Logie Jan: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8515. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call to supplement my colleague David Clendon’s earlier submission on this the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill which has been brought to this House by the National member Dr Yang. I rise to say that the Green Party will be opposing this bill. I commend the member for his intention and I am sure that actually his intent was good. It is unfortunate however that this bill from our reading of it has such fundamental flaws that we are unable to support it.Some of those flaws—to summarise at the beginning of this contribution—would be that it would not achieve the goal that the title suggests it would; that it might create a false sense of safety; and that it actually may put another barrier in front of judges convicting in the first place if they are concerned about the double jeopardy being added. We know that we have struggled with juries to get convictions as things are and that really the concerns of the Attorney-General—they have been raised in the House already in the report and I think they do speak to the heart of our opposition.If this bill does not achieve what the title suggests—and it goes much wider than that title suggests but does not even partly achieve that protection against a change of name for child sex offenders—then we have to ask ourselves: is that worth the time of this House to spend it on examining an idea that has so many fundamental flaws? I can hear some people saying: “Well if you’ve got concerns around it they’re just technical. Support it to the select committee and work through it.” But they are not just technical; they are fundamental. It is about the drafting and it is about the practicality of this legislation in practice. There is strong evidence to suggest that it would have a negative impact in fact on the safety of our children and the functioning of our courts.I do think that we need to prioritise the review of our police and court system. I understand that some of the work that is being done cannot be done through a member’s bill—like the problem that we have with a 1 percent conviction rate for sexual violence in this country which cannot be solved by a member’s bill—but it would be really good if that work was within the scope of the Government. When I heard the previous speaker Ian McKelvie stand up and say that this bill is evidence of this Government’s effort to protect children from child abuse—that is a little unfortunate when it is a member’s bill and is not a reflection of the Government’s intention at all.At this point I do need to raise the ongoing deep frustration I have with the attempts over decades now to try to fix our police and court systems to be able to deliver justice—to ensure that those who offend are actually held to account—and the lack of progress on that. We have had a Government that has put things on the table taken them off and put them back on again. What we are left with at the moment I understand—after decades of work and so many unpaid hours from the community for people struggling to get justice for women and children who are the victims of violence—is a time frame of 6 months for the Law Commission to report on a piece of work that is huge. It means that out of 16 or more significant policy points the Law Commission is probably going to be able to consider only two or three.What we are going to get from this Government is more partial tinkering when the evidence is so clear that the system is fundamentally broken. There is no way that anyone can tell me that a 1 percent conviction rate demonstrates the need for a tinkering solution. It does not. It needs a very well-considered and systemic approach to this problem. When the Government is saying that this bill is evidence of its efforts to protect children I wish it would just address the fundamentals instead.