Clendon David: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8508. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): Can I begin by reiterating our Labour colleagues’ comments—we support the intention of this legislation. All of us want our children to be safe. We do need to ensure their security and well-being. Sadly also in common with our Labour colleagues we do not see sufficient substance in this bill to suggest that it would contribute to child safety.The bill itself is short—to the point to say the least. Bills Digest No. 2292 does not offer much more in the way of evidence or argumentation as to exactly how preventing people from changing their names would actually contribute to child safety in the long run. The only evidence we are pointed to if you can call it that is a newspaper article from a month or two ago when the bill was drawn which references as has been noted the one instance of a fellow—a thoroughly unpleasant fellow by the look of it—who managed to get work at schools in Northland despite having a history of sex offending and despite having a supervision order out against him. He did that we are told by using a fake CV and a fake birth certificate. I see nothing in this bill—this notion of preventing people from legally changing their names—that would prevent somebody from breaking the law in that way. Sadly we had—yes so I will not go into people using birth certificates badly; that is irrelevant. But there is nothing in this legislation that would prevent the sort of wrongdoing that this fellow used to get himself into that position where he ought never to have been.The point is also made that he adopted various aliases. Again the legislation might prevent somebody from legally changing their name but it would do nothing to stop them using aliases or other forms of false identity that would enable them to avoid and evade any controls on their behaviour. The bill goes beyond that.Unfortunately the drafting of the bill is such that not only sex offenders would be captured by it. It references section 107B of the Parole Act which includes a large number of offences including violent offences and murder—a whole host of things—but it also deals with indecent assault. It is entirely conceivable that under this bill a very low-level incident of indecent assault could put somebody into the basket that would prevent them from ever changing their name. Indecent assault is not a minor matter but there are levels of offending. A young man in a bar too much to drink lays hands on a woman without her consent and he is rightly convicted of an indecent assault. In the cold light of day sobered up he thinks better of it and does not behave in that way again in his life. However under the legislation proposed here that young man would be for ever prevented from changing his name legally for whatever reason he might choose to do so.There is a raft of examples like that. The proposer of the bill did identify that there are a large number of offences under section 107B of the Parole Act that have no relation to children or indeed sexual offending—and yet according to the drafting of this anybody convicted of those would be captured by it which makes me wonder at the disjunct between the name and the declared purpose of the bill and the actual effect of it if it did come into law.We do have on the books a lot of alternative means of seeking to manage people who are of some risk to the community—child sex offenders. We do have public protection orders extended supervision orders and preventive detention at the most extreme end.This bill could actually be quite dangerous in that sometimes people do offend they see the light they turn their lives round and they seek to put their past behind them. Sometimes changing a name is a means of doing that. We heard this morning in submissions on the proposed child sex offenders register that so-called naming and shaming often is counter-productive in that it might cause more offending rather than reduce the likelihood of offending. Preventing people from putting their past behind them could be entirely counter-productive in this context too.We see good intentions in this bill. We see a very poorly drafted bill. We see very little likelihood of it actually having any beneficial effect so regrettably we cannot support it.