Carter KahurangiKAHURANGI CARTER (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. The Greens want a world where all children here and across the world live safe lives free from sexual violence and abuse. We know we must strengthen and work to prevent sexual violence from ever happening in the first place. We want to see justice for all survivors of sexual violence and abuse especially children. People who have sexually violated children must be held accountable for the heartbreaking and enduring harm that they have inflicted. Offenders must be accountable and supported to stop their violent behaviour and there must be restoration and reparation directly to the survivors and their needs.We wish to state our position unequivocally because the research and evidence spells out very clearly where the real levers for protecting our children are. The issue of ending violence against children has been a longstanding priority for the Green Party and will continue to be. Under the country's first ever Minister for the prevention of violence Marama Davidson Marama Davidson was able to pull together the country's first ever 25-year nationwide strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence—eliminate.Unfortunately and with respect to the member this bill is not the most effective way forward to protect children from sexual violence and abuse so the Greens will not be supporting this legislation. At best this bill will do nothing to improve the safety and lives for children. At worst the bill will disrupt genuine rehabilitation approaches for offenders to change their harmful behaviour. The Greens cannot in good conscience support any legislation that risks prevention of violence work and does not improve the prospects of survivors.The bill amends the Child Protection (Child Sexual Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016 to require registered child sex offenders to provide additional information to … Police before travelling overseas". This information includes addresses of all the places they will stay for more than 48 hours the number identifying the country of issue of all passports they hold timely and reasonable explanation of any changes to this information. Currently child sex offenders are already required to provide this type of information for some travel or changes of location within New Zealand. This bill will remove disparities in reporting requirements between domestic and international travel. The penalties for failure to report will also be comparable: failing to comply with reporting obligations a fine of up to $2000 or imprisonment for one year; and providing false or misleading information a fine of up to $4000.This bill only applies to known convicted offenders. The aim of the Child Sex Offender Register is to improve child safety by having up-to-date information available on known child sex offenders living in the community that can be used to monitor risk of reoffending. Who's registered? People who have been convicted of sexual offending against children—specifically those offenders who have been convicted of a qualifying offence and were aged 18 years or over and the victim was under 16 years when the offence was committed and were sentenced to imprisonment or sentenced to a non-custodial sentence and directed to be registered at the discretion of the sentencing judge. So this bill only captures convicted known offenders which while important as a capture as it is—we have to be explicit about the confines of this bill and who it relates to.At best registers like this do nothing in and of themselves to reduce offending and at worst undermine rehabilitation efforts and safe integration into community. We have that evidence very clearly. This is an example of flawed legislation that will make politicians feel better about themselves and look tough on crime while there is no substance behind this action. This bill is only aimed at revictimisation and there are far more effective and proven ways to address revictimisation and some of those are addressed in Te Aorerekura. Te Aorerekura is the all-of-Government prevention-focused Tiriti-centred strength-based community-led and whole-of-whānau embraced and embedded strategy to eliminate violence over the next couple of generations.The Green Party remains strongly invested in enduring work to ensure children are safe not just make politicians feel like they're doing something. This bill will not resolve the significant harm of children being violated by sexual violence. While this bill offers no substance to safe responses to violence or prevention of violence it is also regrettable and substandard lawmaking. As legislators we must uphold a high standard of lawmaking as the cornerstone of a modern and functional democracy.In a second reading it is appropriate to refer to the select committee report. After the first reading submissions are heard from the public and interested agencies. It is really important to put on record here that both the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Justice were at pains to highlight that this legislation is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) and therefore risks a dangerous precedent if we want to be serious lawmakers. The Justice Committee's own report noted the statement of the Attorney-General that "the evidence is limited as to the effectiveness of [sexual] offender registers in improving public safety." The report quotes that "he"—the Attorney-General—"considered that the intrusion on that right"—to benefit from lesser penalty where penalties charged—"was not in due proportion to the importance of the objective of the bill and could not be demonstrably justified." This is from the Attorney-General.Now we do in this House weigh up public interest and public benefits whenever we have to consider breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but the Greens have already been clear that this bill does not offer effective solutions to keeping children safe and even worse risks disrupting the meaningful work of offenders to stop using harm. Any inconsistencies with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act would have to be conditional on a proven effective reason for public good. There is no such reason in this case because as stated there is not enough evidence that this bill will be effective in keeping children safe from sexual violence offenders and we all in this House are unified in agreeing that we want to keep children safe from sexual violence and offenders.I want to highlight that the select committee in its report did note the inconsistencies with BORA but the report chooses to take the inconsistencies into consideration but not make any changes to achieve consistency. That is why the Greens must put on record on the Hansard and in this House that we do not support ignoring inconsistencies.So in closing I repeat the Greens' value: the Greens want a world where all children here and across the world live lives free from sexual violence and abuse. We know we must strengthen the work to prevent sexual violence from ever happening in the first place. We want to see justice for all survivors of sexual violence and abuse especially children. People who have sexually violated children must be held accountable for the heartbreaking and enduring harm that they have inflicted. Offenders must be accountable and supported to stop their violent behaviour and there must be restoration and reparation directly to the survivors and their needs. Unfortunately this bill at best will not make life safer for children. At worst it will disrupt genuine rehabilitation for offenders to stop using violence. The Greens instead will keep advocating—[Time expired]"