Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill

I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. This bill will enable the establishment of a child sex offender register through the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Act. Child sexual abuse is a serious problem in New Zealand. It causes significant and long-lasting harm to children in our community and to their families. In 2014 alone, 451 offenders were convicted of a child sex offence, and of those, 307 were sentenced to imprisonment. Also in 2014, 294 child sex offenders were released from prison back into the community. The majority of these offenders will have no ongoing contact with justice-sector agencies after they complete their sentence or orders even though their risk of reoffending may be high.

This Government has gone a long way already towards addressing the risks presented by high-risk sexual and violent offenders with the introduction of public protection orders and the enhancement of extended supervision orders in 2014. The Government is currently working on addressing the risks around overseas offenders who are deported back to New Zealand, of which child sex offenders are a subset. The establishment of a child sex offender register will further enhance the safety of our children by ensuring that the appropriate agencies have the information that they need about registered child sex offenders who are living in the community, particularly when they are no longer subject to oversight by the Department of Corrections.

The bill will enable Police and Corrections to establish a child sex offender register for offenders aged 18 years or older who are convicted of a qualifying offence against a child under the age of 16 years and who are sentenced to a term of imprisonment or a non-custodial sentence and are directed to be registered at the discretion of the sentencing judge, or who are convicted of an offence overseas that is equivalent to a qualifying offence in New Zealand. The bill applies to persons convicted after the Act comes into force. It also applies retrospectively to those serving a sentence of imprisonment, including when they are on parole or release conditions or are subject to an extended supervision order for a qualifying offence on the date the Act comes into force.

The bill imposes reporting requirements on registered offenders. They must report to police and provide a range of personal information within 72 hours of their release from prison, their being made subject to a registration order at the direction of a judge, or on their arrival in New Zealand. This information includes any aliases, all the addresses at which they may reside, their workplaces, club memberships, car registrations, any distinguishing marks, email addresses, details of computer internet service providers used, and passport details. They must report annually to confirm their information and to provide a photograph and fingerprints if required. Finally, they must report within 72 hours of any changes to their personal information, and at least 48 hours prior to any travel, either within New Zealand or overseas.

Duration on the register for offenders is based on the class of the qualifying offence contained in the schedule to the bill and the sentence received. If a registered offender is sentenced to imprisonment, they will remain on the register for life for a class 1 offence, 15 years for a class 2 offence, and 8 years for a class 3 offence. If a registered offender is sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, they will be registered for a period of 8 years, regardless of the class of qualifying offence committed. This reflects the lesser non-custodial penalty imposed by the judge. The bill establishes offences for failing to report or provide the required information, with a penalty of imprisonment for up to 1 year and a fine of $2,000, and a penalty of imprisonment for up to 2 years and a fine of up to $4,000 for providing false or misleading information.

The bill has provisions for information sharing between specified agencies—Police, Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, and Housing New Zealand Corporation—and between Police, Corrections, and a third party when it is deemed necessary in order to protect a child or children at risk; for example, to a parent of a child or children who has a new partner who is a registered child sex offender, that will be the Commissioner of Police and agencies administering corresponding registers overseas, such as Australia and the UK. Information in the register will not be publicly available. This is to ensure that we have one complete register of all offenders, including those who have name suppression. Outside of information sharing among specified agencies, there is limited provision for information to be disclosed to third parties. In situations where there is reasonable grounds to believe that a registered offender poses a threat to the safety of any children, information in the register may be provided to a parent, guardian, teacher, or caregiver of the child, but it will be an offence for anyone to make any unauthorised disclosure of information in the register, with a penalty of 6 months’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $25,000.

I note that the Attorney-General has tabled a report on this bill pursuant to section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The Attorney-General’s report has concluded that the bill is inconsistent with section 9 of the Act and section 26(2), and that this cannot be justified under section 5. Respectfully, I have slightly different views on those. The inconsistency with section 9 is based principally on there being no possibility for a review, at least of the lifetime reporting obligations of those who have been sentenced to imprisonment for a class 1 offence. This was an issue that was considered at length during the policy development stage, and the difficulty is how any reviewing authority can conclude that a fit and healthy person on the register who has committed a class 1 offence has ceased to be a risk to children. A reasonably long period of apparent non-offending will not necessarily mean that the risk of reoffending is sufficiently reduced to justify removing the person from the register.

There are no restrictions placed on where an individual can live or work, whom they can live or associate with, or when and where they can travel, including overseas. They are obliged only to report any changes in these circumstances. The bill is based on the premise that the rights of the child justify the imposition of obligations on these registered offenders and that there is a rational and proportionate connection between the objectives of the legislation and the means used to achieve them. The inconsistency with section 26(2), “double jeopardy”, is based on the retrospective application of the bill to those serving a sentence of imprisonment or who are subject to an extended supervision order for a qualifying offence when the bill comes into force. The limited retrospective nature is considered necessary in order to remove the not inconsiderable immediate risk presented by already sentenced child sex offenders moving into the community after the Act comes into force and not being subject to the bill’s reporting requirements. There are likely to be about 470 offenders to whom these provisions will initially apply. The section 7 report acknowledges that the retrospective provisions would help with addressing the risk, but it considers them to be more than is reasonably necessary. As stated above, I do not consider these reporting obligations to be excessive when balanced against the rights of children.

In summary, we know that child sex offending is a significant problem in New Zealand and that the harm caused to our children is substantial and long term. We also know that the monitoring of child sex offenders in the community is limited by the current legislation, which does not allow for the collection and sharing of information about child sex offenders in the community by relevant agencies. The Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill provides a strong statutory basis for addressing these issues and for enhancing the sexual safety of the most vulnerable members of the community: our children. I commend this bill to the House.

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.

It is important for me to speak in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill at its first reading. I would just like to commend the Minister for Social Development, the Hon Anne Tolley, for all the work she does in the space of protecting children and vulnerable children. I would not say, necessarily, that it is a pleasure to rise to speak to a bill around child sex offenders, but I think, as the father of a young daughter—and many people in this room are parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunties—and for people throughout the country, that it is something that we will join together in support of in making this country safer. It is a bill that is focused on offenders who are over 18 who have committed crimes on children who are under 16.

Child sexual abuse is a crime, and this Government is tough on crime. It is tough on the causes of crime. When we look at crime in New Zealand at the moment, we do have one of our lowest crime rates since the 1970s. I think our Better Public Services target around crime of around 20 percent has already been surpassed, but, as this bill demonstrates, there is always more to do. That is what this Government is committed to and what this Government is focused on doing. Look at the work we are doing around children and vulnerable young children. Look at the release of the State of Care 2015: What we learnt from monitoring Child, Youth and Family report from the Children’s Commissioner and the response of the Minister and the Government in looking at the modernisation and the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family Services, as well as Children’s Teams to work with some of the most vulnerable young children before they go into care, and even things like raising the age of free GP care up to the age of 13.

This bill is about establishing and creating a register that will collect information—things like names and addresses of child sex offenders. It is also about building a risk-based, multi-agency management framework. I think that if we look at that sentence around the risk base and unpack it for a minute, obviously child sex offenders pose a risk to people in the community, and it is about understanding that risk and thinking through how that might play out in a community. The phrase “multi-agency” is about ensuring that all the agencies are working together and are joined up, and that might be the police, the Department of Corrections, and, you could imagine, the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand, understanding that a child sex offender could be living in a house, under their oversight, with a new partner and children.

When we look at the regulatory impact statement, it is interesting that when we benchmark ourselves internationally and look at the research and evidence, it is very much a growing field. It is a field that is still developing evidence around the use of a risk register as well as long-term monitoring of child sex offenders. We can look at a piece of research from the UK in 2011. It was around the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or MAPPA, which was introduced by the British Government in 2001. What it identified from its research was that there was a reduction in reconviction rates amongst sex offenders between 2001 and 2014. That is when they compared that with a cohort of 1998 to 2000, albeit that the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements was introduced in 2001.

So what Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements evidenced was that through risk-profiling as well as risk management of the offenders, it was able to understand how it could cause a reduction in reoffending. Let us be clear: any reduction in reoffending is beneficial. If you look at some of the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement, you see that there are some references around child sex offenders, those who are serving or future ones, having less privacy of personal information through this bill. Depending on the severity of the crime, of course, some people will go on the risk register for 8 years, some child sex offenders for 15 years, and some for life. By being placed on this register there will be less privacy of their personal information, but I think that is tough. At the end of the day, we are putting children first, and that is what we need to do. I think this bill puts children first. I take the comments of the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, about public disclosure and how that probably does not do the children any good itself, but I think that collecting this information and having a multi-agency response and monitoring are the right things to do in looking at recidivism and in looking at reoffending to ensure that we are managing right some very high-risk criminals and putting young people safely in our communities.

So when we look at the three types of information sharing that this bill is talking about for child sex offenders when they go on the register, it is about facilitating more personal information, which police and the Department of Corrections can collect and discuss within themselves. It is also about ensuring that additional personal information can be shared with Government agencies, such as the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand. But it is also about allowing the police and the Department of Corrections, if they feel it is right, to disclose personal and private information to people outside of those Government departments if they feel that a child sex offender is at risk of reoffending.

This bill creates a decision-making power for the courts, and that was clearly stated in the departmental disclosure statement. It has about four categories. If a child sex offender is found guilty of a qualifying offence but is given a non-custodial sentence, a court may make an order for a child sex offender who poses a risk to the lives or sexual safety of a child or children, or other offenders who have received a custodial sentence, and they will automatically be put on this register. But there is also another category, which the previous speaker alluded to, and that is New Zealand nationals who commit these offences overseas and then are deported at the end of their sentence. I know that in my electorate this has occurred recently, and there was fear and concern in the community that there was no oversight of this person who was coming back from another country and reintegrating in a community in New Zealand. So I think this will allay some of that fear for the local community and they will understand that police and the Department of Corrections will have oversight of this child sex offender.

I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I am standing to speak to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. As my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out, we will be supporting the bill’s referral to the select committee. We are concerned about the fact that it is coming to the Social Services Committee. I do not mind considering this bill, being on the Social Services Committee, but we do wonder whether or not, because this is a criminal justice issue, the bill should actually be sent to the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee.

I just want to acknowledge that across the House every single one of us would recognise that this is a major issue. I think it is important to look at a few of the facts that we see in the regulatory impact statement—facts that we should all be concerned about. Child sexual abuse is a serious problem in New Zealand. In 2012-13, 505 offenders were convicted of 1,819 sex offences against children, up by over 20 percent from a decade earlier. We heard earlier from the other side that crime is down, but when we hear those statistics and see that sexual offences against children are up by 20 percent from a decade earlier, then we should be concerned. In 2012-13 the Accident Compensation Corporation had 779 sensitive claims lodged for sexual abuse against children under the age of 16 years. These are just the cases that actually led to a conviction. We know, because of the research, that there are thousands of cases of child sexual abuse out there every year that do not get reported, let alone lead to a conviction. Child victims of sexual abuse are amongst the most vulnerable victims of crime, and the resultant harm is often very serious and long-lasting. These are things that we can agree on in the House.

My concern—and I will be asking questions about this when the bill comes before the select committee—is actually around the rehabilitation side in respect of sexual offenders. I am really interested to know—and I will be really interested to know and will be digging down on this—how successful the rehabilitation programmes that we have in place are, particularly the ones that are run in our jails, what the results are, and what the research there is. What do we need to know as parliamentarians about this and what do the public need to know? Where do we need to be investing more funding and more resource in if the rehabilitation programmes that we have in place are not successful?

I was recently quite disturbed by a case in west Auckland where a person was caught by the police in the library sexually offending against a child. Not only was that disturbing but what was particularly disturbing was that that particular person was working in the capacity of a social worker for a social service in west Auckland and had committed a similar crime 25 years earlier. And, yet, that person was still able to work in that position of social worker and was able to reoffend. I am going to go down the track of talking about the need to have a qualified and registered workforce working with our children, as my colleague Jacinda Ardern alluded to before, and I am going to take this opportunity to bring up the fact that a report that recently came out highlighted the need to have a more qualified workforce working with vulnerable children.

Tomorrow in the House we have a members’ day, and my bill, the Social Workers Registration (Mandatory Registration) Amendment Bill, will be coming up. It is about moving towards the mandatory registration of social workers. I bring this up because I am reflecting on that particular social worker in west Auckland who sexually offended against a young child in the library and who was working for a social service at the time, in the capacity of a social worker. Unfortunately, all too often the people who are committing these offences are either family members or people in trusted positions. So I think we have a moral obligation as a Parliament to make sure that we are holding to account the people who are in those trusted positions or working with vulnerable children. I am hoping that tomorrow the National Government will consider supporting my member’s bill to make social worker registration mandatory.

We are not opposed to certain types of information sharing between departments—in this case, it would be corrections and police—but there are concerns, though, about how information will be shared. Anne Tolley has said that in some cases where there is a significant threat to the safety of children, information from the register may be released to a third party such as the parent or guardian of a child, or a teacher or caregiver responsible for a child. My concern with that is that the National Government’s speakers on the bill have said that, on the one hand, this will not be a public register. The register will not, apparently, be public but will be available to authorised police, corrections staff, and authorised staff from relevant agencies such the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand.

Then, though, we have Anne Tolley, the Minister for Social Development, saying that where there is a significant threat to the safety of children, information from the register may be released to a third party such as the parent or guardian of a child, or a teacher or caregiver. I guess that we are just seeking clarification on that, because, actually, if that information is going to the third party, such as the examples that have been given here, then it actually is going public. So, on the one hand, to say that this register will not be public and will be going to only these agencies, and then, on the other, to say that in some circumstances it can go to a third party—including the guardian of a child, or a teacher or caregiver—it then becomes really blurred. Is this a public register or is this not a public register? If it is a public register, then the Government really needs to name it that and be very transparent about that. At the moment I am a little bit concerned that it is a little murky.

I just want to point out the fact that there should be a mechanism for review to be removed from the register if offenders have not offended in a very long time. This has been brought up, but this is something that we will need to discuss at the select committee. There are so many issues digging down on this that we are going to have to have discussions about at the select committee, which does take me back to my concern as to whether this is well-suited with the Social Services Committee or, as my colleague Jacinda Ardern pointed out earlier, whether it would have a better fit with the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee, given that this really is a criminal justice issue.

It is important to manage any risks to children and the community posed by convicted child sex offenders who have come to the end of their sentences or are serving non-custodial sentences. We do accept that this bill will allow for the tracking of convicted child sex offenders in the community, to be used as a tool to try to prevent reoffending. If it does assist with preventing reoffending, then of course we will support this. But we do need to acknowledge that this is not a silver bullet, with regard to the very serious issue that we face as a country with child sex offenders and sex offences committed against children. There is much more that needs to be looked at. This is one possible way in which we can try to mitigate the risk, but it definitely is not the silver bullet to resolving the issues that we have in this country with sexual offences against children.

I rise to take a call this evening to support the first reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. Like my colleague Matt Doocey, I would like to acknowledge Minister Tolley for her work in this area and for bringing this bill to the floor of the House, and also the Hon Judith Collins for her previous ministerial roles. I know that she had a particular advocacy for such a register.

This bill is seeking to strike the right balance between protecting some of our most vulnerable children—who are aged from a few months old through to 15 years old—on the one side, and on the other the rights of those who have committed these crimes and been found guilty for them but are returning back into the community and are, no doubt, wanting a fair life as they do that. In my view, this bill traverses that age-old tension between public safety, on the one hand, and individual rights, on the other. But the bill that we are discussing this evening reflects a clear bias towards keeping our most vulnerable safe. It is anchored in a view that information tightly held that is used to inform risk and associated response is an appropriate framework to protect those who need our protection, but it does, of course, at the margins erode the rights of individuals.

That is a balance I am comfortable with, and, no doubt, during the select committee process we will hear a spectrum of views from those who are across New Zealand on this issue. I am going to listen with interest, and I am sure that most of our select committee members will, to assure myself that we have landed in the right place. I believe, at the moment, that we have. I also think it is right that we as the Social Services Committee reflect on it. This is a whole-of-Government approach, which this Government has brought in to protect and look after our most vulnerable, particularly children. So I am very confident that under the leadership of Alfred Ngaro and the deputy chairmanship of Matt Doocey and others we will have the appropriate discussion and traverse the areas that we need to.

Sexual offending against children is a serious problem that causes significant and long-lasting harm. Reported child sexual abuse is increasing. In 2012-13, 505 offenders were convicted of 1,819 sex offences against children, up 20 percent from the previous decade. That, to be honest, is likely to be a lower-than-reality number, because children, of all of our community, are less likely to have come forward in all cases if they have been offended against. What we do know is that victims of child sex offenders are some of our most vulnerable in New Zealand. Their lack of emotional, physical, and intellectual maturity puts them at serious disadvantage to those who are leveraging their often adult status. These adverse effects are significant. They can include chronic depression, low self-esteem, sexual dysfunction, and personality disorders, amongst others—and, I guess more tragically, they often have an increased risk of being an offender themselves, in time.

The key problem that we are seeking to solve with this bill is to close the gaps in Government information collection and information sharing systems that have become evident in reviewing recent incidents relating to reoffending. I think this is a key point that we should bring out in this discussion—that this has occurred. We have seen situations where reoffending has occurred in society, and as we have looked deeply at the causes of that and what the conditions were in the place when that happened, it was the lack of information and the lack of sharing between relevant Government ministries that were contributing factors to that.

This bill seeks to establish the child protection offender register, as we have heard this evening. It includes all offenders aged 18 years or older at the time of the offence who have been convicted of a qualifying child sex offence and, of course, were then sentenced to imprisonment. It also enables a judge, if it is a non-custodial sentence, to assess the risk profile of that individual and then also direct them to register on the register as well. It also includes a condition to capture, if you like, on the register those who have committed these crimes in offshore jurisdictions but who intend to live in New Zealand for more than 6 months. Again, as long as the offending was of a similar threshold to what the equivalent would have been in New Zealand, they too will need to be registered on this proposed register.

I will spend a moment on the register itself. I think it is worth here in this first reading to just step through some of the components of that. It is going to have a range of personal information of these individuals: their names and other identifying particulars—address and the like, as you would expect—details of each qualifying offence, or corresponding offence if it was in an offshore jurisdiction; the date they were sentenced; the date the registrable offender ceased to be in custody; and, of course, an obligation that if any of that information changes, they have to update the Department of Corrections within 72 hours of any change or 48 hours if they are seeking to travel. Just as important, every 12 months there is an obligation to make sure that that has been reconfirmed as accurate. As has already been discussed this evening, the time frames in which they need to be on the register are 15 years or 8 years from the date they have been released from prison, or potentially for life depending, of course, on the seriousness of the qualifying offence for which they were convicted. As a point of detail, those who are on this register because of their non-custodial sentence and the judge’s direction, are required to be on this register for 8 years.

In terms of the ongoing management of the register, obviously in this bill it is clear that the Department of Corrections and the Police will share responsibility for managing that. I think, again, that that is a very sensible and efficient conclusion. The Department of Corrections, whilst those offenders are in prison and once those on the register move out into the community, then swaps it over to the Police to be the lead manager of that interface. Agencies such as the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand will, of course, continue to have limited access to the information—limited, but they do have the capacity to have access to it if it is clear that it is in the interests of public safety.

Obviously, this information needs to be updated to establish a complete picture of emerging risk of reoffending. I think that that is a key component of this register—that it is not a static piece of data. Those with the greatest skills of being able to assess the risk profile of individuals can assess the data, can look at the trend line of recovery of the individual, and can build a particular support plan around them. It is that interface, if you like, between the data and a management plan over time that reduces the risk on our vulnerable children in New Zealand.

That is why I think this is a good bill, and I welcome the conversation that we are going to have, as the Social Services Committee, over the next few months. Thank you.

I would like to just begin my comments by saying—not wishing to labour a point already well made by our Labour colleagues; and there is a terrible pun in there that was unintended—that the matter of the Minister’s choice of select committee does seem peculiar. I do not wish to impugn the Social Services Committee in any way—I am sure that it is a splendid committee.

According to the advice on our very own parliamentary website, however, “The Social Services Committee considers matters relating to housing, senior citizens, social development, veterans’ affairs, and work and income support.”, and I struggle to see how the content of this bill fits under that umbrella of issues to be considered by that committee. It is not a matter of academic interest; it is a genuine concern that committees build up a level of expertise and experience in their area around specific matters of interest. The Law and Order Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee are accustomed to working on legislation around offending, around courts, around corrections, and with police, and I really am puzzled as to why you would not send it to one of those committees. So be it.

The Greens are supporting this bill going to the select committee at least, essentially based on the reality that we are willing to engage with any proposition that is aimed at protecting children. It is fair to say, I think, that most forms of offending against the law will find a level of tolerance in some parts of society. With traffic offences, some drug offences, and breaking the rules around tax you will find a cohort of people who are willing to tolerate and even participate in some of those things. Sex offending against children is abhorrent, I would argue, to all New Zealanders. It is something that none of us can tolerate, nor should we, and so any mechanism that might reduce the risk to our children is something that we are willing to engage in.

We will engage in this process in good faith and we will endeavour to keep open minds, but the first most important question is: will the establishment of a child sex offender register make our children safer? That is the evidence and the information that we will be looking for in the select committee. We will be wanting to hear the evidence of experts and we will be wanting to engage with the research, to be persuaded that actually that is the case, because such evidence as there is seems at best ambivalent about whether these registers actually do any good in the real world or whether they are simply a means of appearing to do some good. As I say, we will engage with that in good faith, and we will be interested to see what the outcome is.

Having said that, even if that primary question about whether a register could potentially protect children is answered to our satisfaction, we would still have some fairly significant concerns about this bill as drafted. Not least of all are concerns around the matters described in the section 7 report from the Attorney-General that indicates that the bill as drafted is inconsistent with sections 9 and 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, around disproportionately severe treatment.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Doesn’t listen to anything I say. No one listens.

Ha ha! I may quote back to the Minister on that comment, but for the moment it is double jeopardy, and the finding of the Attorney-General is that this bill is inconsistent in a way that cannot be justified. That is a very serious matter. It is not a nuanced commentary; it is quite clear-cut and it is quite black and white, and that is something that will have to be attended to and remedied.

The main thing about this matter is that once a person is on the register for some offences then there is no going back—it is for life. There is no possibility or no acknowledgment of reform. A person may, over time, step away from offending and their risk profile could drop to zero, and yet that person would for ever be on the register. I think it is important to recognise that the register—OK, a name on a piece of paper—is actually a great deal more than that.

The Minister did indicate some of the implications of being on this register. It includes name, date of birth, address, names of any children living at an address or where a registered person may be living, details of any club or organisation with which they are affiliated that might also have child participation—and if you think that one through, that would include organisations like Forest and Bird. In fact, it is hard to think of any social club or group where children might not be involved. Also included are details of motor vehicles, all and any phone numbers, details of service providers for phones, details of internet service providers, and details of login names, usernames, and passwords. This is an incredibly intrusive list of requirements. This is an extraordinarily comprehensive array of information about a human being. It is almost zero privacy, and the significance of that I will come to when I mention the security or otherwise of such a register and our ability to keep such a register private.

The fact is that if a person chooses to travel from their place of residence they must give 48 hours’ notice, and they must indicate where they are going to be staying and the names of any children who might be at that address. And somebody might be obliged to do this for 8 years, 15 years, or for life—long past the point at which they may represent a risk to society or, particularly, a risk to our children.

The cost of this legislation or, rather, of maintaining such a register has been commented on. It is in the many hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of that burden, we understand, would fall on the policing budget, which is already inadequate. The police are already underfunded to the point where they are struggling to provide an acceptable level of service, despite their very best efforts and despite their very successful attempts to find efficiencies, to find ways to do more with less. Nevertheless, the cost of this legislation in terms of its implementation would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and that is OK—if that is going to actually protect our children, then, yes. The price ticket is not irrelevant, but it certainly becomes a matter of less importance.

But the worst-case scenario is that if we put this thing in place and it does not work, we have spent a great deal of money that could have otherwise been spent on provisions and on mechanisms that would help protect our children—everything from education through to treatment, through to social mechanisms that might be a much better use of that money than spending it on something that may or may not work.

I mentioned the matter of privacy, and Carmel Sepuloni, I think, outlined some of the dilemmas there. It is very difficult to have any confidence in the fact that a register of this nature would remain confidential—private—given the number of agencies that might potentially have access to it. We have rather a poor history in New Zealand. I will not sheet responsibility home to any particular Government or any particular time, but we do not have a particularly good history of keeping secrets. Once databases and their information are in the domain of the public sector, it is very difficult to guarantee their long-term security. That would be an extraordinary invasion, given, as I said, that people’s log-in details, their passwords to get into their internet accounts, and their emails would be part of the information that could be accessible and, indeed, could be accessed by people who ought not to do that.

Clause 39 of the bill as it is drafted would be something of a deal-breaker for the Greens. It says that the guidelines, which will be prepared by the commissioner, etc., “may authorise the use of information contained in the register for a purpose other than the purpose for which the information was obtained”, with the criterion being “if an authorised person reasonably believes such use is necessary to … prevent or reduce a threat to public safety …”—end of story. It goes on to talk about particular concerns around protecting children, but the bottom line is that this information could—at the whim of an authorised person—be used for any purpose on the grounds that it might prevent or reduce a threat to public safety. I would be less concerned if “public safety” was defined anywhere in this bill. It is not. One could draw some exceedingly long bows and provide this information on the flimsiest of excuses based on the wording of the current clause 39. I do not think that is acceptable. I do not think we could be part of supporting that, and I hope the select committee attends to that particular provision.

The point has been made that the bill is intended to be retrospective—that it will apply to people who have been convicted before the passing of this legislation. We would have some serious reservations about that, and Jacinda Ardern in her contribution highlighted a couple of potential pitfalls where people may be captured under this legislation when, in fact, it was never the intention of the legislation to include those people within it.

So, as I say—going back to where I began—we will certainly engage with this in good faith. We will look at the evidence, we will listen to the research, and we will seek out good information and make a decision as to whether or not we think a register would actually protect our children from this most heinous of crimes—sexual offending against them—and our actions from that point will be dependent on the information that we receive. Kia ora.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee. We do, however, have some concerns, questions, and queries that, hopefully, will be addressed at the select committee. A few of them have already been mentioned. What I did was I went through the departmental disclosure statement and regulatory impact statement, and a lot of those questions fell out of there. So I will take this opportunity to go through those questions and queries from those documents there.

I will start with the disclosure statement and the general policy statement, and the main reason why New Zealand First is supporting this bill is actually quite aptly noted here. It says: “Information sharing between relevant agencies is recognised as an effective way to minimise the harm from re-offending by known child sex offenders, when complemented by a structured risk management framework. Child sex offender registers help government agencies identify and manage the risk of sex offending in the community, and provide offenders with incentives and support to maintain a low-risk lifestyle.” So that is a good paragraph about the basis of why New Zealand First supports this bill, but what is this legislation trying to effect?

What I saw in the regulatory impact statement was of quite some concern, and I know that the Minister actually mentioned it in her first reading speech but kind of brushed over it. It states that “The potential for child sexual re-offending arises when convicted sex offenders are living in the community. … each year around 210 of these offenders are released back into the community [and] approximately 115 child sex offenders per year commence a community-based sentence. The majority of these offenders have no on-going contact with justice sector agencies after their sentence, even though they may present a significant risk of future harm.” So when I read that I said, what is going on here? This cannot be a new problem that is occurring. We have got the information out there that we have got over a hundred child sex offenders in the community who pose a significant risk of future harm and there is no contact with our agencies at that stage.

That is obviously why we need to have something like a child sex offender register, but obviously there is a significant problem, apparently, and there has been for a long time. Given that information, it is no wonder there has been a 20 percent increase over the last couple of years. In the executive summary, it states that 1,819 sex offences against children occurred, which is up by over 20 percent from a decade earlier, but I do not see anywhere in any of these documents where they actually address the recidivist rate, or the reoffending rate, so this, obviously, is the target for the register.

I went and did a little bit of research, and found that the sexual reoffending rate after the 12-month follow-up is in and around 10 percent, and after 24 months it actually jumps up to about 17 percent. So there is a really big problem, and this goes some way to addressing that problem. Obviously, child victims of sexual abuse are amongst the most vulnerable victims. The general public know that this is a different type of criminal and it is a different type of crime, which is why we need a different method to be able to deal with that, and that is what the register is.

What also needs to occur is wraparound services and the other services that would support and integrate with the register. I noticed that in the Bills Digest it suggests that there is a framework of risk minimisation that would support the register, but it does not go on to detail what that framework is. Again, it will be interesting to find out what exactly that framework is that will support the register. I think it is a key thing to note that this is not in itself going to stop child abuse. This targets the child abuse reoffenders, so we need other methods to help prevent child abuse. Carmel Sepuloni actually mentioned one of them, which is the bill that is going to come up tomorrow dealing with the mandatory registration of social workers. That is one of the prime examples of why we cannot look at the register as a silver bullet.

There were a few options that were considered going through and coming up with the child protection offenders register, and it highlights the importance of what the considerations were in ending up at this stage. The options were to maintain the status quo, to extend the scope of the existing child sex offender harm reduction measures, and also to increase funding for NGOs in order to increase the provision of specialist assessments. All of those have limitations in themselves, from some being voluntary, to the status quo not working so we need to find a different mechanism. That is why New Zealand First is supporting this bill.

It actually took until the sixth speech today, from the Green Party, to start mentioning the funding and where the resources will be coming from. When I was reading that I was quite surprised at where this funding was actually going to come from. It says here that the 10-year cost for this proposal is around $150 million, and it states that “Some capital components and all field operating costs for the Register and risk management framework amounting to $85.1 million (Corrections $70.6 million, Police $14.1 million, Courts $0.38 million) over ten years will be met from within existing baselines.” Therefore, $85 million of the $150 million - odd is going to be met from existing baselines.

It goes on to say: “The additional $9.1 million”—in regard to corrections—“will be absorbed by Corrections through efficiency gains.” What that means, in other words, is—tough luck; suck it up and do the job. Corrections will not get any more funding to do more work. In regard to the police, it says “Police will absorb the cost of its new activity … through achieving more effective utilisation of existing staff …”. More effective utilisation of existing staff. That means wearing more hats, doing more jobs, and no extra help, no extra staffing, and no extra funding to make this happen. What that says to me, actually, is that this could end up being yet another public service that is being stretched, and stretching to breaking point.

Actually, I was looking at a study that was done by the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. One of the study’s headings was “The impact of community notification on criminal justice agencies”. I just want to quote this. It says: “A small but growing body of research demonstrates that community notification has a significant impact on the agencies responsible for its administration … One of the most frequently cited concerns of administrators is that it places a strain on limited agency resources … Community notification schemes are undeniably expensive to implement and maintain, irrespective of whether they are active or passive … The time and money invested in activities associated with notification inevitably must be redirected from other areas, which could plausibly lead to an increase in other types of crime …”.

So there is a lot of detail that has been somewhat brushed over in the presentation of this bill, and I think one that was kind of swept under the carpet a little bit and not mentioned by anyone in the National Party yet, not even the Minister for Social Development, was where the funds are coming from. In the end it is, unfortunately, going to be placed on the police, corrections, and the courts to find a way to make it happen. What we do not want to see is the potential for this register to do a good job being squandered by lack of resources once again from the Government.

Like I said, New Zealand First is going to support this bill. I went through a few—very few—questions, queries, problems, and concerns that we had. I had a heap more to go through, but that will be coming through in the select committee. New Zealand First supports this bill going through to the select committee.

Can I just say that it has been wonderful to hear such widespread support for this bill across the House this evening. I guess the reason why people have been so supportive of it is that keeping vulnerable children safe is at the heart of what this bill is trying to achieve. I think we can all agree on that. I think we would all agree that that is a very good thing for us to be doing, so that reason alone is, I guess, the main reason why the Minister for Social Development has chosen to put this legislation through the Social Services Committee. I have heard a bit of disquiet around people being concerned that perhaps this bill should have gone to the Justice and Electoral Committee or the Law and Order Committee. I can see the rationale behind what has drawn people to that way of thinking, but actually, when you consider that at the heart of this bill is the protection of vulnerable children, that is exactly what we are about in the Social Services Committee. I am sure that that committee will do an outstanding job of looking at the benefits of such a bill coming into law and that it will be able to weigh up those justice issues. There is a little bit of crossover between those committees anyway, and so I am sure that people will bring their expertise from the Justice and Electoral Committee and the Law and Order Committee into the Social Services Committee to be able to assess this bill as it takes its passage through Parliament.

As I have said, I think the great thing about this legislation is that it is about looking after potential victims—people who are yet to suffer abuse, perhaps—but it also looks to protect past victims from being abused again by people who may have offended against them. A bill like this, and putting together legislation like this, is, in fact, a balancing act—a balancing act between the personal freedoms of the offenders and the safety of victims and potential victims. I have always been one who has believed in the fact that people should be given the opportunity to be rehabilitated and to come to a place where they can perhaps be reformed and where they would perhaps no longer offend and no longer be tempted to offend. I think this is something that can happen. But at the same time, we should not just presume that because somebody has shown some level of contrition, they are therefore not at risk of offending again. So, as I say, for the sake of those victims and potential victims, we need to put some protections in place.

This is, of course, a private register, and the reason for this is that it is not always beneficial for information like this to be sitting out there in the public domain. I am sure that we will get submissions coming into the select committee from people asking: “Why don’t you just publish a public register so that we can all know who these people are?”. I think that is not the answer, because it can lead to vigilante-type behaviour. It can even lead to the victimisation of offenders who have perhaps been rehabilitated and who are trying to make the best of living a good life again after having made some bad choices. So making this a public register is not the right thing to do. Therefore, it is important that we remember this and ensure that we keep the parameters of the privacy of this intact.

Also, this is not a new concept. I remember sitting in the staffroom at Child, Youth and Family close to 20 years ago with people talking about whether or not a register like this would actually be helpful. I think that when you are looking at placing vulnerable children with families, this type of information would be good for Child, Youth and Family to know, particularly if it is looking to make a placement with a kin caregiver or with someone within the whānau. Having access to this information via the police might be particularly useful, because the last thing that we would want to do is place a young person who has come into the custody of Child, Youth and Family into the care of somebody who is a known sex offender. Perhaps they are not in any particular ongoing contact with the justice system now. It might be historical, but still you would not want to take the risk of placing a child with them. So it is appropriate that people within Child, Youth and Family have access to this information.

I think it is really important to understand that it is the police and the Department of Corrections that are going to have direct access to this information, and they will have the ability to share it with authorised people within the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand Corporation. There has been a little bit of a suggestion that there is some concern about whether that information gets shared any further, and I think it is important to understand that the police or the Department of Corrections may then disclose this information to a third party when it is deemed necessary to protect a child or when a child is at risk. So it is not just that the police or the Department of Corrections have the ability to share this with absolutely anybody. For example, if a parent of a child or children was moving in with a new partner and that person was on this register, it might be appropriate for that parent to know about that because it might not be something that they knew about that person. So there will be some parameters around how and when this information can be shared, but it does not mean that it is then becoming a de facto public register. It will still be a private register limited to those people who are authorised to view it and who will have some discretion if they deem it is appropriate to disclose that to a third party in order to keep a child safe from harm.

At the moment, offenders can disappear back into communities when they finish a sentence. If they have got to the end of any protection orders or any ongoing parole, it is appropriate that we want the authorities to be able to continue to keep track of them. What it means is that those people who know the offenders, who know their patterns of behaviour, and who know the things that are most likely to be triggers that might lead to them reoffending will then be able to assess the living arrangement that somebody is moving into. They will be able to look and say “Actually, that’s not a good idea.” and perhaps, at that point, provide some level of intervention. It also means that we will be able to ensure that when those offenders are perhaps tempted to reoffend, the knowledge that there is somebody who is keeping track of them will also act as a deterrent for them.

So even though they are not actually being punished, they are not having to still perform some sort of sentence, and they are not listed under ongoing monitoring, there is at least something in place that says: “Actually, someone is keeping an eye on us. Someone is keeping an eye on me to make sure that I am behaving and to make sure that I am not reoffending.” And do you know what? If they really are fully reformed, if they really have been fully rehabilitated, then those people will not have anything to be afraid of because that information will not be shared with anybody else. They will be able to continue living a normal life, but our communities can continue to operate in a way that makes them, at least in some way, better protected than they are now. It is not onerous for those people who are in this situation to have to report in once a year the information that is required to be on the register.

So it is a good piece of legislation. It achieves, hopefully, good outcomes. I am looking forward to the select committee process, when we can perhaps iron out any of the kinks in the bill that might need to be ironed out and when we can fully debate that trade-off between people’s right to go about their business and personal freedoms, and the needs of vulnerable children in our society. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.

I rise to take a short call on this, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. The Green Party is supporting this bill going to a select committee so that we can hear evidence from a range of experts on this issue.

We do, of course, have child welfare at the heart of our concern generally, and we specifically have a long history in this House of trying to improve our system response to sexual violence and to keep our children safe. So we do have an interest in the identified intent of this bill. However, as it stands, as it is written at the moment, we do have significant concerns.

I would also like to just raise my sense of bemusement that this is being referred to the Social Services Committee. Of course, as a committee last term we had the inquiry into social services for sexual violence and considered some of those issues and certainly heard from providers which are providing treatment for harmful sexual behaviours and sexual offending. So we have some history of looking at sexual violence issues but not at all of the justice response to those issues, and this bill gives powers primarily to police and the Department of Corrections, which will have direct access to this register, and we have not considered those issues.

I would like to note that actually the evidence we heard from those providing services to people engaging in harmful sexual behaviours was that they were very sceptical of the value of registers and warned us against them, in fact. They did note that they still have concerns that people referring themselves for treatment for these behaviours or thought patterns that may lead them to worry that they may offend actually are still finding it very difficult to get into courses to be able to address those behaviours or attitudes in themselves.

So the thought that the Government is prioritising a register when we are yet to be sure there is evidence that it will make a difference, over the provision of those services that we know have a very high success rate, seems to me to be less than constructive, particularly when we know that the conviction rate for sexual violence in this country is 1 percent. So this is dealing with a tiny, tiny percentage of people who are offending against children in this country and it is focusing $150 million of precious resource towards a scheme for which, actually, we do not have international evidence that can assure us that it is going to be effective. The register is targeted towards this tiny, tiny percentage of people out of a much larger group when we could actually be putting that money into establishing a really solid system of prevention and early intervention in our communities. My instinct—and from listening to people working in this sector—is that our resources would be better focused on prevention and early intervention rather than this register, which does raise quite a few concerns around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I do also just want to point out one of the strange, possibly unintended consequences that might arise from this and that we do want to hear evidence on. This is that it may send a message that sex offending is one of those crimes that you cannot rehabilitate, that we need to just keep an eye on these people, and that is simply not true. There is absolutely a really, really high rate of behaviour change. There are under 5 percent, I think, of people who have offended who after treatment are still a risk. We actually have parole amendment legislation that allows for extended supervision orders to be renewed for that group of people. We do not want to create the impression that may make it harder for people to disclose if they think somebody is never going to change.

I call Adrian Rurawhe—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. We have heard many good contributions to this debate. Keeping our children safe is one of the most important things that our society can do, and one of the things that is not addressed by this bill but that is important to be mentioned is parents being able to keep their children safe. I acknowledge the previous speaker, Jan Logie, because I totally agree with what she has said.

I congratulate the Minister for Social Development on bringing this bill to the House. The Social Services Committee will be able to deal with this efficiently and in a way that it needs to so that our children can be protected. But that is only a small part of the equation, I think. My understanding, and the way I read things, is that the bill deals with those who potentially will reoffend. It is the offenders who have already offended who go on to the register, and that deals with just a small percentage of the overall potential offenders out there. But it is an important step that can potentially prevent further harm to children within our society. So for that I acknowledge that the bill is important.

The register and the sharing of that information is important to recognise as well—and to also identify the potential risk there and the rights of those people who will be registered on that register. The bill does break new ground in that sense. I think the select committee will have some important work to do around it. There is certainly, I think, a test that will need to be met for this register and the processes involved in it to be effective. I stand here to acknowledge that and to highlight that issue. The rights of those people need to be recognised, as well. What the long-term impact is going to be I do not know, but I certainly think that that is a question the select committee needs to answer.

The increase in offending against children—and over 50 percent of all sexual offending has been against children—is such a terrible statistic. That is something that needs to be dealt with not only through this bill but also in the way that all agencies deal with our families. The Government has a policy on Whānau Ora. I think Whānau Ora, from my understanding, is one of those policies that needs to be interwoven in every single piece of legislation that affects our families. I want to put it to the select committee that it should also take notice of that policy—the Government’s own policy on that issue—and apply it to this bill. And it should make sure that it considers every other measure that it can in empowering families to take responsibility for themselves, and that it also looks at providing additional resources for families to be able to keep their children safe. I think that is the main message that I want to give to the House and to the select committee on this issue.

We support this bill’s referral to the select committee, but with reservations, to ensure that the select committee does all that it can to make this bill the best it can be. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. I would like to acknowledge the Minister in charge of the bill, the Hon Anne Tolley, for bringing this bill to the House.

This bill will enable the establishment of New Zealand’s first child sex offender register from July next year—that is, July 2016. This register will enable information sharing among entities dealing with the issue. This register will be established by the police and the Department of Corrections. Once it is set up, authorised staff members will have access to this register to identify and manage risk posed by convicted child sex offenders when they come to the end of their sentences or by those who are serving non-custodial sentences.

As we have heard from the Minister and other speakers, this information will not be publicly available, but it will be made available to third parties only if there is a significant risk to a child’s safety posed by a convicted registered child sex offender. This information will then be released to third parties like parents, guardians, or school principals. Convicted child sex offenders over the age of 18 will go on this register—those who are convicted for committing such crimes against children under the age of 16. So if they have been sentenced, or if they are serving non-custodial sentences, or if they have been convicted overseas for a qualifying offence and they come back to live here in New Zealand for more than 6 months, they will be required to go on that register.

This register will contain quite a bit of information about the offender—not just the name and the address but it will have some identifying particulars about the offender. It will also have information about the offence and the date of sentencing for the qualifying offence. So, as this register contains extensive information about the offender and also the offence committed, this register is not going to be publicly available. As I said before, this information will be made available to third parties as specified agencies only if there is a significant risk to a child’s safety, overall welfare, or sexual safety.

This bill also covers the suppression order aspect. It is quite common that in these kinds of cases people apply for suppression orders. In respect of convicted child sex offenders who are subject to suppression orders, their information on this register may also be disclosed to third parties. These convicted child sex offenders on the register do not have any restrictions on their usual activities. If they wish to travel they will be able to travel, but there will be some reporting requirements. For example, if a convicted child sex offender on the register wants to go away from their usual residential address for more than 48 hours, they will be required to report to the commissioner. They will be required to provide information about their plan at least 48 hours before they commence their travel.

This bill is part of National’s big programme to keep young people safe from harm. It is important that we look after people. They should feel safe in their homes and communities. It is important that everyone, including young people, is treated with respect and dignity. It is not just about tackling crime; this register is about preventing crime as well. Our focus is to make sure that we are preventing crime from happening in the first place. We know that the crime rate is the lowest in 35 years in New Zealand and that New Zealanders are benefiting from this low crime rate. This has happened because this National Government is hard on criminals. We have toughened prison sentences for gang members. We have stopped the release of violent criminals on parole, and also the street racing offences have halved since the new legislation passed. This bill is an example of how we are continuing our work to protect our young ones—children—in the community. It is important that we protect them from any violent or sexual crime. Our goal is to protect the public and to hold offenders accountable.

We are using technology. National introduced 24/7 GPS monitoring of high-risk offenders but this register is going to be useful because it will allow information sharing among different entities. This is also about breaking the cycle of reoffending and imprisonment. The register will help different agencies to keep track of these convicted child sex offenders and to also monitor their circumstances. Our interest is to keep victims safe. Our interest is to make sure that victims are not revictimised and offenders are not reoffending. Victims should not be always living in the fear that offenders are around them. Parents of children should not be worried about offenders hanging around their houses, playgrounds, or schools. We need to make sure that the system provides an assurance to them that we are keeping track of convicted child sex offenders. We should be able to protect children from known offenders so that children get the best possible opportunities to get ahead in life.

Children, if they are abused sexually or physically, can take a long time to recover. They may not get back on track for their whole lives. They may suffer mentally and physically because of the abuse that they might have faced at a young age. So we want to make sure that victims get the right kind of support, firstly, to deal with the aftermath of the crime, also long-term support should be available to help bring them back on track.

The Government is ensuring that our focus is on victims. We want to prevent sexual abuse happening against children and this can be done with the help of communities, parents, schools, and legislation like this. It is very sad to see when offenders go out and commit the same crime repeatedly and victims are revictimised. That is where this bill is going to provide protection for children. At a recent public meeting in Mount Roskill I spoke to inform them about this bill coming before the House. It was quite well-received and there were a lot of positive responses to this bill. We want the public to have trust in the system, and that trust will come only if we have the right kind of mechanisms in place. The setting up of this sex offender register is a significant step forward to protect children.

Another important thing about this bill is that it also establishes an offence for people who do not provide information for this register. So if convicted child sex offenders fail to provide information to go on this register, they can be fined up to $2,000 and can be sent to jail for up to 1 year. If they provide misleading or wrong information, that is taken even more seriously, and they can be fined up to $4,000 and sent to jail for up to 2 years. Convicted child sex offenders serving a sentence at the time the new legislation comes into force will also go on to this register.

So the aim of this bill is to keep track of convicted child sex offenders, monitor their circumstances, and see whether there is any need for any action to be taken. The information on these convicted child sex offenders will be continually updated so that the information will be the most recent. Because of the type of information on the register, the register is not publicly available but, as I said earlier, that information will be made available only if there is a significant risk posed by a convicted child sex offender to a child in the community. I believe this step will reduce child abuse, so I support this bill and commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

There is no more important job for this House than to keep our children safe. I, for one, am hopeful that the work on this piece of legislation will do just that. As a parent there is nothing that makes you more fearful than the harm that may befall your child. I know that parents whom I have spoken to whose children have been offended against in the manner that is described in this bill are incredibly emotional about what happens to their children. We have an opportunity to look at the impacts of sexual violence on our children and do something really useful about it.

There have been many speakers who have talked about what the potential for this bill is. In a previous life having worked in family violence, not necessarily in sexual violence but in family violence, I have spoken about having run a refuge where we used to say that six women and a piece of paper was all we had to keep our women and our tamariki safe. In this regard we may be falling into the same kind of trap that a register that for all intents and purposes is designed to keep our children safe may not achieve that, because we know that a register will register those who have already offended and will do nothing about protecting our children from the harm that may befall them from those predators in the community whom we know nothing about.

Only 1 percent of sexual offences are actually reported to the police. We are talking about recording a small number of known offenders and doing nothing about protecting our children from the prevalence of sexual violence in our community. We know that it is prevalent. We know that from the statistics around mental health. We know from the statistics around suicide that sexual violence is prevalent in our community, and I do not believe that without proper mechanisms, support, and therapy in place a register of known sex offenders will achieve what we want to achieve to keep our children safe.

This bill talks about an arbitrary period of time that offenders will be on the register—8 years, 15 years, or for life. There has been no discussion about the validity of those dates. Is 8 years better than 7 years, or would it be better to have 10 years? We need to actually have some real, valuable information to ensure that whatever period we have people on the register for is useful.

The other thing that we should be considering, which does not appear anywhere in the bill that I can see, is the requirement for offenders to actually get treatment. There is no point in saying that after a period of time a sex offender is no longer a risk. There needs to be a prescription of treatment and monitoring that that work has been completed by that offender. That does not appear anywhere in the bill. The bill talks about the actual criteria by which you would appear on the register—you must be over 18 at the time of the offence and convicted of a qualifying offence, and it can be custodial or non-custodial. Also, a sentencing judge can put you on the register at their discretion. There is nothing about the nature, necessarily, of the offending, the nature of the treatment that that offender will take on board, and then again there is nothing about his or her level of risk to children, going forward, that appears in this bill except for an arbitrary date.

I have real concerns about who will have access to the information about people who appear on the register. We are talking about staff from the Ministry of Social Development and from Housing New Zealand. I can kind of understand what that is about—about the placement of sex offenders into the community—but I do not feel comfortable about the level of protection of that data once it is opened to scrutiny by various members of those organisations. There is also some talk that caregivers, teachers, and others will also have access to the names. That is one very small step away from being a public register. I do not believe that the level of scrutiny that is required to be applied has been given to that very core detail around the privacy of your information.

There is very little that holds this piece of legislation to ensuring the privacy of offenders if it is opened up to many other people getting access to that information. I, for one, am not suggesting that we do not have a register of some sort, but I would really want to ensure that there is a high level of protection around that information and that it is used only in the manner in which it should be. We know this is a hugely emotional subject matter, particularly for parents and for other members of the community who want to keep their children safe. Getting access to that information could result in a terrible unintended consequence. I, for one, want to make sure that I would be comfortable about the storage and the access of this data.

We say right in the very beginning in the explanatory note that the register will reduce reoffending against child victims. I am not sure that this bill actually will achieve that.

There is quite a prescription about the reporting mechanism, the terms of reporting, and the restrictions around travel, and they proceed for a significant period of time. I do want to refer to the concerns of the Attorney-General that these provisions are inconsistent with section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Even after someone has potentially paid for the crime that they have conducted, they are still required by this bill to continue to be monitored, to continue to report and to continue to have their access to freedom restricted.

Because it has not really been touched on anywhere, I want to refer to the opportunity to get treatment or therapy to ensure that you are no longer a risk as a sex offender. I want to refer to a report that came out of the Department of Corrections. It is quite an old report—from 2002-03. It talks about the overall recidivism rate as being 8.1 percent across the three programmes that the Department of Corrections conducted, but the recidivism rate for people who completed their treatment programme was 5.2 percent—a reduction of almost half. If we do not have a mechanism in our legislation to ensure we get good therapeutic interventions, we miss out on actually providing safety from at least half of the offenders who will offend again. I believe that when this bill goes to the select committee there are many questions to be asked around those types of provisions.

We are supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee. I am honoured to be able to sit on the select committee and to be able to ask those questions, and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

The Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill—it is really all in the name, and particularly in the first two words. It is about child protection. I have heard a few of the speakers throughout the night lament that it is not a silver bullet, but, unfortunately, there is no silver bullet with offending of any kind, and particularly not with complex offending like child sex offending. There are many reasons why people offend and it is a very difficult issue to deal with.

Over several years the Government agencies have been increasingly aware of a lack of coordinated information about known child sex offenders in the community. It is interesting, today, that the Productivity Commission has just published a report on social services, and one of the major findings in that report is that it identified that siloing of information amongst Government departments and agencies is a major problem. I think that this bill seeks, in some way, to go towards fixing that particular problem in this area.

Ever since the Privacy Act came in we seem to have got ourselves so fearful. We are so tangled up in red tape around privacy that good sense has gone out the window. When one Government department holds information that is really the key to unlocking some potential actions that can save issues in other areas, we are sitting on that information and not sharing it. This bill is absolutely about unlocking that and cutting through the red tape to allow the sensible management of people in this area.

In recent years, Government agencies’ attempts to institute new initiatives to combat the risks posed by known child sex offenders have highlighted the lack of a source of coordinated information—the lack of an agreed risk-assessment process and an agreed management framework for a coordinated preventative action. Those are a lot of words, but basically what that is saying is that we have some information and we are not able to do anything about it; those offenders are sitting out there in the public domain, and we really should take a sensible approach to deal with that. If you have a register with private information about those offenders, then you have to balance risk and manage it.

Of course, the offenders have a right to privacy, but there is also the right of people to live their lives without fear of being offended against in such a way. People in families, as we know, can get really fearful, and sometimes overly so, about these sorts of people coming out into the community. Having the measures that are taken in this bill, which I will talk about in a moment, will go a long way towards managing this in a sensible manner and balancing those risks, as I mentioned earlier. So the bill is about managing risk.

But the issue is that in 2012-13 there were 505 offenders convicted of just over 1,800 sex offences against young children, and that was up 20 percent on the previous decade. In 2014 it was 451 offences—a number of ACC sensitive claims, particularly for young people subject to sexual abuse. Each year around 200 sex offenders are released back into the community. Last year it was 294, and on top of that around 115 sex offenders start a community-based sentence each year. Most of those have no ongoing contact with the justice sector or agencies after they are released. That is where this bill steps in, and we will be able to have confidence that those people are in contact with the relevant authorities.

All of those statistics that I just rattled off represent only the tip of the iceberg. People have come out tonight with statistics about how many other people might be out there as offenders who have never come before the justice sector. Well, we simply do not know how many people there are or what percentage there is, but we do know that it is a very small percentage who are convicted and who come to the attention of the authorities. But, at least, we can manage only what we can manage. We have to start somewhere and I believe that this is a very good place to start.

One of the things that I touched on earlier is that some of those people who have been subject to abuse go on to become abusers themselves. So breaking the cycle where possible is very important, in my view. We need an overarching framework to coordinate preventative action to support offenders, and that will be a part of this. That has probably not been touched on that well, but offenders themselves, when they get out into society, often slip back into their bad ways because they are not supported. If they are not supported, they can slip back out of their low-risk lifestyles that they are able to live in, and back into their old ways. We need to support them to ensure that that does not occur.

The bill will help Government agencies to carry out their duties to protect children and society effectively. At the moment, they are really trying to fight with both hands tied behind their backs, and we are actually untying those knots and letting them get on with what they do well. It will increase support, as I said, for the offenders, but it will also discourage reoffending by giving those offenders confidence that they are living in a society that they are being supported in.

The offenders will be required to update their information annually, and within 72 hours of any change to their personal information that is held on a register. That information includes their aliases, fingerprints, a photo of the offender that has to be updated every year, current address, workplace, employer, car registration, IP address—and, of course, that is very important because often these people are very active on the internet, if they end up in that area; so we need to ensure we know that—and passport details. As I said, they will have to update their fingerprints and their photos with the police every year, and this ensures that the police are actually working with relevant information. There is little point in having a register if the register is out of date, and it would simply serve no purpose at all to have this register if we did not know where the people were living at any given point in time.

I think, to cut to the chase, this register is necessary. The bill will limit accessibility to the register, and I think we have heard a few people talk tonight about ensuring that. It is only one small step from setting up the register to making it fully public. We do not want vigilante activity; we want this information to be protected. There are, indeed, sanctions in the bill for anyone who releases information to unauthorised people—that is, to be subject to a prison term of up to 6 months for an individual, or a fine of $25,000 for a body corporate. So I think those things are managed and are covered as best they can be. As I said, it is about managing risk, and I think the bill treads that good balance and deals with it as well as we can expect. It is a great pleasure to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services Committee.