Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take another call on this important legislation in the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I just want to pick up first on some comments from the previous speaker Melissa Lee just regarding the purpose of a register such as this. While I do appreciate that the specifics of tonight's legislation that we are debating is around correcting a drafting error that came through—and that has come through in the Supreme Court's decision; I say that with respect because this isn't about pointing fingers—this is just to say that we acknowledge as a Parliament the original intent of the Act that's currently in place led to a Supreme Court decision that basically said that we can't implement it as we intended to. We are taking the opportunity to correct that. It is not about a finger-pointing exercise at all.What I did want to talk about a little was actually the usefulness of registers such as this. I come from a place where people who do offend against children commit one of the most horrific crimes that can occur against an individual. I also come from a place where I do believe with the right support a lot of people—and not all—can actually change and can actually at least work towards no longer offending against children. That should be our hope in this House. That should be something that we are aiming for: that those who offend get an opportunity for rehabilitation and to when they do come back into society have an opportunity to live a life where they are no longer participating in those offences.I do want to put on record that the purpose of a register like this is not for the purposes of punishment. It is more than just about monitoring; it is actually about ensuring that agencies can continue to provide support. One of the things unfortunately about offending against children in this way is actually the importance of ensuring people are protected from being around children.One of the things that I know from my work in the church is that actually we would often have people coming to church for redemption who perhaps had committed offences of this nature and didn't want to continue in that way but as a church in the role I had we still had to put protections around those people to ensure that the children in our church were safe. It was an incredibly important and difficult thing to sometimes manage and the usefulness of knowing people's histories is actually about putting the right supports around them so that for example in the church context if someone was attending a church who perhaps had a conviction there would be important steps taken such as making sure that they weren't working on a children's Sunday school programme they wouldn't be left alone with children and there would be people noticing if they were spending time around children because those are the kinds of things that then can become a risk for people who have a conviction around a sex offence.So a lot has been talked about tonight around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the role of us as a Parliament putting in place legislation that overrides that and I do want to acknowledge that I think it is fair for us to raise those concerns. I think those questions are good ones to ask. As a Parliament we should always be taking care not to tread across the bill of rights Act. However on this particular occasion in my view this is the right approach because this is not necessarily actually about penalising people. This is about ensuring two things: that when people exit prison the right monitoring and support is there for them; and secondly that we are taking steps to put the safety and welfare of children and tamariki first—which is something that as a society we have to accept is something we haven't always done very well.So I am pleased to be able to support this legislation and to support our Minister in changing this law quickly. I thank most of the members opposite for also working alongside us to change this legislation. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.