Clendon David: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11657. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would agree with the previous speaker Jono Naylor on one point he made which was that the bill has come out of the Social Services Committee in somewhat better shape than it went in. However the Greens initially supported this legislation to the select committee with some reservations because I guess sex offending against children is universally abhorred. It is one of the most offensive forms of criminal activity possible. There has been talk of registers and their merits or not for some time. We went into that process with an open mind to investigate the evidence and to see whether in fact there is value in establishing something like a child sex offender register in New Zealand.Our conclusion is that there is no value in that proposition. We will not be supporting this bill in future readings. We are basing that on the evidence we heard at select committee. It was a good committee. There were one or two changes made that have improved the bill from the initial draft. But overall we simply do not see that there will be a sufficient return on investment if you like—and I mean that in a general not only in an economic sense—in establishing something like this. There is overall a distinct lack of evidence that these registers actually do anything to make our children safer. There are a lot of economic and other costs along the way.The bill as it is drafted proposes an incredibly intrusive regime for people who may indeed have offended. We are concerned obviously about the section 7 Bill of Rights Act report. The concerns outlined in that section 7 report still stand. The bill does impose a disproportionate punishment. Yes I acknowledge that there is now the possibility that after 15 years a person might apply to have their name removed from that register. That is a small step. But still overall the punishment if you like is disproportionate. I mentioned the intrusive nature—everything down to people’s log-ons and passwords for their internet accounts their email accounts and the like would be open to inspection by all and sundry. And I do mean that. It is a point I will come back to in a moment.The Human Rights Commission was one of those that noted that the bill would be very costly. The regulatory impact statement document in the figures given by the officials indicates a cost of about $146 million over 10 years. On balance it is very hard to see how simply creating a list of names is going to give better value for $146 million over that period than would investment in such things as education programmes—educating families and their children on how to keep our kids safe—and treatment programmes.Despite some assertions to the contrary sex offenders can be rehabilitated. They can and often do change their behaviours. So investing $146 million in essentially creating a list of names with potential for significant negative knock-on effects we simply do not see as a smart way to spend scarce public sector dollars. The Council for Civil Liberties agrees with that point of view. It describes the bill as establishing a very harsh regime with very little justification while making no economic sense. The Law Society similarly expressed the view that the bill infringes on civil rights and freedoms and it made a positive alternative proposition that the very admirable intent of the bill which is to improve the safety of our children from potential offending of this sort could be achieved by allowing judges and indeed parole boards to impose a registration and reporting requirement in individual cases where the risk profile is seen as being so high that such a regime would be appropriate. I think that would be a much much better proposition a much more targeted proposition and a more effective and appropriate proposition than this sort of shotgun blanket approach that simply registers people for an offence and in many cases puts them on that list for life.I mentioned that the select committee had made some changes that we saw as being positive but not sufficient to make this legislation overall acceptable to us. The legislation names a number of agencies that would have access to the register. They include Police and the Department of Corrections and that would seem entirely appropriate. Both of those organisations are accustomed to routinely dealing with confidential information—confidential databases if you like. Then we get down to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). I am not sure how many people work for MSD but I suspect it is a large number. In the likelihood—Alfred Ngaro: 10100.DAVID CLENDON: Sorry?Alfred Ngaro: 10100.DAVID CLENDON: 10100—thank you Mr Ngaro; a man on top of his numbers clearly. That is a large number of people we would be relying on to keep a database confidential.Similarly Housing New Zealand—people in that organisation I suspect have no particular culture or experience in maintaining the very strict confidentiality of highly sensitive database information or material or whatever you call it. My point being of course that you would have many many thousands of people in fact with access to this database. The likelihood of its leaking—it is almost a certainty that all or part of that database of that register would quite quickly enter the public domain.The knock-on effect of that we know could be entirely negative. It could lead to what somebody last night referred to as vigilante action against people. We know from the evidence we saw at the select committee that for want of a better word “outing” people publicly drawing attention to people who may be back in the community and trying to live proper and decent lives making them the target of suspicion fear and often aggression is more likely to lead to them reoffending than if they are simply left to get on with their lives with appropriate positive support from within the community.Again we would be much better to restore and dramatically increase funding to projects like the Circles of Support and Accountability. We saw the Bond Trust recently which has a good record of working with paedophiles post-release and ensuring that they are protected in some cases from themselves and that other people are protected from them. It is doing that in a very positive low-key way. That funding of dare I say a trivial amount of $25000 has been withdrawn despite the fact that in the UK as we speak the funding for similar entities has been dramatically ramped up because it has proven to lower the likelihood of people—sex offenders specifically—reoffending. So you have got to pose the question: why are we spending many millions of dollars—$146 million—over 10 years on a project that is unlikely to result in improving the safety of our children when we are taking away small amounts of money from a project that has a track record of protecting those self-same children?Something that sits behind this legislation I believe—and we saw it spelt out very graphically in some submissions—is the proposition that sex offenders cannot be rehabilitated cannot cease their behaviours. That is simply patently untrue and we have good evidence that in fact there are many examples where people have offended against children but then have gone on to regret their actions to seek treatment and to remove themselves from that risk profile. There is no evidence to suggest no solid evidence to say that a register will deliver the outcomes that it seeks to achieve. We know there are alternative mechanisms for reducing the risk that certain offenders represent.I recently had a conversation with a fellow who works in this area as a support person for some serious and high-risk sex offenders. They know very well what does work and what can work. At every step they are running up against bureaucratic and economic barriers to implementing the programmes that we know do work. Although this is certainly well-intentioned legislation—anything that protects our kids from predators from sex offenders has got to be seen as a good thing—we have absolutely no confidence that this legislation will deliver positive outcomes and for that reason we will not be supporting it.