Sio WilliamSu'a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Community safety is a matter of grave concern to many of our communities and I know most New Zealanders pay their taxes in the expectation that the Government uses those taxes to ensure that our communities are safe. So when issues of community safety come before this House we on this side of the House take them very very seriously. As outlined by my senior colleagues who have spoken earlier the Labour Party supports this bill but despite supporting it on the basis that we do want to ensure that there is safety in our communities I have to say that I share the concerns that the Hon Phil Goff has shared with this Committee. When I look at the report from the Law and Order Committee it says that this bill seeks to amend the Parole Act and the Sentencing Act to enable the monitoring of offenders released from a sentence of 2 years or less and of offenders sentenced to intensive supervision. I also note that in this committee's report there have been significant changes made by the committee. I note that the committee recommended that new Part 1AA be inserted setting out amendments to the Corrections Act and inserted new clauses 2B and 2C. I also note that the committee recommended inserting clause 2D which inserts a new section 64A into the Act. Not having sat through that committee but having read this particular report I do not get a sense of confidence—that the committee had confidence when the Minister tabled this piece of legislation. That concerns me. When Ministers who have the power and the resources table legislation that ends up being significantly amended by the committee that concerns me as to what the real thrust of the bill is. I heard the member from New Zealand First talk about whether this bill is really about reducing prisoner numbers to allow this Government to somehow paint itself as being able to reduce those numbers but the Government is not necessarily concerned about law and order. I also note that in the regulatory impact statement—and we have in paragraph 28: The department intends to provide the courts with advice on whether offenders are suitable to have their whereabouts restricted and monitored by GPS in pre-sentence reports." I just highlight the fact that they identify family violence offenders who pose a high risk to their victims gang affiliate offenders who pose a high risk to public safety and the third one that the department identifies in this regulatory impact statement is high-risk sex offenders. This is of concern to me because in Māngere we have one about whom the community has been agitating for some time now and it is wanting this Government to remove him from the place that the Department of Corrections has placed him in. It has placed this high-risk sex offender right next door to a school in a community that has many many children and yet the department is aware that this high-risk offender also presents an imminent and high risk of reoffending. The department is aware that this sex offender raped a 13-year-old girl. The concern there is that despite the department and the Minister trying to assure the community that this offender has 24/7 surveillance and has electronic monitoring it was only yesterday that a member of the community reported to me that they saw this offender at Pak 'N Save in the morning and he was out in the public. I was told by the corrections officers that this offender has a range of conditions on his being placed next to Jean Batten School in Māngere. I am going to follow this up but I am hopeful that the Minister on hearing this and the officials hearing this would ensure that this is not the offender whom we are talking about. This a note given to me early this morning by a member of the Māngere community saying that they saw this man in Pak 'N Save—this is a person supposedly with 24-hour surveillance and with electronic monitoring. I do not know whether there were other people around monitoring him when he went to Pak 'N Save or whether he has slipped the electronic monitoring and gone out. I was listening to the Hon Phil Goff talking about how easy it is for people to slip the electronic monitoring. There have been a number of examples that have been repeated already in the media not just this year but I would say in the last 8 years of this Government. People have been slipping their monitoring and then reoffending. That concerns me because if this is about community safety if it is about law and order if it is about keeping our children safe—as far as the people of Māngere are concerned we do not have that confidence at this point in time. I have to say it was highlighted to me by my colleague Susan Zhu in Auckland how members of the Asian community do not feel safe at all with the offending that is happening in Auckland and the appearance that these communities are being targeted by offenders. Generally we know that whenever a burglary or some crime is committed in the community it is usually by somebody who has offended before and has served time. So the plea I am making is that if the Government is true about its need to ensure that there is the ability for minor offenders to be able to attend funerals and whatnot I want to know what it is exactly that it intends to do with the high-risk sex offenders identified in this regulatory impact statement and how this Government intends to ensure that our children are safe from those who have a high risk of reoffending. At the moment insofar as the people of Māngere are concerned as long as that high-risk offender at imminent risk of reoffending is located a few houses down from Jean Batten School the community does not feel safe. What is worse now is that the parents are having to adapt their behaviour in order to try to present some semblance of confidence and protection to the young people who are around that particular school. If the story pans out that this neighbour did in fact see that this man was at Pak 'N Save yesterday—and supposedly he was under some electronic monitoring and 24/7 surveillance—has this man broken the conditions of his bail being located here? The other thing I will say is that electronic monitoring is not necessarily going to prevent people from reoffending. I am not sure that this Government has captured in this bill the holistic approach that it needs to take. As I pointed out earlier in another debate on a bill that this Government has introduced here there is a need for this Government to address where we house those offenders who have been released and particularly those offenders who have a high risk of reoffending. Is it safe to place them next to children? I do not think so and certainly the community of Māngere does not think so either."