Chadwick Steve: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this very specific and very tight little bill. I think it is for that very reason that the bill is a little flawed but I support my colleagues in saying the bill should be referred to the Education and Science Committee. It is worrying that even the sponsor of the bill—the member whose name this bill is in—did not sound very enthusiastic himself about it when I listened to him in order to be inspired as to the rationale behind the bill. I agree with the Green member Metiria Turei that we are all concerned as parents about the protection of our children from sexual predators. But this is a very narrow bill. Even Mr Bernard Ogilvy expressed the view that that it misses out on any reference to some other legislation that will capture sex offences and sexual violation such as the Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill that we debated last night and the Summary Offences Act. That is worrying. This bill is far too narrow which I think is a real fault. 
It is also deeply concerning that even though we are really concerned about who stands and who is eligible to be a trustee we do not trust the community any more to know who is a good upstanding person with the skill sets required for boards of trustees. The perception that a person may be a sexual predator is something that we do not want to become embedded. I am pleased to see in the bill that at least a person has to have been charged with and convicted of a crime. But we on the Government side of the House do believe in restorative justice. For some crimes such as possession of pornography and others there are instances when those sexual criminals can be rehabilitated into society. I am sure that those are not the crimes that Gerry Brownlee meant to be captured in this bill. We are starting to define the broad spectrum of what sexual violation is and what sexual offences against children are. Hopefully the select committee can spend a bit of time on coming up with a much tighter definition than just “sex offences against children”. I think we need to look at other laws such as the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act because trading in pornography may be something that takes years and years to become public knowledge. A community would never know about it at the time that a person put himself or herself up for election to a board of trustees. 
I think that we need to look at the hard facts. Over the years that many of us have stood for boards of trustees over 70000 people have stood to be trustees and only three have ever been known to have convictions for sex offences. So this bill is rather a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” approach. In some areas that we represent it is very very hard to get people to stand for boards of trustees. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: They don’t always have an election though so you don’t know. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: That is right; people may not know. I think Mr Brownlee had lofty intentions—he is lofty and this is a lofty ideal—when he brought this bill in but I do not like any legislation that is a knee-jerk reaction. I feel it may have been something—[ 
Interruption 
] That is right. That certainly was not. The smoking legislation was about public good for hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders. 
Simon Power 
: And this isn’t? 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: This certainly is. It will save more lives. We have to look at the hard facts about actual convictions. 
Labour will support this bill. I think it needs a lot of tidying-up in the select committee but it is going to a very good select committee. Labour will support the referral of this bill to the appropriate select committee.