Ardern Jacinda: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6636. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to rise on behalf of Labour and to make a contribution to this first reading debate. First I just want to query with the Minister for Social Development her decision to refer the bill to the Social Services Committee. I would have thought that the rationale behind sending it to either the Law and Order Committee or the Justice and Electoral Committee would probably be a much more useful decision particularly given that the likes of those two committees have dealt with things like extended supervision orders and other issues that can be quite confronting to Bill of Rights issues and that need to be properly weighed up and given that those are the select committees that have had to deal with those issues. I am sure that the Social Services Committee will do a fine job but it just seems wrongly placed because at the end of the day these are criminal justice decisions that are being made.Of course there will be absolute consensus across this House around the need to protect the most vulnerable citizens in New Zealand and children are amongst those citizens. We always welcome and are willing to support initiatives that are well placed to do that. For instance even when the Vulnerable Children Bill came up we took the opportunity to highlight those areas where we thought that there were useful mechanisms in place for children. Of course that does not remove our ability to critique when we think that there is an absence of those ideas but I want to raise the point that in arguing and debating for bills like this we are actually already missing some very simple opportunities to put in place those protections. For instance it is all well and good for us to be debating this child sex offenders register but what about the fact that in the Vulnerable Children Act we have a requirement now on NGOs and on anyone who is working with children on the front line for them to take up the role of making sure that they check their workforce and that they ensure that they are properly able to work with children. So carrying out police checks will be a part of that. Of course it does not matter that the Government is now putting in requirements via a bill that it has before the House at the moment that they will have to pay for that.Secondly the Government has also removed the ability of those NGOs to ask Child Youth and Family Services to do a check on individuals whom they are employing in order to check that they are the right people to be working with children. So on the one hand we are saying that we want to create greater checks and balances but on the other hand we are removing the ability of NGOs to do that job properly. This seems counterintuitive. So our argument is: let us get the basics right. Carmel Sepuloni’s bill on the registering of social workers is another prime example. If we want to make sure that we are protecting young people a very simple thing we can do is make sure that we have registration of social workers in New Zealand and we do not even have that. So again let us get back to basics. That does not preclude us being able to do things like this but let us get the basics right. I look forward to debating that bill tomorrow hopefully.To come to the detail of some of this bill Labour is supporting it going to the select committee so that we can look at some of the issues that we have a few concerns about and also some of the issues that obviously we would support. In the explanatory note in the general policy statement for this bill it says upfront that “The commission of sexual offences against children is a serious problem … it causes significant and long-lasting harm …”—no question there—“Information sharing between relevant agencies is recognised as an effective way to minimise the risk of harm from reoffending by known child sex offenders”. We must also add however that the research and evidence definitely suggests that the ability to rehabilitate these individuals is undermined if ever these registries become public.That is a really important point for us to keep in mind because as much as there is public pressure for opening up information like this it actually undermines our ability to keep young people safe. That seems counterintuitive. The easy political thing to do is to say: “Let’s just put all that detail out there.” That actually makes it harder to safely reintegrate someone and to ensure that we rehabilitate them properly so they never offend again. There is research and evidence around that fact and we cannot and should not play politics around that if that is in fact the right thing to do in terms of trying to keep people safe in the long run. So yes keeping a register absolutely has benefits but that register must be kept within the Government departments which can make sure that they use that information appropriately and in the best interests of children and their communities.The explanatory note then goes on to say that the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill requires all child sex offenders to register if they were aged over 18 years when the offence was committed and were convicted of a qualifying offence. I think it is up to the select committee to make sure that that list of qualifying offences is the appropriate list. I have had a quick look through it; a lot of it seems to make sense. The one issue that I am genuinely unsure of but that I would like to test at the select committee is that we do have to be careful with some of the historical offences on our statutes—for example people who currently hold convictions from pre - homosexual law reform—which are not actually the kinds of convictions that we want to be captured in a bill like this. I think that is just one of those tricky legislative questions that we need to ask at the select committee so that we know we are including only the right people in this particular bill.The bill also goes on to say that we want to ensure that we can register any offender who is found guilty of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction. Look—that makes sense. A lot of individuals are being deported back to New Zealand prior to finishing their custodial sentences. Again I think that what we have to be mindful of here is just the practical implications actually. It sounds good on paper but we actually do not even have an information-sharing agreement that has been practically implemented between us and Australia for instance. I think we are all in agreement that it is a good idea but as a select committee if there are blockages to that we should be talking about it because it is holding up our ability not just to do this work but also to implement some elements of our extended supervision order legislation. Already we have seen some horrific cases where it was not the intention of the Parliament to have those individuals let off the hook when they came back into New Zealand.One of the other points that is made is that “All registered offenders when residing in the community will be required to provide a range of personal information to a central register administered by the New Zealand Police. The registered offender must update the information annually within 72 hours of any change of details and at least 48 hours prior to travel.” Just one issue there that I would like to see discussed at the select committee is: who then is making sure that that residential address is appropriate? We have already seen cases in New Zealand where someone has been released to an address that is actually within very close proximity to victims. In this bill we have a reporting mechanism but it does not seem that there is any check in that reporting mechanism to ensure that it is an appropriate residence for that individual. So we need to make sure that we have got that mechanism in place otherwise it becomes quite redundant.If indeed the people are checking that appropriateness—which you would assume would be probation officers—we have already seen some areas where that process has fallen down. So again are we resourcing those individuals to do this job properly? Who will be monitoring for instance that people are staying within the residence that they are listing? Will we be privately contracting out that role? We have seen the issues that that can present. How can we make sure that the current poor management that we have seen around monitoring of offenders in the community is done properly? These are all things that make a scheme like this utterly redundant unless we have proper checks and balances in place. So these are all questions that we would ask.Also I want to add in because it seems appropriate that actually there is an assumption in this bill that when a sex offender is released into the community they have got accommodation they simply need to go and register it and everything is therefore tickety-boo. Part of our problem with reintegration and rehabilitation is the lack of availability of appropriate accommodation in the first place. I have seen scenarios where it has been decided by the Parole Board that an offender is ready for release and is ready to be monitored back in the community but they have been unable to be released because of a lack of appropriate accommodation. This has to be a part of a proper well-functioning corrections system to ensure that we have the appropriate kind of accommodation available in the first place. So we are kind of skipping a bit of a step in making that assumption in the first place.The other thing that we would like to see discussed is what the mechanisms to be removed from the register are when for instance after a period of 10 years a person has not reoffended there have been no issues and everyone is satisfied with the way the individual has reintegrated. We heard the Minister for Social Development make some vague comment about—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to have to interrupt the member but her time has well expired.