Collins Judith: Sex Offenders Registry Bill — First Reading 
Collins Judith: Sex Offenders Registry Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7499] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 The National Party supports this bill going to the Law and Order Committee and I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Deborah Coddington on the bill and on the drafting of it. 
There is no excuse for rape. There is no excuse for rapists continuing to prey on the vulnerable and genuinely destroying the lives of people for whom there can never be any true redress. Unlike property crimes unlike a lot of crimes that as a lawyer I have seen in my practice there can be no insurance against rape. No amount of money can compensate a rape victim and I hazard to state there would be very few rape victims who are not on a daily basis reminded of the crime committed against them. They will never go away. Unfortunately we live in a society where there are in fact rapists—sexual offenders we call them now but they are rapists—people who abuse children who abuse the elderly and who abuse others. These people are almost always likely to be recidivists. I am sorry if that offends the civil libertarians here but those people almost always will be recidivists. It takes a certain mindset to commit that sort of offence against another human being. 
I welcome the fact that we will be looking at this issue. I am almost certain this bill will pass through to the select committee. I hope that it will not as a bill become watered down by concern for those who are in fact rapists recidivists—the sorts of people whom none of us would wish to have living anywhere near us. As a mother I can say that the greatest fear for most parents would be that their child was the victim of a sex offence. It would for many people be worse than death and that is because of the inhumanity it displays. People like Jules Mikus prey on women; they prey on women with young children. Yes we now find that he himself as a child was the victim of a sex offence by his own father. Of course sex offences that are just left to rot like that will often have a bad result further on down the track. What actually happens in cases like his is that very very innocent young lives are destroyed and no amount of work that this Parliament can do will ever bring back their innocence. It is a shame and a shocking shocking situation. 
I welcome the comments from the Minister of Justice about the work of the police under this bill. I am concerned however that our police are already under-resourced and will not have the resources actually to follow up on this work. I fear that the concerns expressed by Deborah Coddington and others in relation to this bill will come to pass—that is that the police will be asked to keep registers but will instead spend a tremendous amount of time as they do now pulling drivers over for faulty backing lights and faulty brake lights. I fear that they will not be given the resources or the power actually to do their job. That is a concern and I hope the select committee is able when it looks at this bill to make recommendations accordingly. I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.