Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to begin by putting on record the strong view of the Labour Party that the primary goal in this debate of course needs to be protecting children from harm protecting children from becoming victims and as much as possible reducing the potential of future offending from those who are found to be child sex offenders. There is absolutely no dispute from us that that has to be the aim when debating legislation like this. I have heard some commentary in the media that somehow what has been prioritised in the debate are issues of privacy and confidentiality. The primary driver for us has always been protecting children. That has to mean making sure that we make the most of the evidence and research that is available to us around what works best when it comes to protecting children. Sometimes that research might tell us something that will seem counter to our intuition. But that does not mean we have the luxury of ignoring it. I want to go into a bit more detail on that. Essentially what the Minister presented to us with this bill is set out in the purpose clause. What she was trying to achieve were admirable but broad aims. The purpose clause reads: The purpose of this Act is to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders". Those are absolutely the aims that we should have. But the question we need to ask is how best you achieve that when what you are simply doing with a register like this is ensuring you keep up-to-date names and addresses that are shared between Government departments. We are not arguing that that is something that should not happen. In fact most people would probably think it already does. Keeping names and addresses and up-to-date information but just within Government agencies is useful information for instance to make sure that they are complying with their parole requirements and that they are following conditions as in not being located close to schools and areas that would inhibit their rehabilitation and potentially put children at risk. That is useful information. We need that information. No one is denying that. But does it reduce sexual reoffending against children? For us the add-on that has always been most important is the kind of rehabilitation and community focus work that happens around the offender upon release. Not every child sex offender receives a charge that allows them to be kept in prison for life. Let us be honest. There are some for whom we absolutely need to do a proper risk assessment to know for sure whether this is someone who should even be released. But after that point there will be those who will come under the view that they can be reintegrated if they are monitored correctly and if they have access to programmes that are proven to work. A database on its own does not achieve that. Our contention in this debate has been: what are we doing beyond the database? What are we doing beyond the register? I want to speak to that using the evidence that was provided to us at the Social Services Committee and in particular the submission that came to us from Ms Gwenda Willis. She is a registered clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at Auckland University. She was awarded the prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship for her work on what stops convicted sex offenders from reoffending. If we are going to listen to anyone it should be to this individual. Her first point to us was how important it is that we take into account individual differences and risks in sexual reoffending. We have tools available to us in New Zealand—are used in New Zealand—that can reasonably successfully analyse the risk of reoffending for different offenders. However what this bill did was just carte blanche use conviction and put anyone within particular categories of conviction on to the register. That is one way of doing things but the argument that was being made here by Ms Willis was that we actually have much more accurate tools and those tools can also tell us whom we need to target the most who might actually be a higher risk offender and whom we need to monitor to an even greater degree than others and to what degree we are using that information and that research. There was good reason for that. Even the New Zealand Police vouch that "The Register would be supported by an offender risk management framework … that targets resources to where the risk of re-offending is greatest …" It would have made sense if we integrated that risk assessment into the register system as well but we did not do that. So that is perhaps a missed opportunity. Remember the register that this bill establishes costs $146 million. This is not a cheap exercise. That is money that we forgo out of the corrections budget and it is money that potentially we are forgoing out of rehabilitation which is something that we absolutely were very keen to make sure we placed greater emphasis on. Why is that? Why would we be so keen to focus on something that people will no doubt say is airy-fairy it does not protect people and it does not prevent people from harm. But actually the reality of this—it is not great politics—is that it does far more than registers do. Here is the research and evidence: "Circles of Support and Accountability is an example of an alternate measure for reducing sexual reoffending that has produced much more promising results. … Research has demonstrated that [this programme] is associated with reductions in sexual reoffending exceeding 70%." That is higher than for any of the rehabilitation programmes in prison and is a much better result than we ever achieved behind the prison gate. It proves that actually there is work that we should be investing in that will make a difference. The STOP submission outlined this also. It stated that "Community based sex offender interventions have a key role in contributing to the assessment and management of risk of those offenders required to notify. Research has consistently found that contemporary cognitive-behavioural treatment is associated with statistically significant reductions in recidivism …". So we can reduce recidivism. In fact it found a reoffending rate of only 3.2 percent on 534 treated sexual offenders—a reoffending rate of 3.2 percent. You will not get reoffending rates reduced to that extent almost anywhere else. If we make sure we invest in programmes that we know work we can reduce harm and we can prevent risk. These again I want to reiterate are for those who have not got for instance preventive detention—the ability to keep them behind the prison gate. The other point that I want to make because this came up a lot is: should this be a public register or should this be a register for only Government departments? We felt so strongly about ensuring that this stayed a Government agency register only that we said to the Government "Please entrench this in the name of the bill." and I give credit to Anne Tolley for agreeing with that. The bill was renamed the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill to ensure that you cannot by the stroke of an amendment change the bill to make it public. It is entrenched in this bill that it is a Government department - only register. Why is that important? Because evidence shows that you can get a nominal reduction in harm through a Government register that is only for agencies—a small reduction in harm. The moment you make it public you increase risk. All of the evidence that has been undertaken overseas where they have created publicly available registers has increased the likelihood of children being harmed and sexual offenders reoffending.Darroch Ball: Rubbish. That's rubbish.JACINDA ARDERN: Darroch it is not rubbish. I could quote you the number of—Darroch Ball: I'm going to quote you some when I stand up so just wait.JACINDA ARDERN: Go right ahead but our eminent researcher in reducing sexual offending presented evidence to the select committee that said it increases harm. It might be good politics for some members of this House to play into the idea that simply giving this information will make everybody safe but we have a responsibility in this House to not play politics with children's safety. We know from what has been presented to us that making it public would put kids at risk. That is why ultimately we have supported this bill but we want to make sure that we do more—much more—to protect children."