Ball Darroch: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBall Darroch: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6646. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee. We do however have some concerns questions and queries that hopefully will be addressed at the select committee. A few of them have already been mentioned. What I did was I went through the departmental disclosure statement and regulatory impact statement and a lot of those questions fell out of there. So I will take this opportunity to go through those questions and queries from those documents there.I will start with the disclosure statement and the general policy statement and the main reason why New Zealand First is supporting this bill is actually quite aptly noted here. It says: “Information sharing between relevant agencies is recognised as an effective way to minimise the harm from re-offending by known child sex offenders when complemented by a structured risk management framework. Child sex offender registers help government agencies identify and manage the risk of sex offending in the community and provide offenders with incentives and support to maintain a low-risk lifestyle.” So that is a good paragraph about the basis of why New Zealand First supports this bill but what is this legislation trying to effect?What I saw in the regulatory impact statement was of quite some concern and I know that the Minister actually mentioned it in her first reading speech but kind of brushed over it. It states that “The potential for child sexual re-offending arises when convicted sex offenders are living in the community. … each year around 210 of these offenders are released back into the community [and] approximately 115 child sex offenders per year commence a community-based sentence. The majority of these offenders have no on-going contact with justice sector agencies after their sentence even though they may present a significant risk of future harm.” So when I read that I said what is going on here? This cannot be a new problem that is occurring. We have got the information out there that we have got over a hundred child sex offenders in the community who pose a significant risk of future harm and there is no contact with our agencies at that stage.That is obviously why we need to have something like a child sex offender register but obviously there is a significant problem apparently and there has been for a long time. Given that information it is no wonder there has been a 20 percent increase over the last couple of years. In the executive summary it states that 1819 sex offences against children occurred which is up by over 20 percent from a decade earlier but I do not see anywhere in any of these documents where they actually address the recidivist rate or the reoffending rate so this obviously is the target for the register.I went and did a little bit of research and found that the sexual reoffending rate after the 12-month follow-up is in and around 10 percent and after 24 months it actually jumps up to about 17 percent. So there is a really big problem and this goes some way to addressing that problem. Obviously child victims of sexual abuse are amongst the most vulnerable victims. The general public know that this is a different type of criminal and it is a different type of crime which is why we need a different method to be able to deal with that and that is what the register is.What also needs to occur is wraparound services and the other services that would support and integrate with the register. I noticed that in the Bills Digest it suggests that there is a framework of risk minimisation that would support the register but it does not go on to detail what that framework is. Again it will be interesting to find out what exactly that framework is that will support the register. I think it is a key thing to note that this is not in itself going to stop child abuse. This targets the child abuse reoffenders so we need other methods to help prevent child abuse. Carmel Sepuloni actually mentioned one of them which is the bill that is going to come up tomorrow dealing with the mandatory registration of social workers. That is one of the prime examples of why we cannot look at the register as a silver bullet.There were a few options that were considered going through and coming up with the child protection offenders register and it highlights the importance of what the considerations were in ending up at this stage. The options were to maintain the status quo to extend the scope of the existing child sex offender harm reduction measures and also to increase funding for NGOs in order to increase the provision of specialist assessments. All of those have limitations in themselves from some being voluntary to the status quo not working so we need to find a different mechanism. That is why New Zealand First is supporting this bill.It actually took until the sixth speech today from the Green Party to start mentioning the funding and where the resources will be coming from. When I was reading that I was quite surprised at where this funding was actually going to come from. It says here that the 10-year cost for this proposal is around $150 million and it states that “Some capital components and all field operating costs for the Register and risk management framework amounting to $85.1 million (Corrections $70.6 million Police $14.1 million Courts $0.38 million) over ten years will be met from within existing baselines.” Therefore $85 million of the $150 million - odd is going to be met from existing baselines.It goes on to say: “The additional $9.1 million”—in regard to corrections—“will be absorbed by Corrections through efficiency gains.” What that means in other words is—tough luck; suck it up and do the job. Corrections will not get any more funding to do more work. In regard to the police it says “Police will absorb the cost of its new activity … through achieving more effective utilisation of existing staff …”. More effective utilisation of existing staff. That means wearing more hats doing more jobs and no extra help no extra staffing and no extra funding to make this happen. What that says to me actually is that this could end up being yet another public service that is being stretched and stretching to breaking point.Actually I was looking at a study that was done by the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. One of the study’s headings was “The impact of community notification on criminal justice agencies”. I just want to quote this. It says: “A small but growing body of research demonstrates that community notification has a significant impact on the agencies responsible for its administration … One of the most frequently cited concerns of administrators is that it places a strain on limited agency resources … Community notification schemes are undeniably expensive to implement and maintain irrespective of whether they are active or passive … The time and money invested in activities associated with notification inevitably must be redirected from other areas which could plausibly lead to an increase in other types of crime …”.So there is a lot of detail that has been somewhat brushed over in the presentation of this bill and I think one that was kind of swept under the carpet a little bit and not mentioned by anyone in the National Party yet not even the Minister for Social Development was where the funds are coming from. In the end it is unfortunately going to be placed on the police corrections and the courts to find a way to make it happen. What we do not want to see is the potential for this register to do a good job being squandered by lack of resources once again from the Government.Like I said New Zealand First is going to support this bill. I went through a few—very few—questions queries problems and concerns that we had. I had a heap more to go through but that will be coming through in the select committee. New Zealand First supports this bill going through to the select committee.