Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): There are three points I want to make and I want to start with Part 3—this is Miscellaneous matters—Regulations". In clause 49 it says that "The Governor-General may by Order in Council make regulations for any of the following purposes:". Clause 49(c) says "prescribing details relating to the administration of the register:" and clause 49(d)(i) talks about "the circumstances in which information will be required concerning the identity of the registrable offender …".The reason I have some concerns about this is that what this Part 3 basically says is that if the Minister or the Government of the day does not like how this is operating they can change the rules without bringing the bill back to the House. I think that from a constitutional perspective that is quite dangerous because what we are talking about here is something—as a number of members have talked about—quite subjective in the nature of law we are proposing and in the type of matter we are proposing here. I think that by taking it out of Parliament and putting it in to regulations we run the risk of that separation of power. I would have liked to see any change in this come back to the House as an amendment bill.There is just one other thing I would like to query the Minister in the chair Anne Tolley on. She talked about clause 43 where the commissioner may disclose information. The reason I have concerns about this is that word "may" because this does not put any obligation whatsoever on the commissioner to disclose information to anyone at all. It is purely subjective. What it says in clause 43(1) is: "The Commissioner may disclose personal information in the register to an affected person if the Commissioner believes on reasonable grounds that the registrable offender poses a threat to the life welfare or sexual safety of a particular child or particular children."There are three subjective terms in there that cause me concern. The first one is that the commissioner "may" disclose personal information the second one is "on reasonable grounds"—I am not too sure what constitutes reasonable grounds—and the third one is the "welfare" of a particular child. Obviously we know about the physical and/or sexual well-being because that is highly documented in the case but the mental and the psychological well-being is again subjective. I think this clause here around when the commissioner may disclose information or the information that can be disclosed is too wide and is open to interpretation. The last thing we want to see is someone coming before the courts because they have caused harm to a child and the commissioner being held to account and the court saying that the commissioner should have provided this information but he did not and therefore we go through a debate about what is reasonable information and when it should be released.What I would like to talk about is actually what the personal information that must be recorded is—i.e. what this register is. We are talking about clause 15 here. What happens is that there are 22 pieces of data that must be recorded within 72 hours—and that is in clause 16—of the offender being released from custody or made subject to a registration order. These are quite specific and I applaud that. The concern I have is that if we make an assumption—and we have heard these figures—that there are 250 sex offenders released from prison ever year after 10 years that is 2500 sex offenders and it specifies in the bill that an offender must update their report at least once a year or as designated by the commissioner. So that is 55000 pieces of data that have to be monitored every year minimum after 5 years. That is an average of seven per day.What it does say in the bill is actually in some cases the person has to be monitored for their whole life. So what concerns me is the level of resource that is going to go into monitoring those 55000 pieces of data every year and conceivably even more as this builds. What we must ensure in the Public Service is that when we collect data it is there for a purpose and not simply for the fact of data collection if you know what I mean.Carmel Sepuloni: I know what you mean.STUART NASH: Thank you Carmel Sepuloni. The thing about this also is that when we look at clause 37 it outlines the penalties for not disclosing information. It is $2000 for failure to disclose information. This is based on the reasonable person test again but $2000 really is not a great fine. But the thing is that it is quite prescriptive in here—"