Henderson Emily; Rurawhe AdrianDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise again to congratulate this House first off. It's encouraging as a newbie to see the courtesy and common sense that has been displayed tonight in what has been a difficult issue. I congratulate the Minister for knuckling down to fix a mistake that was not of her own making with grace and without recriminations and for the exemplary approach to consultation that she has taken and also I believe possibly a record for the first person to ever get her first bill through in a day. I also congratulate the Opposition parties for also recognising the importance of this work and the fact that it did need to be done under urgency. The discussion has been moderate thoughtful and considered and I likewise respect the Greens' position. There is an issue with retrospectivity and the question is whether that issue is justified. It is finely balanced as my colleague Dr Webb has said—finely balanced in the Court of Appeal. So I put it to you this way: monitoring is a proportionate and necessary response. But let us break it down even further. The first question is: what is the risk of harm if we do not go against convention? Well we all know the harm that child sex abuse can do. It is extreme and long lasting in some cases. It is necessary to say—and I do want to say this—not all victims of course go on to be offenders but the results can be long lasting and lifelong. It is important however to notice in particular that historical sex offenders are the ones caught most by this bill and I want to just reiterate that disclosure of sex abuse is not a quick process for most people who are abused and historical sex abuse disclosures are actually quite common and quite normal and the harm done to those people who have had to live with that experience all their lives can be crippling. I have worked with people who have taken over 50 years to address what happened to them as children and I have seen the transformation that happens when they are then able to disclose and deal with that in a sensitive and appropriate manner. We do know that child sex offenders are often serial offenders. There are studies from the early 1980s which talk about first-time sex offenders and what was often discovered there was that although it was the first time they had been caught it was normally not the first time they'd offended. There was often quite a long history of offence behind every single supposed first-time offender. The risk of harm is high. But is then the response proportionate? This is the second part of the question I'd suggest. A register alone I have to agree with my Green colleagues would not be appropriate. A register alone is a penalising response but this is not a register designed to penalise; it is a post-sentence rehabilitative condition. It enables officials to walk alongside an offender and to help them reintegrate because we do have effective clinical treatment but we don't have enough of it. We need this additional fence of the Police and Corrections being able to walk alongside our offenders until they can get into proper clinical treatment. In these circumstances police monitoring is an effective and proportionate response. But I do want to reiterate something else that Minister Poto Williams said. It is important in the way we talk about sex offences and sex offenders that we do not vilify. Intensive treatment can work people do rehabilitate and also offenders are so often family members and it is family members they offend against. It is important not to vilify because we know from clinicians that often the reason kids don't disclose abuse is because they are scared of what will happen to dad or to uncle or to grandpa. They want the abuse to stop but they love the offender. We need to be careful and moderate in our language when we talk about this if we want to make a real difference to the children who are being offended against and I sometimes wonder if the reason that we are sometimes so unready to believe children when they do disclose is that we fail to recognise that most offenders are ordinary people and that the dad next door can be the monster of our fears and our nightmares. It is important that we take a treatment-focused approach and it is important therefore that we make this register a reality for all of our offenders but it's important that we recognise that it is a step hopefully along the road to rehabilitation for these people for the sake of their children in more ways than one. For that reason I commend this bill to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Melissa Lee—five minutes.