Wall Louisa; Rurawhe AdrianLOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. Firstly can I congratulate Matt Doocey for focusing on our children. I know he as a father is incredibly passionate about ensuring that our children are safe. But I really want to start my contribution with a quote from Waikato University Professor Devon Polaschek who was asked to comment on this particular piece of legislation—and I quote—We need to do more than just vilify sex offenders to make our children safe." The reason I chose to start with that quote is because the theory of the proposition that principals should be notified so they can better protect our children in theory is a good one but the reality of child sex offenders is actually quite horrific and I'm going to now read some of the research about who our child sex offenders are. In New Zealand about 90 percent of child sexual abuse is committed by someone known to the child or their family. Australian researchers are a lot more specific and I particularly want to focus on misconceptions about child sex offenders by Kelly Richards. It's a piece of Australian research. Ninety-four percent of child sex abusers are known to the child or the family. So who are they? Male relative not father or stepfather 30.2 percent; family friend 16.3 percent; an acquaintance or neighbour 15.6 percent; another known person 15.3 percent; the father or stepfather 13.5 percent. The total is actually over 100 percent because in 3.7 percent of these cases the young person is abused by more than one perpetrator and I want to note from the Australian literature that less than 1 percent of the perpetrators of child sex abuse are woman. So the reality of the situation is that strangers don't commit child sex abuse against our children. You know the people that are closest to them do. I guess the only relevance was the acquaintance or neighbour at 15.6 percent. But what it really speaks to is the vigilance of every single parent in our community to make sure they know who has access to their children and the proposition that my colleague Matt Doocey—and I want to acknowledge Matt's passion and why he's doing this. But I think the current mechanism to be quite honest on a case by case basis will allow the Department of Corrections to do their job which is to ensure that our child sex abusers do have support through the Kia Mārama programme based at Rolleston Prison and also Te Piriti which is at Auckland prison. Our recidivism rates are 7 percent so we know some of our child sex offenders are going to be recidivist sex offenders but I think the hysteria around this type of legislative solution actually isn't helpful. But what it should do is inspire all parents to know who within that child's sphere are the adults within that child's sphere and to be incredibly vigilant about who our children are being accessed by because unfortunately when you look at the literature abuse is actually a matter of opportunity. So if we know where our children are every single minute of the day we know who's with them and we obviously trust the people that are looking after our children then actually not only can we be much more vigilant about preventing child sexual abuse but we actually have to realise that for some of the people who are in our prison system they have the opportunity of rehabilitation to understand that what they're doing is wrong because—believe it or not—some people don't understand that taking advantage of a child is wrong. And therein is another issue—I mean it's two to one basically in terms of our child sex offenders compared to adult sex offenders because there aren't any consent issues. I guess with adults it's a lot more complicated in terms of those victims going to the police and proving that they said no. So that's my contribution and rationale unfortunately for not supporting this bill. Kia ora.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Matt Doocey—five minutes in reply."