Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill because we believe that a register is at a bare minimum needed. We do have Supplementary Order Paper 178 which mentions that we wish that the register be made publicly available. I have to note though that my Supplementary Order Paper does state that there will be two separate registers. One will have the entirety of the information that is described in the bill as it is and that will remain restricted. However the publicly available register will have the basic information on the offenders within the community. I will talk more about my Supplementary Order Paper in a later call but first I would just like to speak on a couple of things that the Minister has said and that a number of the other members have said when they were speaking here. The first is that during question time today the Minister mentioned the names all having to be on one register and that the issue of name suppression would be a reason to ensure that it is restricted and a reason why it could not be made publicly available. The figures that New Zealand First got for the number of child sex offenders—firstly there are over 400 convictions for child sex offenders every year; over the last 10 years on average there are probably around 250 to 300 who are released from prison every year; and also around 180 who are given community-based sentences every year. Of all of those child sex offenders less than 10 percent are actually given permanent name suppression. This is not a huge number or proportion of all of the child sex offenders who are given name suppression. There is only a very small number and that is no excuse for keeping the register restricted. There are a couple of questions that fall out of that. There are instances now where high-risk child sex offenders are placed in the community. The surrounding community the schools and the neighbours are informed of where they are and who they are. That happens now. The only reason that corrections and all of the authorities do that—the one and only reason—is for the community to know in order for them to protect their children. That is it. There is no other reasoning behind why it actually happens now—why there is publicly available information for certain communities with child sex offenders in those communities. That is a question that I would like Minister Tolley to answer: why does it happen now that the communities surrounding these high-risk child sex offenders are informed of their locations but she does not want to make the register of all of the child sex offenders public for that same reason—the one and only reason—which is to give the parents the ability and the tools to make safe and correct decisions for their children about where they go whom they associate with where they spend social time and where they go to school etc. All it is is a tool for parents to protect their children. Secondly there are a number of people who have stood up and talked about research. We have had Labour say that registers do not work and there is little evidence that it does work—same from the Greens. We have had the Minister talk about research as well. Even in the departmental report for the Social Services Committee it literally states that There is a wide range of international research … against the effectiveness of sex offender registers … most of the evidence that is available comes from the United States which is not a jurisdiction that is fully comparable with New Zealand." The last sentence of that little paragraph there says: "There is little evidence available that pertains specifically to child sex offender registers in like jurisdictions." So when any member stands up and talks about the research that context needs to be put into place. There is no jurisdiction and no international research out there—and members have been talking about international research—that is comparable to New Zealand jurisdiction. So any conclusions that any member makes in this Committee based on the international evidence cannot be applied with any sense of certainty to the jurisdiction of New Zealand. There are a number of things that I would like go on to in further calls including Supplementary Order Paper 178 but the most important I think in regard to this bill is the fact that we had around about 150 submissions to the select committee and it will be interesting to see how many of the members actually read them. The vast majority—120 or 125—asked for the register to be made public. Over 80 percent of all the submissions that came in wanted the register to be public. Apparently there are no other parties in this House that are listening to the public. Politicians get accused day in day out about being out of touch with reality about being out of touch with the public what the public wants and what the public needs and here is demonstrable proof that we have the public coming forward with their submissions and asking and pleading for us to have that register be made public. Every single party—apart from New Zealand First—in this House is ignoring them. We have just recently had an issue with a child sex offender in Lower Hutt. All the Lower Hutt people wanted to know was who that person was and where they were. That was not because of vigilantism or because of the mob mentality like the Minister was mentioning and fearmongering. That is not what the purpose of a public register is. The reason why the parents in Lower Hutt wanted to know who that person was and where they were was solely to protect their children—solely to protect their children. That is why they come out and ask for a public register. I would also like to note that of those submissions we had a number of victims of child sex abuse who came forward and every single one of them wanted it to be public. Every single submission from a victim of child sex offences wanted the register to be public. I can say that we had a number of child sex offenders who actually made submissions and every single one of those child sex offenders did not want a register and did not want it to be public. I ask the Committee and I ask the Minister why we are ignoring the obvious public support for a public register. Why are we ignoring the victims of child sex abuse who have come forward to submit to the select committee and asked for it to be made public? Why is New Zealand First the only party that is listening to them? That is a question that I would like the Minister to answer. I think it has been mentioned also previously that it is not a silver bullet. It is not about solving the issue of child sex abuse; it is about concentrating on the reoffending. Those who we know have offended and those who we know are likely to reoffend—that is what this tool is; it is a monitoring tool. It is not about punishment. It is not about extending the sentence that they have had. It is about the authorities in terms of how this current legislation is written knowing where the sex offenders are and who they are and being able to monitor them. That is why New Zealand First wants to extend that for the public to be able to do the same thing. We believe that actually there is a lot of ideology out there about the rights to privacy of the offender and the perpetrator. New Zealand First says and believes that the children's rights to protection and the parents' rights and the communities' rights to protect their children come before any of the rights of the offender—any rights of the offender. If this Committee and the Minister take the step to put the children at the centre of this conversation then there is no doubt that the Minister must agree to make the register public. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. I will speak a little later on about our Supplementary Order Paper 178 in detail. We will be supporting this through the Committee stage. We would like the register to be made public and I would like the Minister to answer those questions. Thank you."