offenders.” The regulatory impact statement also notes that there is limited research evidence from other jurisdictions about the effectiveness of sex offender registers. I heard the member from New Zealand First saying that there being no evidence to show this works does not mean that it does not work. Well actually that US-based research does question whether it works.We also have to recognise the potential for harm from this register: the possibility—when we acknowledge that we have a 1 percent conviction rate in this country—that people will see this register particularly if it is public and they will think: “OK they are the dangerous people over there. Anyone else we don’t need to be so worried about. We don’t need to make the efforts around having vigilance and ensuring that people know how to report because they are the dangerous people.” In actual fact they are a tiny percentage of the dangerous people in our society because our justice system does not work.The $146 million—which I might say is about three times what the entire sexual violence sector got out of the select committee inquiry which they had to fight and advocate for decades to get based on strong strong evidence—is being given to an unproven method and $86 million of that will come from Police baseline funding when police are patently unable to do their job of getting cases to court at the moment because of resource pressure as well as a failing legal system. To take money from them and their resources to put into a register when we have no evidence that it is going to work is to me creating more potential harm than not.So the Green Party is absolutely opposing it on the basis of the needs of victims. We need to put money into prevention services right across the country and we need to put money into ensuring that our justice system works. That is where our money should be going in the first instance alongside support for survivors. We were given evidence by the Law Society that said that we could do this with some law changes through parole and sentencing to ensure that when there was evidence of risk we could put measures in place. We have to recognise there is the potential that if this goes through and the Law Society does not support it that it may be a deterrent against sentencing people which we have seen with increased penalty rates. So there is significant harm at play here.STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Let us first put on the table that in my view sex offending against children is the ultimate betrayal of trust. It is that fundamental breaking of a social contract that exists between people who live in the community and the community itself. I actually do not think to be honest there is such a thing as a disproportionate punishment for child sex offenders but what I do want to see is money spent in a way that keeps our community safe.So what is this bill about? What it means is that all child sex offenders will have to be on this register if they are 18 years old or over and are sentenced to imprisonment. They will have to update the register annually. They will have to update the register within 72 hours of a change of details or within 48 hours prior to travel. What happens is depending on the sentence they will stay on the register for either 8 years 15 years or life. The ministries that will have access to this register are the police the Ministry of Social Development Housing New Zealand and the Department of Corrections. The reason they have access to the register is so they can manage the risk to public safety posed by known sex offenders who are living within the community. I do not think there is anyone in this House who would disagree with the intent of that in any way shape or form because it does have to be managed in the interests of public safety.According to the bill police and corrections staff will have to inform third parties where they consider it necessary to protect the safety of the community. So the police and corrections staff do have the mandate to go out to the community and say: “Be aware there is a known sex offender living at this address or living within this community.” The real concern I have about this is the fact that the police and corrections just do not have the resources to do this. What I would like to see before I support this in any way shape or form is assurance from the police that they are going to really police this legislation and manage this in a way that is going to achieve the objectives. As Darroch Ball mentioned if they do not do this and we have recidivist sex offenders living in our community with a high risk of reoffending then this bill will mean absolutely nothing. So there does have to be an absolute assurance from police and corrections staff that they are going to manage this in a way.I do have a concern that the register will be leaked. I think that is a very real concern because if we put ourselves in the situation of someone from the Police Department of Corrections Housing New Zealand or the Ministry of Social Development and we saw on the register that a known sex offender was living beside a friend of ours or beside a school it would be incredibly difficult. There would be a real moral dilemma I believe on whether to speak out or not—on whether to inform a school or a friend with children that a known sex offender was living beside them. I think the moral dilemma around how to keep such a register confidential is very real and we must understand that.The one thing that must lead policy and legislation in this House is evidence and Alfred Ngaro talked about this. If you look at my Facebook site you will see that I am no apologist for child offenders in any way shape or form but what we need to do is develop legislation that is based on good evidence. What I have read is that the evidence suggests that making public such a register actually does not do any good to the community whatsoever. It does not stop child offending in any way shape or form nor does it protect the community in a way that we all want it to. If the evidence pointed the other way—if I had evidence that said making public a register would protect our community—then I would be all for it. But the evidence I have seen says that making public a register does not in fact protect the community.Just to sum up I have absolutely no doubt that every member in this House has the safety of our community at heart. We have the victims as the No. 1 group that we want to protect and we have our communities’ safety at heart; there is no doubt about that whatsoever. But what we must do is ensure that if this bill passes there are the resources in place in the corrections system and Police to give effect to it and to make sure that our communities are safe. Thank you very much.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill’s second reading. I am taking this call to support this bill.It is important to reduce any possible risk to children including the risk of them being sexually attacked and the responsibility for this cannot be left to parents and guardians alone. It is not written on the foreheads of offenders that they are child sex offenders so we need a system to record that: a system that is kept up to date and that serves the purpose of informing people—those who can be affected like parents teachers or other community groups looking after children.This bill is to establish New Zealand’s first child sex offender register. There are conditions around who goes on this register: they should be over the age of 18 should be convicted of a qualifying crime and should be sentenced to imprisonment or a non-custodial sentence with a judge’s direction to go on the register.It is important that we have this register so that there is a process for authorised police and corrections system people to work on this register to keep a record of people because at the moment what happens after child sex offenders finish their sentence is that they go back into the community. But we want to track them; we want to see whether there are any changes in their circumstances that can increase their risk of reoffending.As a member of the Social Services Committee I want to thank all submitters. There was a huge number of submissions with 140 written submissions received by the Social Services Committee. That shows that there was huge interest in this legislation. All submitters expressed concern about this offending and I want to thank the submitters because it helped us understand their points of view. All submitters agreed that child sex offenders pose a serious risk to the community that they choose to live in. There was a wide range of views that came through submissions. Some submitters thought that the child sex offender register should be publicly available while others thought that it could be misused. So there were extreme views on this. But overall a majority of them agreed that it should not be publicly available.The issue of name suppression when child sex offenders go through the process also came up. All acknowledge that child sex offending is a serious problem in New Zealand—it is a significant problem in New Zealand—and that monitoring of child sex offenders in a community is limited by the current legislation. In 2014 alone 451 offenders were convicted of a child sex offence and 307 were sentenced to imprisonment. Once these offenders have completed their sentences they are free in the community—there is no system in place for them to keep in contact with the justice sector. That is what we want to fix through this legislation.Looking at the numbers this register is going to be a substantial register; it is estimated that 472 offenders will be registered in the first year rising to 1541 in the fourth year when an evaluation will be completed. So along with being a substantial register in terms of numbers of child sex offenders who will go on this register this is an expensive piece of legislation because of the system that is required to set it up and then there is the ongoing maintenance of this register that will be required—but we do not want to compromise the safety of New Zealand families especially children. We all agreed that this will not completely eliminate reoffending but this will definitely enhance child safety. So I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.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.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 32; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 14Green Party 14.Bill read a second time.