Andersen GinnyCHILD PROTECTION (CHILD SEX OFFENDER GOVERNMENT AGENCY REGISTRATION) (OVERSEAS TRAVEL REPORTING) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 29 June.GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. Well this is a good bill by my learned colleague Greg O'Connor. This bill the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill essentially extends the provisions already existing under the sex offender register that was passed under the previous Government. It's important to specify I think that we've picked up this debate since a period of time has passed and to outline what the bill endeavours to achieve and how that will be laid out by amending legislation. A registrable offender under current law is a person who's been convicted for a qualifying offence and has been sentenced to imprisonment or in fact has been sentenced to a non-custodial sentence as sometimes is the case and also anyone who has been made subject to a registration order. A person is not able to qualify if at the time they committed the offence they were under 18. So to be clear a qualifying offence is class 1 class 2 or class 3 offences as defined in the Crimes Act and covers a full range of sexual offending as defined in that Act where the victim is under 16 years of age.Of note is that there's also corresponding legislation for offending that happens in a foreign jurisdiction. But what this bill essentially does is it provides for the activities that may be conducted that are illegal in New Zealand in another country and to have those brought under the same monitoring system that is currently provided for the movements of an offender in New Zealand. The register as it now operates imposes on offenders reporting obligations of a number of relevant pieces of personal information that are particularly around the offender's address or addresses importantly where they're residing where they're visiting and in particular if there's any children that reside at those places that they may be. And these provisions are quite clearly laid out in section 16 of the Act. It's really important to note that this is where Mr O'Connor's bill makes an important change. The basis is that section 21 of the Act that the recent offender must have been intending to be away from their registered residential address within New Zealand and 24 hours before travel they need to provide to police all of those details—where they are going the dates on which they will travel which addresses whether there will be a child likely or not likely to reside at those addresses and also the date that the registered offender intends to return to their registered residential address that the police will be aware of and monitoring that. But under section 21(4) of that the registered offender can leave New Zealand and provided that the dates of their travel and their date are provided to police and their intent to return that's where it stops. So this bill provides a bit further. Unlike such travel in New Zealand currently under the law the registered offender is not obliged to supply police any of those details of where they are intending to reside and whether there are likely to be children at those addresses. And so it's very important where we know that there is a sex tourist trade particularly in countries close to New Zealand like Thailand and Cambodia South East Asia where we know that people do travel for the explicit purpose for sexual offending on those who are under the legal age of consent that this bill seeks to extend the provisions that already exist for the protection of New Zealand children to further overseas. This bill requires that registered offenders must advise police of all of those countries that they intend to stay in the date they intend to travel and the country and the date they intend to leave that country. It provides further protections. And as chair of the Justice Committee I look forward to this bill. I look forward to hearing submissions from a wide range of groups that no doubt will have a strong view in terms of how this bill should be progressed further. I would like to thank Mr O'Connor for using his wealth of experience as a former police officer and undercover agent in this space to be able to provide a bill that provides further protection for children not just in New Zealand but further afield as well. I commend it to the House.