Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. There is no easy place for this debate to land because there is nothing more vexatious than the issue of harm that comes to our children. So I want to just acknowledge the Social Services Committee that heard the submissions on this particular piece of legislation because there were some difficult things to hear and it is a very sensitive conversation. So it is in that vein—that there is no easy place to land around this particular issue—that I actually want to structure my comments in this Committee stage debate.When we look at the purpose in clause 3 there are two key phrases that are within the legislation. The first one is about reducing sexual reoffending. We had many submitters who came to the committee and there were a variety of views. If I can perhaps sum up the arguments on both sides when it came to that particular argument about reducing sexual offending.Some of the submitters said that this legislation actually has the ability to identify where potential risk can reside within the community. That is important—so potential risk can be identified and therefore it is easier for offenders to be taken in for questioning by police should another offence occur. So you kind of know in the community where there are some identified individuals who pose some risk and it is easy for the police to be able to monitor that group of people—as long as they are placed in an appropriate setting and that is something I want to come back to later.There was another group of submitters who actually had another argument in that they felt that it was a significant amount of money there we are talking about—and it is significant—and I want to comment on that. When the Social Services Committee conducted the inquiry into funding for sexual abuse services the result of that was an extra $10 million going into the sector over 4 years. So we are talking about the difference between $10 million to support the sector for people who support victims of sexual offending and a significant amount of money—$146 million over 10 years—for this register. So there is quite a disparity there and submitters said that they felt that the money could be better spent on rehabilitation and prevention. That is the thing that I do not think that this register actually addresses—the prevention of harm through sexual assault.The other thing that the second lot of submitters said was that actually there are relatively low rates of reoffending—relatively low rates of reoffending—so that when you have a register of people and you know where they are in the community they may not be ones who are likely to reoffend. To also pick up on the point that our Green colleague David Clendon made about the notion of stranger danger this register actually plays into those ideas around stranger danger when we know that sexual offending—particularly against children—actually happens with people who are known to the family. By and large there are many more people who offend who are known to the family and over a period of months or perhaps years children particularly are groomed by these people.So we have got two arguments with regard to whether this piece of legislation actually reduces sexual reoffending.The other significant part of that clause is about reducing the risk posed by serious child sex offenders. And here I want to comment on two recent cases where the community has had a view about having sex offenders in the community—namely in the Hutt and also in Māngere—and where the community has been very clear about the fact that it does not want sex offenders in their communities. People have felt that the placement of those offenders has been inappropriate in their community whether it has been where they have lived or whether it has been where they have been able to access children—being close to schools and that kind of thing. So the community has—