Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well it's a pleasure to rise and speak in support of Greg O'Connor's bill. It is a relatively small adjustment to the existing register and requirement of sex offenders to notify the Police in some cases of their movements. I would say I've just been reading—and my friend's got it there—Amendment Paper 175 which I see the Minister of Immigration has tabled. I note that it looked to allow essentially information matching between Police and Customs. I must say I'd be interested to hear members from the other side speak to this because we had plenty of opportunity as the chair has noted to discuss this at the Justice Committee including an opportunity for the Minister—it's in the name of Erica Stanford the Minister of Immigration—to come to the committee and talk to it. So I'm surprised that it's popped up at this late notice. After discussions with the member in charge of the bill I understand that it wasn't signalled to the member which is a breach of courtesy if nothing else.Now it may be that this Amendment Paper will not raise any concerns when we get to committee stage but it would have been good to see this kind of step go through a full and robust process. In particular information matching does raise privacy concerns and I'm sure the Privacy Commissioner would have liked to have had some discussions around this Amendment Paper had in fact it been drawn to the commissioner's attention as of course would the member in charge. So I do hope that the Minister will actually come down and speak to this Amendment Paper and exactly why it is needed.The chair of the Justice Committee was perhaps a little dismissive of the Attorney-General's report and I can see why but I do think we need to take statements from the Attorney-General—after all she is she is a King's Counsel if you hadn't been told already. But the fact of the matter is that the Attorney-General points out a couple of things of concern. I guess the one that I think is most concerning and the thing that in criminal law we need to be most aware of is retrospectivity—that people have had a punishment meted out in the courts which was the appropriate punishment under the law at the time and we then go back and make it even more stringent. So there are people who are currently subject to the restrictions that being a sex offender places on them. Those restrictions are now going to be increased by this notification provision and that's going to be done retrospectively.In some ways I guess one of the things is whether you see this notification regime as an element of punishment or whether you see it simply as a community safety measure but certainly it is a constraint on the liberty of the offenders that's being placed retrospectively. The way I get around that I guess is to say well it may have that effect but certainly its dominant purpose is to protect potential victims if you like and that in terms of proportionality the burden on the offender is quite low. Because we're not refusing the ability to travel we're just requiring certain notification provisions.So with that really I wanted to say that I think this is a good bill. It went through the select committee and actually did have a fair bit of working over. And anyone who reads the select committee report will see that there are some substantial changes including the removal of some clauses such as clause 4 where an amendment to section 21 was removed where the kind of detail that perhaps was needed was actually watered down a bit so that you didn't need to know every element of the person's travel. Rather it was simply the date they were to travel in and out of New Zealand and where they're going to predominantly be residing and when they're intending to return to New Zealand and a few other bits and pieces in there.But look again I congratulate the member on a useful addition because we absolutely endorse the need to reduce the number of victims that are out there. But as the member in charge of the bill Greg O'Connor said it's also about assisting offenders to not put themselves in situations where risk is created so it's actually good for the offender as well. So once again congratulations; I commended it to the House.