Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this bill put in front of us today, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill. That is a mouthful. I will just narrow that down to the “Name Changing of Child Sex Offenders Amendment Bill”, for the rest of this speech.

This is a very, very serious matter, and one that New Zealand First takes extremely seriously, as do all New Zealanders when we are talking about our young children, the vulnerable people in our society, and those people perpetrating crimes against them along the lines of sexual activity of that nature. We do support this bill moving forward, and we do get behind what Dr Jian Yang is saying here. However, notwithstanding that, there are a number of holes. This legislation is very, very wide. You could drive a bus through it, but we see that the right place to get down to the nuts and bolts of this piece of legislation is in the select committee process. We would like to hear from submitters—people in the community who have a deep understanding of this situation—to try to iron out some of those issues.

We have read the Attorney-General’s report. It is like many Attorney-General reports, which do not always support the legislation that is put forward by Government or through some other members’ bills, but you have to be objective and look at that and say: “Where can we straighten up this piece of legislation?”.

Some of the unintended consequences, I think, really come down to a situation that encapsulates other crimes committed. Largely, those crimes should be collected—you know, the murderers, assault with intent to rob, etc. Then, of course, you have got indecent assault. Or we do have a situation where there are people captured under the Film, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, relating to publications of objectionable material. I can think of a number of scenarios where you might have a female in a situation where she has got herself on the minor end of an indecent assault, or somehow involved negatively in the publications Act, who finds herself on that sex offenders register. In a situation where she decides, in time, to get married and change her name to her husband’s name, it will pose what I would consider an unintended consequence. I believe the right place to iron out these unintended consequences is, of course, in select committee.

I think the Attorney-General’s report is a very good, in-depth, and thorough report delving into some of those holes, but I would much rather err on the side of caution. New Zealand First would much rather be supporting this bill because it is a step in the right direction, as opposed to not taking that step at all. It does dovetail quite nicely into the sex offenders register, which is very, very topical at the moment. New Zealand First, of course, does support legislation that does come down hard on the criminals in our society—those criminals who are perpetrating crimes against other vulnerable New Zealand citizens.

I did, however, take some offence at some of the words that Adrian Rurawhe was talking about, and I think a lot of New Zealanders will take offence, when we come to the Treaty of Waitangi and the rights of the Treaty of Waitangi. To me, that is offensive.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before the dinner break I was just starting off my contribution around Adrian Rurawhe’s contribution. I can understand parts of what he was saying around the very wide-ranging openness of this bill, which will allow for this bill to be having little or no effect potentially. However, I cannot accept that he was using the Treaty of Waitangi and the rights around the Treaty of Waitangi as a reason to oppose this. I find that deeply offensive. I was certainly aghast when he used the Treaty of Waitangi in this manner.

This bill is about child safety and it is a huge concern for New Zealanders and New Zealanders at large. We need to do everything and anything we can, even if they are little micro-steps heading in the right direction, and we see this bill as a micro-step in the right direction with some ironing out that can certainly come through the select committee process. This bill is about reducing the opportunity. We cannot take away the opportunity from some of these recidivist offenders but we can reduce it. This bill does take that step. We do, however, need to see a better form of information sharing to make this bill more effective. Thank you.

I am very pleased to stand in support of this bill, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill—it is quite a large two lines of title. It is a relatively succinct bill, but it has a very strong intent to protect those vulnerable amongst us in order to stop those who would seek to change identity to remove themselves from the watchful eye of society and the agencies the Government appoints in order to continue to potentially commit offence.

This has been a very interesting debate so far. There have been many comments made about the report of the Attorney-General. It is wonderful that he is here this evening. I have it on good authority that our Attorney-General is not encumbered by political concern but writes his reports to address the spirit of the law. He is a true man of the law. He has written a number of things that I would like to address.

In paragraph 11—because this is an issue around the right to freedom of expression—the Attorney-General writes in his report: “The right to freedom of expression is to be construed as having a wide ambit in New Zealand, and the broadly described examples in s 14 are non-exhaustive. I consider an individual’s choice of name is an element of freedom of expression.”

We know that the names that people choose are expressions of their creativity. We name streets. We name companies. We name businesses. We name clubs and organisations. We name teams and musicals. We name songs, poems, and movies. We name our dogs, our cats, and our goldfish. We name our plants. Some people name their trees. Some people name their houses. People use names all the time as an expression. But when people change their names—for example, if a company that owes a lot of creditors money winds up and changes its name, we say that that is wrong because it is seeking to elude justice. What this bill is about is not about stopping creative freedom, but stopping people escaping justice or escaping what would be considered to be a reasonable surveillance by a society in the protection of the most vulnerable.

The Opposition members say there are holes in this legislation, and, of course, that is what a select committee process is for. It is to go through the legislation to find the weaknesses, the strength, the intent, and the spirit of it, and make it workable legislation, make it workable law that achieves this intent and purpose. If we were to defend the freedom of expression of somebody who could go about and just change their name because that is their freedom of expression, yet we did not protect the freedom of children to grow up, and I know we do that in many, many ways—in many, many ways. But if we put the freedom of expression to change your name as you will and wish first and foremost, and we do not—and I am sure everybody in this House would hold high as an aspiration that we protect the ability for young people to grow up and be able to express themselves freely and fully without fear, without concern, without brokenness, without horror, and without all the things that happen to young people, unfortunately, in our country. We have got to think through these sorts of things very, very carefully.

I am really happy to commend this bill to the House. There are many pieces of legislation that have come through this House to protect the vulnerable, and I believe this will add to that suite of laws. Thank you.

I am going to give a very straightforward contribution in this House on this particular bill and debate. You will not hear anyone in this Chamber argue for a moment that we should be lured away from the focus of protecting children. Everyone in this House agrees that we should be putting in place, as far as our powers allow, protections to prevent children from being harmed, to as far as we are able prevent those who target children and seek to harm them, and to protect children from those individuals. We share that intent. Intent, however, is not enough. It is not enough to symbolically stand up and say: “We all believe this and here is a law, a bill, that proves that we believe this.” Intent is not enough if the bill that this Parliament is debating will absolutely not deliver that shared view or that shared intent. This is the New Zealand Parliament; we cannot simply usher through pieces of legislation because they purport to do something that they do not. I know that the Attorney-General will agree with me because he has made it absolutely undeniably clear in his report on this bill that the bill, which has been titled the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill, actually does not even achieve the objective of the title. This bill will not stop sex offenders changing their name. If that is meant to be the purpose of this bill—and yet we have had the Attorney-General tell us it will not achieve that outcome—why are we supporting it? Why would we waste this House’s precious time with a bill that will not achieve the stated objective?

I want to read from the Attorney-General’s report. The Attorney-General states: “Notwithstanding its wide drafting,”—so this is him pointing out that actually the bill does not target those it is meant to as well—“the Bill does not prevent, or only partially prevents, a ‘child sex offender’ from changing their name. At common law, a person can lawfully use a new name without registering it, so long as the new name is not used for fraudulent or improper purposes. The new identity is established simply by using the new name and by repute, and the change comes into effect when the person starts using the name. Similarly, a person is not legally obliged to give their ‘registered’ name, address, or other information unless there are statutory requirements specifying otherwise.” Statutory requirements might be, for instance, registering to be a teacher in which you are required to have a criminal check and disclosure around criminal history anyway. The Attorney-General goes on to say: “I consider the prohibition on child sex offenders changing their registered name will have a minimal impact on the ability for a child sex offender to use other names.”

This bill will not do what the bill sets out to do. It is farcical to have a Parliament pretend—act under the pretence—that we are protecting children, when clearly we are not. In fact, putting up that pretence is dangerous. This is a point I wish to offer up in this House, because someone might say: “Well, even if it doesn’t quite do it, if there’s a small chance it might, maybe you should do it anyway.” Putting through a bill that purports to prevent someone from changing their name, when it does not, creates a false sense of security, and that is a dangerous thing. The individual who in the past committed child sex offences and was found to have changed their name did so unlawfully. They fraudulently changed their name, as in they used a false name when they tried to take a job as a teacher. They acted unlawfully. This bill would not have stopped that. So by passing a bill that makes it seem as though we have covered everyone who might do that, perhaps we might not take our police vettings as seriously. Perhaps we might not do the checks and balances via the teachers council that we need to undertake. We cannot afford to drop our vigilance, and I would put forward that this bill means that we could, as a result, drop our vigilance and put children at risk of being harmed, when what we all collectively want to do is prevent that harm from happening in the first place. We cannot support a bill that the Government’s own Attorney-General patently does not support.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak on a bill introduced to this House by a colleague of mine sitting next to me, Dr Jian Yang. I think it has taken a great effort, in fact, to get this bill to this point. I want to remind a number of speakers who have gone prior to me that the process of Parliament enables bills to be introduced to the House and then discussed at length by select committees. It seems to me that a lot of the criticism that I have heard tonight from both the Labour Party and the Greens could certainly have been furthered in the course of a select committee discussion. I think that is the first point that I want to make.

At the core of this bill is yet another effort to make the lives of some of our children better than they already are and to protect them from those who can only be called predators. I think that the attitude of those opposed to this bill at the first reading is a little sad, because I think it is an opportunity for us to make some progress on a very difficult topic, a very difficult issue for our communities. The issue of name changes, of course, is also a difficult issue for our law enforcement agencies and for those around them. I accept the fact that you cannot stop someone from changing their name by passing some legislation, but you can certainly make it illegal to do so by passing some legislation. I think that that is really important for this Parliament to consider as it goes through this process.

David Clendon talked about the low levels of offending that could lead to the conditions of this bill kicking in. Again, this is an issue that could well have been dealt with, and could well be dealt with, by the select committee in the course of the discussions it has. That is why we have select committees. I congratulate New Zealand First on recognising this and on in fact wishing to take this discussion further and get some progress on the issue through the select committee.

Very recently Minister Tolley launched the Wanganui children’s team, which covers the Taihape, Marton, and Raetihi part of my electorate, and which will be most welcome in those areas. When you get these diverse rural electorates, of course, the challenges right throughout those electorates are very different in the different areas. Wanganui touches on the edge of the Rangitīkei electorate, and that Wanganui children’s team will certainly have a good impact, in my view, in all three of those towns I have mentioned and the communities surrounding them. It is further evidence of the effort put in by this Government to the protection and safety of our young people.

Also just recently I had an organisation from Taumarunui, a Whānau Ora provider, the Taumarunui Community Kokiri Trust, bring its presentation to Parliament, looking at a lot of the issues that this bill aims to deal with as well. Although this bill deals with a very, very narrow part of the challenges we face in respect of child sex offenders and the impact they have on the young people they come into contact with, all those providers out there are working very hard to try to alleviate this situation. Every piece of legislation we can put in place to assist that process is a good one. So I fully support even the smallest progress that we might make through this bill, and I support the bill because of it. I think it is really important. If we impact on the lives of only two or three children a year, we have made a significant difference to those children’s future, and no doubt to the family that lives with whomever that offender might be.

I have read the report of the Attorney-General, and the issues raised in this report will, of course, be discussed in the select committee. There is always opportunity, I think, to alleviate some of the concerns expressed in that report. There will be some concerns that will not be able to be alleviated, and the select committee will at that time make its judgment on that.

Changing one’s name is no doubt a freedom that most deserve. However, everyone has a responsibility to their fellow humans and to their neighbours. In some cases abuse by these people, and abuse of that freedom, should lead to some rights being withdrawn. I think that there is often evidence that we can make a very strong case for some rights being withdrawn from offenders, particularly offenders of this nature. I have got a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill and I hope it makes good progress. Thank you.

I rise to take a short call to supplement my colleague David Clendon’s earlier submission on this, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill, which has been brought to this House by the National member Dr Yang. I rise to say that the Green Party will be opposing this bill. I commend the member for his intention, and I am sure that, actually, his intent was good. It is unfortunate, however, that this bill, from our reading of it, has such fundamental flaws that we are unable to support it.

Some of those flaws—to summarise at the beginning of this contribution—would be that it would not achieve the goal that the title suggests it would; that it might create a false sense of safety; and that it actually may put another barrier in front of judges convicting in the first place, if they are concerned about the double jeopardy being added. We know that we have struggled with juries to get convictions as things are, and that, really, the concerns of the Attorney-General—they have been raised in the House already, in the report, and I think they do speak to the heart of our opposition.

If this bill does not achieve what the title suggests—and it goes much wider than that title suggests, but does not even partly achieve that protection against a change of name for child sex offenders—then we have to ask ourselves: is that worth the time of this House to spend it on examining an idea that has so many fundamental flaws? I can hear some people saying: “Well, if you’ve got concerns around it, they’re just technical. Support it to the select committee and work through it.” But they are not just technical; they are fundamental. It is about the drafting and it is about the practicality of this legislation in practice. There is strong evidence to suggest that it would have a negative impact, in fact, on the safety of our children and the functioning of our courts.

I do think that we need to prioritise the review of our police and court system. I understand that some of the work that is being done cannot be done through a member’s bill—like the problem that we have with a 1 percent conviction rate for sexual violence in this country, which cannot be solved by a member’s bill—but it would be really good if that work was within the scope of the Government. When I heard the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, stand up and say that this bill is evidence of this Government’s effort to protect children from child abuse—that is a little unfortunate when it is a member’s bill and is not a reflection of the Government’s intention, at all.

At this point I do need to raise the ongoing, deep frustration I have with the attempts, over decades now, to try to fix our police and court systems to be able to deliver justice—to ensure that those who offend are actually held to account—and the lack of progress on that. We have had a Government that has put things on the table, taken them off, and put them back on again. What we are left with at the moment, I understand—after decades of work and so many unpaid hours from the community for people struggling to get justice for women and children who are the victims of violence—is a time frame of 6 months for the Law Commission to report on a piece of work that is huge. It means that out of 16 or more significant policy points, the Law Commission is probably going to be able to consider only two or three.

What we are going to get from this Government is more partial tinkering, when the evidence is so clear that the system is fundamentally broken. There is no way that anyone can tell me that a 1 percent conviction rate demonstrates the need for a tinkering solution. It does not. It needs a very well-considered and systemic approach to this problem. When the Government is saying that this bill is evidence of its efforts to protect children, I wish it would just address the fundamentals instead.

Dr Jian Yang—5 minutes in reply.

I will briefly reply to the accusation of the previous speaker, Jan Logie, about the Government’s inactivity in protecting our children. The fact, actually, now that we have looked at some statistics, is that the child abuse statistics show that the number of children abused in the year ended June 2014 fell by 2,306 or 12 percent on the previous year. Also, under our Social Workers in Schools programme 142,000 children now have social worker access. We have done a lot of things to protect our children. We have also established four children’s teams around the country to work with vulnerable children and their families. We have the Children’s Action Plan, with more than 30 initiatives to tackle the complex issues that lead to children being vulnerable. We are modernising the social work programme. We also have tougher sentences for crimes against children, in which household members are accountable for failing to report abuse. These are the things that the National Government has been doing or has done.

I would like to elaborate on a few points raised by some speakers. First of all is the freedom of expression. The Attorney-General’s report acknowledges that “There is no question the Bill serves an important objective. Victims of sexual abuse are extremely vulnerable, and the resultant harm is often very serious and long lasting.” The report does raise the issue of freedom of expression. We certainly value the freedom of expression. However, we also value child safety. So the key question here is how to have the balance. I believe that the bill will help us eventually to find the proper balance. Related to this is the definition of “child sex offender”. I am sure that we will be able to work out a clearer definition to better serve the intended purpose of the bill. There is another thing that one particular speaker mentioned, which is that naming and shaming can be counter-productive. But this bill is not about naming and shaming. It is about how to prevent convicted child sex offenders from legally changing their names. I find it very hard to understand why some people are putting the feelings of sex offenders before the interests of our children.

I would say that it is important for us to make sure that we have all the efforts there, all the tools there, all the mechanisms there to protect our children. The Government has been doing a lot. A member’s bill can simply strengthen some part of the overall system or mechanism. So the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration (Preventing Name Change by Child Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill is intended basically to strengthen the system a little bit further. I hope that all parties will support the bill being referred to the select committee and protect our young people from sex offenders. Thank you.