Clendon DavidDAVID CLENDON (Green): Can I just briefly refer to Minister Paula Bennett's answers that she gave just now. I am sure the Labour Party was very pleased if in fact it did receive this bill yesterday. There are other parties in this House that take an interest in the proceedings of the House. I do wonder why one party is favoured over another in terms of having been given access to the bill. We saw this bill for the first time about mid-morning—10.30 perhaps—this morning. I do wonder why the same courtesy is not extended to every party because we all have an equal role and an equal right to represent the point of view of the people who put us in this place. If I may I just want to refer to clause 6 of the amendment bill which amends section 9 of the primary legislation. I observed the Chair's comments earlier about Groundhog Day—not wanting to hear repetitive comments—and I apologise if the point has been made but I am not sure that it has. I struggle to see anything in the first part of clause 6 that is anything other than wordsmithing and I wonder why we are in the House under urgency—chewing up time on a Tuesday evening essentially—for wordsmithing. If I may refer to section 9 of the primary legislation that we are amending section 9(1) says: If a court convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence the court may order that the person must be placed on the register … comply with reporting obligations" etc. and then the rest of the section goes on to talk about the consequence of that. The amendment being offered to us in clause 6 of the bill says that we will replace the words "convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence" with the words "imposes on a person a non-custodial sentence in respect of a conviction for a qualifying offence". I have read those two phrases. I have tried to sort of unpick them and rearrange them and I fail to see any material difference in the wording of them. Both require that both conditions pertain—that a conviction and a sentence must have been determined for the offence. It is not a matter of at what point this requirement or opportunity to put somebody on a register kicks in—is it after the sentencing or after the conviction? In both versions the court must have done both—convicted and sentenced a person—before the court has the option of putting them on the register. So I am just really puzzled as to why what appears to me after reading it numerous times to be purely wordsmithing—I fail to see any material difference in those two phrases with the new phrase replacing the old. The question I ask is why? What is the material outcome? What is the actual difference in terms of how this bill will be understood or implemented? The other point in clause 6 of the bill inserts—again into section 9 of the primary legislation—the statement that "(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1) the date on which the person was charged with the offence is irrelevant." I am not sure what mischief that is putting right. Again where in the bill is it implicit or explicit that the date on which a charge was applied has any relevance to the decision of the court as to whether or not a person ought to be placed on this register? So those are the two questions I guess. Why are we simply wordsmithing under urgency and what is the relevance? What is the mischief or the absence the lack or the shortcoming in the primary legislation that the new section 9(1A)—this reference to the date of a charge and the relevance of that—is applied to? Thank you."