Chen Naisi; Rurawhe AdrianNAISI CHEN (Labour): Can I start by acknowledging everyone whose lives are affected by the topic which we have been debating here tonight. There are many many triggers here tonight that may have been mentioned that may have brought back memories or fears and I'm sorry. I just wanted to say to everyone who's listening here tonight that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this has happened to you. I'm sorry that through no fault of your own you have to live with the consequences. But can I ask one thing of these people tonight: understand that we are trying to find the best solution and ultimately achieve a safer community for our country and for everyone here. I believe every member comes to this place with the best of intentions and we've heard that in the last few days with the last batch of maiden statements in the class of 2020. We know that here everyone gives their best effort to try and find what is the best solution for our country. But tonight I can't commend this bill the Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill to the House and I just wanted to lay out the reasons why I don't believe this bill is the best solution for everyone. There is a difference between a bill that goes the extra mile and a bill that has gone too far and I believe this belongs to the latter. I have long held the view that every offender was once a victim and I formed that view when I was working in the District Court and the High Court in Auckland as a court-appointed interpreter specialising especially in criminal trial cases. As I worked on a lot of these cases I was able to witness firsthand the importance of rehabilitation for these offenders and how important it is for them to reintegrate back into the community for them to have the support of their whānau so that they are able to readjust into a normal life. Look the reason why I believe that this is so important is because I have seen over and over again their repentance and their struggle with behaviours that they themselves are absolutely horrified by. I think tonight we have to look at how proportional the means of this bill is to the end that we want to achieve and whether this type of punishment is effective to the goal we're trying to achieve. I have labelled this as punishment because as we've heard from my colleagues there are a lot of reactions from the community that over-punish an offender someone who is trying very hard to get back on to their own feet. Right now this protection that we have in terms of our corrections system is in place and that is a balanced approach. We want to help sex offenders get back into a normal life as soon as possible because that is we believe the best solution for the whole entire community. Also on this bill I just wanted in particular to raise that we have received an opinion that this bill does breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in the right not to be subjected disproportionately to severe treatment as affirmed in section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I just recall that Mr Doocey also said today that the schools must manage the offender and in his anecdotes he has named people who support this bill being educators who support this bill. I just wanted to speak to that because I think they are educators—principals of schools and teachers of schools—and they should be tasked with teaching our children instead of dealing with offenders. Our corrections officers in our corrections system in our country are facilitated resourced and professionally trained to deal with offenders and we should leave that job to them for them to protect our community. We should be resourcing them more. We should be able to resource them so that they can do their work and we should be able to trust them to protect our community as they have already adequately done. Finally I just want to finish with a point that I believe a world view of not just black and white should be what we should be showing to our children but that people are multi-faceted and belong to a spectrum and we should always look at every problem with a pragmatic view of what ultimately achieves the purpose that we want to—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.