Tolley AnneHon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I thought it was appropriate that I say just a few words in response to the two speakers who have already been on their feet Stuart Nash and Carmel Sepuloni. It will come as a bit of a surprise to the member who has just resumed her seat Carmel Sepuloni that actually I quite agree with her. This register this piece of legislation is not a silver bullet to solve sexual offending against children and should never be seen as that.This has been a very slow deliberate development of policy. If I go right back to when I had the privilege of being the Minister of Corrections I was really concerned that there were a large number of these predators who disappear into our communities and nobody knows where they are. On their release from prison or their release from the court with a community sentence the police may have some knowledge of them but time goes by and they can move on and they can just slip quietly into the community—and there are a considerable number of them. So that was where the idea came from: that we needed to be able to keep track of where these people are.I did go and do some international research and I remark on the comments from Stuart Nash and that there is a paucity of evidence as to whether keeping a register actually stops anything. What it does do—there is good evidence—is it does keep track of where they are. But the difference between what we saw overseas in some jurisdictions and what we are proposing here is that management context around those high-risk offenders based on the analysis that is done at any one point in time on their circumstances. That came out of a conversation actually with an offender himself who said: I understand why you're doing it but if you're setting up this register I need to be able to know that I can go—because I know when I'm slipping off track—there needs to be a way that I can go and seek help when my circumstances alter. I have a good idea of what those triggers are and I need that assurance and that back-up that I can go and seek some help." That has been augmented by discussions with both New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections about those offenders who are at high risk—not just at one point of time but throughout the time that they are back in our communities when something can trigger a relapse. In most cases those offenders are taught to manage their urges but when a circumstance changes in their life—losing their job losing their rental or home something happens in the wider community or something happens in their family—it can actually have a serious effect on them. And so that management system that we are building in is new and it is something that we should keep a very close eye on to make sure that it is effective. I do not disagree with having a good look at it a few years down the track to make sure that it is effective.At the heart of it it is a known group of people—and we want to know where they are in our communities and identify those who at high risk and make sure that we can put some support and services around them. There are some police who may well drop in on some of those high-risk offenders on a regular basis to make sure that they are OK that they are living where they said they were living and that they are keeping their details up to date.I just want to be a little bit pragmatic about the amount of money. It sounds like a lot of money—$147 million—but that is over 10 years. So on a per annum basis if it means that we can keep track of where these people are then it is not a lot of money and it does give some comfort and some tools to the professionals in order to deal with a particular group. I also agree with the speaker who has just resumed her seat that it is not the panacea as I said. It is not the silver bullet and by far the most dangerous people the evidence shows are the people who are friends with your family—or who are in your family—and you need to keep a very close eye on what is happening to your children. I think that is a sad thing. When I was a child we roamed the streets and there was a much more open way of living and we just cannot do that today. We know that these predators are there we know the damage that they can do and we have to do everything we can to protect our children—our communities' children—from those predators.Finally I know that Darroch Ball is going to speak to his Supplementary Order Paper 178; he raised the question in the House today. In the research that I did there are jurisdictions that have public registers and there are jurisdictions that have non-public registers. All the experts and all the specialists will tell you that if you have a public register you leave yourself open to the sort of mob mentality that we have seen on numerous occasions. In fact one offender who had not reoffended for many many years was working and was well rehabilitated into a normal life had his house burnt down while he was out working in his forestry job simply because someone found out that he had a previous conviction and they did not want him living in their neighbourhood. I can understand the fear that parents and communities have when they know that there is a predator there. We can all understand that but if we want these people to be rehabilitated—and many of them can be and can live an offence-free life—then we have to find ways to rehabilitate them into our communities and a public register does not support that.But for me the most important reason for the register was that I wanted to make sure that all the names were on the one list. The courts do offer name suppression in many cases in order to protect the victims. If we had a public register those names could not appear. It would mean that you would need a separate register in which case you have got two places where you have to go to get information. And we all know that that may lead to people slipping through the cracks. So the desire to have a register where we knew where everybody was and the advice from the experts about the ongoing management of these people in our communities led to the fact that we needed a closed register that only specific agencies could get access to. I have indicated to Jacinda Ardern that I am comfortable with the change to the name as proposed in Supplementary Order Paper 193 as I have said on many occasions in recent weeks. Actually it does not matter what you call it it is the way that this operates that is going to make a difference in our communities. If that makes it clearer that this is not a public register—it is only for Government agencies—well then there is no harm in calling a spade a spade and having the name reflect that."