Goff Phil: Sex Offenders Registry Bill — First Reading 
Goff Phil: Sex Offenders Registry Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7497] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 The Government has foreshadowed major changes in dealing with child sex offenders and it will support this bill going to the Law and Order Committee as one aspect of a series of measures that are necessary to minimise the risk of sexual offending particularly offending by paedophiles against children. 
This bill proposes a registry so that police have reliable information on the whereabouts of sex offenders. I think the outstanding feature of the register is that it requires those who are categorised or covered by the bill to regularly update the police on addresses. I think however that the important decision made by the author of the bill Deborah Coddington is that this register ought to be available for the purposes of policing and available to relevant agencies but not publicly available which would allow the names and addresses of sex offenders to be published with wider public access. I think there is a very good reason for doing that. Where the names and addresses of such offenders are known it does tend to promote vigilantism and is counterproductive to working to prevent reoffending by sexual offenders because the most likely way of promoting further offending is to drive those offenders underground and out of contact with the control and support mechanisms—the supervision mechanisms—that are necessary to keep them from reoffending. So I welcome Deborah Coddington’s acknowledgement of the need to avoid those particular outcomes. 
 We certainly do need a proper database for those who are serious and recidivist sex offenders. The police currently collate such information in collaboration with other agencies but it is fair to say it is not systematised and there is room for improvement in practice. Indeed in acknowledgment of that a pilot scheme was started at the beginning of this month in Dunedin where there is interagency management of child sex offenders during their parole and supervision period. There is collaboration between the various bodies and full sharing of information. I expect that that pilot programme will be successful and if successful it will be rolled out across the country. That will considerably improve the management of sex offenders in the community. 
Up-to-date information about known offenders and where they live however is by itself of somewhat limited use. It may help the police to solve crimes more quickly and it is worthwhile for that reason alone but what it does not do is act to prevent future offending. Prevention requires the active management of sex offenders in the community and that means a combination of controls such as supervision and court-reporting requirements and availability of and support in undertaking regular counselling and relapse prevention programmes. That is why the Government is now working on ensuring the maximum effectiveness of the police database as part of a wider package of measures to ensure that the risk posed by recidivist offenders is actually minimised. 
I think one can properly categorise sex offenders into various tiers of risk. The top tier—the worst offenders—are much more likely today to receive preventive detention. The circumstances in which preventive detention can be imposed by a judge were significantly extended in the Sentencing Act passed last year. Preventive detention is a penalty that is a lifelong sentence. It is a sentence that now applies from a younger age to a much wider range of offences and without the need for an offender to have previous serious offences in order for that sentence to apply to an individual who has offended seriously. It allows for any offenders if and when they are ever released back into the community literally to be controlled for the rest of their natural life through reporting and supervision and allows for the possibility of recall if behaviour indicates that the offender is at risk of reoffending. It is a draconian sentence. It is a sentence however that gives full control and gives priority to the safety of the community where that very clearly is justified. 
Currently however there is no active management regime for the second tier of sex offenders. These people are also habitual offenders and under the principle that when one has served one’s time that is the end of one’s sentence there is too little attention given to the identifiable likelihood that those individuals will go on to offend again if they are not managed appropriately in the community. The register does not on its own address that gap. That is why the Government has proposed an extended management regime that would allow authorities to exert control and monitoring over that tier of offenders for up to 10 years after their release from prison. The legislation will be introduced before the end of the year and I hope the select committee will consider that bill alongside Deborah Coddington’s bill. This is a radical change in control and supervision of offenders. It is however a change that has been implemented recently in the United Kingdom and in Canada and I believe that it is a change that is merited because again priority must be placed on protection of the community from people who are known as habitual offenders. 
Those offenders who are subject to preventive detention therefore or subject to the new proposed extended supervision regime would be required to keep their whereabouts notified to relevant agencies. That would be a standard condition of their release. This bill’s provision for collecting and maintaining up-to-date information therefore would not be relevant to those two groups of the most serious offenders because that information would already be routinely required. A register however may be useful in implementing similar tracking requirements on the next tier of sex offenders. My view at this point is that it ought to apply to relatively serious or recidivist offenders but not to offending that is minor or that is deemed to be one-off offending. 
In considering the establishment of any registry a key issue is balancing the benefits that the registry may deliver in terms of crime prevention and crime resolution with what the registry may involve in terms of the resources required to put it together. Costs would depend on how a registry was implemented and how accessible it needed to be and to whom. This bill as the author has indicated is not prescriptive in this regard and I think that is a sensible approach but the select committee will have to give some consideration to what the implications for various agencies’ information systems might be. 
Sex offenders and in particular child sex offenders have an appalling effect on their victims. They cause traumas that blight the lives of children for years to come. We need to consider today regimes that address and minimise that offending far more effectively than we have done in the past. Tougher sentences to deal with the worst offenders are now available and as we saw in the sentencing of Nicholas Reekie are being used. But sanctions imposed after the offence has been committed are less valuable than measures that are effective in preventing offending. Cooperation and information sharing between agencies are essential to the proper management of those at risk of offending and we have begun that process. Extended supervision of those who have offended and are at risk of doing so again is essential and the Government will act in an unprecedented way to ensure that happens. A register of offenders to ensure an effective and up-to-date database could also be an important aspect of management and control and for this reason the Government will support the referral of this bill to the select committee. I look forward to the consideration of the bill alongside the legislation proposed by the Government which will be in this House before the end of the year.