Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill

I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill be now read a second time. This bill will enable the establishment of a child sex offender register, which will reduce sexual offending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders living in our communities. I would like to thank the members of the Social Services Committee, and in particular the chair of the committee, Alfred Ngaro, for his and his committee’s work on this groundbreaking bill. I thank all those members of the public who took the time to submit on the bill. The bill in its current form reflects the careful consideration of the committee.

As emphasised by the submitters on this bill, child sexual abuse is a serious problem in New Zealand. It causes significant and long-lasting harm to the child victims in our communities and to their families. As also noted by some of the submitters, the actions of the child sex offender can also result in significant harm to their own families, especially the children who have to live with the repercussions of their parents’ offending.

Inter-agency work aimed at preventing child sexual reoffending has improved in recent years, in response to various incidents and the introduction of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014. However, the lack of a centralised child sex offender register has meant that Government agencies cannot reliably identify, assess, and/or monitor persons who pose a risk of further harm to children, especially after the completion of their sentence.

The bill enables the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections to establish a child sex offender register for offenders aged 18 years or older at the time of committing the offence 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 sentenced to a non-custodial sentence but directed to be registered by the sentencing judge, and for offenders convicted of a similar child sex offence in an overseas jurisdiction who intend to reside in New Zealand, or who are currently serving a custodial sentence, or who are subject to an extended supervision order or public protection order for a qualifying offence, on the date that the Act comes into force.

In summary, the bill prescribes the duration of an offender’s registration based on the class of qualifying offence in schedule 2 and the sentence received. If an offender is sentenced to imprisonment, the duration for class 1 offences will be 8 years; for class 2 offences, 15 years; and for class 3 offences, life. If an offender receives a non-custodial sentence and the judge orders registration, the offender will be on the register for 8 years, regardless of the offence committed. Registered offenders will be required to report to the police or, in some cases, to the Department of Corrections, and to provide a range of personal information upon their release from prison, their commencement of a non-custodial sentence, or their arrival in New Zealand, and then annually. They will also need to report any changes to their registered information and any intended travel from the registered address.

Where it is deemed necessary to protect the safety of a specific child or children, the bill provides for authorised information-sharing of a registered offender’s personal information between specified agencies, between the commissioner and overseas law enforcement agencies, and between police and third parties. The information on the register will not be available to the public. The bill establishes offences for failing to report or provide the required information, for providing false or misleading information, and, most importantly, for unauthorised disclosure of information on the register by agencies or third persons to whom information has been disclosed.

The bill has emerged from the Social Services Committee with a number of changes as a result of the committee’s careful consideration of these difficult issues. I believe these have strengthened the bill. In the bill as reported back, a registered offender who is registered for life will be able to apply to the District Court for a suspension of their reporting obligations after 15 years on the register. The onus will be on them to prove that they no longer pose a risk to the life or sexual safety of a child or children. If the application is granted, the offender’s reporting obligations will be suspended but they will remain on the register. If the application is declined, they can reapply after 5 years, or a lesser period if specified by the court. The police or the Department of Corrections will be able to apply to the court for a revocation of the suspension if it can prove that the offender’s level of risk has increased.

Another amendment to the bill is that registered offenders will be required to seek the approval of the Commissioner of Police prior to applying to the Department of Internal Affairs for a change of name, and the bill provides a list of the matters that the commissioner must consider prior to granting approval. It is an offence to fail to get that prior approval. The bill also now includes matters that the court must consider when contemplating whether to order an offender sentenced to a non-custodial sentence for a qualifying offence to be placed on the register.

The Attorney-General presented a report on this bill pursuant to section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, advising that he considered the bill as introduced was inconsistent with section 9 of that Act and with section 26(2). I consider that the bill as reported back goes some way to addressing these concerns. The Attorney-General’s report, in respect of section 9, commented particularly on the lifetime reporting obligations of offenders. This has been modified, to enable those with lifetime reporting obligations to apply after 15 years to have those obligations suspended. With regard to section 26(2) the retrospective provisions are now ameliorated by the new review provisions.

As noted by the select committee’s report, for those offenders qualifying for the register who are still serving a custodial sentence but who will have already been released into the community when the Act comes into force, the reporting requirements are calculated to have started from when the offender was released from custody, not from the commencement of the legislation. The committee has, however, in my view, rightfully retained the substance of the retrospective application of the bill, to remove the immediate risk from previously convicted child sex offenders who are still serving a sentence of imprisonment when the legislation comes into force.

There was discussion during the committee’s consideration of the bill around whether it would be better and cheaper to place offenders on the register based solely on their assessed risk. Although I can appreciate this view, and did consider it at the time of writing the bill, the problem is that the risk presented by a child sex offender can vary over time. An offender assessed as having a low risk of offending at the time of sentence or release from prison may well become high risk once back in the community again, or 5 years after release, if some change in circumstances triggers the offending behaviour.

This Government believes that it is in the interests of child safety to ensure that personal information is gathered on all qualifying child sex offenders, so that if the offender’s level of risk does increase—for example, when an offender notifies police of a change of circumstances—agencies will be informed, can assess potential risks, and will be able to start working with the offender, or, if necessary, a third party such as the offender’s new partner, to reduce the chance of further offending.

There have also been concerns expressed that the resources required to establish the register will reduce resources for proven interventions or treatment programmes for child sex offenders. This is not a case of having either programmes or the register; both play a very important and complementary role in reducing sexual reoffending against children. I am confident that we have got the right balance to achieve the purpose of this legislation—the protection of vulnerable child victims against the offending behaviour of child sex offenders in the community.

I propose to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee of the whole House stage with technical amendments to clarify procedural matters and ensure consistency of language in the bill. It will also include an amendment to the commencement clause to the effect that the Act shall come into force 30 days after the date on which it receives the Royal assent, rather than on 1 July 2016. This is because a lead-in period of 1 month is needed to bring technical aspects of implementation into effect. I commend the bill to the House.

Before I call the member—I did not interrupt the Minister while she was reading her speech, but I do want to make it clear to Ministers that they do not have a general exemption from Speaker’s ruling 53/4 from the Report of the Standing Orders Committee in relation to reading speeches. Where matters are highly technical and at first reading, there are exemptions. I think it is fair to say that parts of this bill were technical, but Ministers should not read—in fact, no member should read—their entire speech. What I am indicating is that at first reading people are much more flexible, but by this stage of a bill, except for the very technical parts, members should not read their speeches.

It is my duty on behalf of Labour to give a second reading contribution on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill. I think it is really important, particularly with legislation like this—as it was with the legislation that we had before this House in a member’s bill around name changes of sex offenders via the Birth, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act—that we are absolutely clear about what bills like this will achieve, and what they will not achieve.

Sometimes the mere title of a bill can be very misleading. I want to use my second reading speech to be very clear on that front, but to also extend some challenges to the Minister regarding our support for this bill, because during the debate—particularly during the submissions at the Social Services Committee—it became very clear to us that, unlike what the Minister has set before this House, there have been trade-offs with this bill. The amount of expenditure that will go into the creation of this register will be well beyond what the public would expect, and is undoubtedly coming at a cost to investment in other areas. I will set out that challenge a little bit further on.

Firstly, what does this bill do? Well, it requires offenders to register with an official sex offender register if they fall under certain criteria: if they are convicted of one of the child sex offences listed in a schedule of the bill, if they were aged 18 or over when they offended—very important because, of course, there is separate jurisdiction for those under that age via the Youth Court and Rangatahi Courts, and we deal with them there—and if they are sentenced to either imprisonment or a non-custodial sentence and, if it is a non-custodial sentence, they are specifically directed by the judge to be registered. I think that is an important point. If it is a non-custodial sentence, that will be indicative of the severity of the crime, and in that circumstance we would not want a blanket rule of thumb; we would want the discretion of the judge to be applied. And then also, of course, a person guilty of any offence set out in the schedule who may have committed that crime in a foreign jurisdiction would also have to register.

The onus—it is not a default registration—would sit with the offender to fulfil those requirements. Of course, that will in and of itself require certain mechanisms to be set up for returning offenders to ensure that they are aware of that responsibility, and, likewise, for anyone who is covered by the bill and who changes their details at any point, because there are requirements that fall upon them to make sure that those who hold the register are aware of those detail changes.

This is where there will be confusion, however. The bill, in its title, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill, implies that that is an accessible piece of information. The reason that it probably implies that, I would say, is because there has been some debate for some time, driven by groups like the Sensible Sentencing Trust, that there should be a sex offender register for public safety. They never put in a caveat, when they talk about it, about whether it should be publicly available, or available only to Government departments. This bill is very clear that the register is available only to specified agencies—the police, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, and Housing New Zealand—and they are able to share amongst themselves. The only exception is where the Commissioner of Police—the commissioner, so it is at a very high level that this discretion is used—believes that an offender poses a threat to the life, welfare, or sexual safety of a particular child or particular children. Affected persons, such as parents, guardians or teachers can be informed under those circumstances.

That is very particular, and we might consider it to be a set of circumstances. For instance, where someone may have been the victim of predatory behaviour, and that sex offender perhaps has some potential for contact might be an example. But what I will be seeking from the Minister in the Committee stage is a few more examples of the ways that discretionary power would be used. In the bill, it does seem to be rather confined but it does still allow groups such as teachers—and does not necessarily give the degree to which the individual or individuals are to be informed. Could, for instance, that include an entire classroom of children, or an entire set of parents for an entire classroom of children? I think we need to be absolutely clear that where these details are revealed to the public, we know the parameters and the criteria that will apply to that. Otherwise this is not a public register.

One of the amendments that Labour will be seeking for this bill is to change the name. It is misleading, and as part of the need to protect this register from ever becoming public, I think the name of the bill should be changed to something like the “Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Database for Government Agencies) Bill”, or something to that effect—something that implies this is definitely not a register that can be accessed by the public, nor should it ever be. And the penalties need to reflect that. I see the quizzical look across the Chamber from my colleague Chris Bishop. The reason that I am so stuck on this point is that it would take one amendment by one Minister in the future—and he knows this to be true—to dramatically change this bill and allow it to be a public register. It would not take much. And I think that this Parliament needs to be clear in its intentions, and be clear that the evidence states—

💬 Chris Bishop: Changing the name doesn’t change the facts.

Well, I think the change of name would give clarity to the public, because I have certainly heard members of the public who believe that this is a public register. The word “register” implies that, because of the way the debates have been constructed around the issue of registers.

💬 Chris Bishop: What about “Database”? This could be a public database.

Well, maybe I need a little more creativity and time, Chris Bishop, but the point is there. We do need something that clearly indicates that it will not be a public register, and we need the penalties to reflect the fact that this should never be made public.

The reason that it should not be made public—I want to come back to this point—is that the evidence tells us that a public register would do more harm than good. When I say “harm”, I do not mean vigilante harm; I actually mean the harm that sits at the core of the purpose of this bill, which is to keep families and children safe. If it is about keeping children safe, we know that the likelihood of reoffending by those who are convicted of sex offences is heightened by acts like having public registers. International evidence makes that absolutely clear. So if it is about safety, then we should be absolutely rock-solid that this should never be made public.

The second point is a point that was made very clearly by submitters who work in this field every day. I want to talk particularly of a submission that stands out in my mind, from an academic from Auckland University who specialises in the kinds of rehabilitation programmes that are offered to sex offenders in New Zealand and who has done a lot of research into the most successful interventions when it comes to sex offences, particularly those perpetrated against children. Her submission was very, very clear that a bill like this does very little—does very little—when we are talking about reducing risk and keeping people safe. But we are about to spend—and this will stagger people—$146 million over 10 years on a database to be shared by Government departments. That is $146 million—that is staggering.

The Minister tells the House that that will not lessen the amount that is therefore spent on rehabilitation. Well, it is certainly not going to increase the amount either, and our concern is that the submission that was made by experts in the field was that there is already a shortage of programmes in this space and access is difficult. So I would like the Minister, at Committee stage, to tell the House that she will be investing the equivalent amount over 10 years—$14 million per annum—into rehabilitation programmes specifically in this field. If she is willing to do that, then we will believe that nothing is being lost in this space by spending $146 million on something that is unproven to reduce harm. We will be looking to support this bill, or not, based on some of the amendments that are made in the Committee stage. We are heavily caveated at the moment, because we are not necessarily convinced that this will make families and children safer.

I am rising in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill in its second reading. It will probably come as a surprise to many people that this country does not already have a child sex offender register. It would be a register where offenders over the age of 18 offending against children under the age of 16 would be registered. For me, as an electorate MP, it has already happened in a small town, where the fear starts and there are allegations that there is a sex offender living in the town. It does surprise people when they talk to the authorities that there is no central register, and I think people look to us, and to the authorities, in those times to ensure that they are understanding where people are living, tracking offenders, and understanding how they can manage the risk a lot better.

Over the course of this call today I want to touch on three areas. No. 1 is a bit more about the bill. No. 2 is some of the issues that we had to address during the select committee stage. No. 3 is some of the changes that we are now bringing back to the second reading.

I just want to acknowledge the chair, Alfred Ngaro, and all the members of the Social Services Committee, who I think did a very good job and stayed reasonably objective. The committee was constructive. It is quite an emotive issue, and at times we could have fallen down the hole of trying to debate punishment versus treatment and how this register will support that. In my own view, it probably fits somewhere in the middle of that continuum. But at the end of the day this is only one tool that will support the management of sex offenders better.

It was interesting; we encountered the impact that putting people on a register has on human rights. We know that child sex offenders will be put on the register for—depending on their offence—8 years, 15 years, or life, but the impact was around their privacy of personal information. Personally, I thought: “Tough.” We had Jian Yang, who introduced a member’s bill that would stop child sex offenders from being able to change their names. We had to take advice, and we were not, around human rights issues, able to implement that, but there were some changes made in this bill because of that bill. It did surprise me—fair to say, I thought it was a bit PC gone mad, but there it is. We will be talking a bit more about how some of those amendments were implemented into the current bill.

What we know is that this register will be very prescriptive. There will be three types of information sharing. There will be one, as you would expect, between police and the Department of Corrections, sharing information about how we can make our children and our families safer, and how we can manage these offenders as well. There is also an avenue for sharing information—I think, quite rightly—between Government agencies like Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development. A third avenue is for third parties, where information will be able to be disclosed to people on the ground around offending history, but that comes with a restriction where they are not able to go on and disclose that information to others. Basically, it is very prescriptive on the register—three types of information sharing.

As has been alluded to by the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, this is a field that is developing. Research is about understanding how better we can mitigate or manage this risk, and treatment as well, which I know a lot of people will be sceptical of. But as we move further into this field and the research evolves—I mean, when you look at some of the language that was spoken to us about the child sex offender register being a risk-based, multi-agency management framework, it sounds like quite a bit of jargon. But it is about understanding the intricacies of using a tool like this and gathering the information we need about personal details, travel details, addresses, and movements of sex offenders, and then how that informs supervision packages, treatment approaches, and court orders that these sex offenders will be on.

When we looked at the cost-benefit analysis, it showed that the potential benefit of this bill was preventing up to 34 child sex offences, and I think we have also got to use the Pareto ratio, where possibly only 20 percent—

💬 Chris Bishop: What?

The Pareto ratio. Only 20 percent of these offences will be recorded; 80 percent possibly will not. Exponentially, there is a real capacity to understand how this can go forward. There is also a clear link for child sex offenders to recidivism and other crimes, and how that will play out as well.

I just want to quickly touch on some of the changes. The first one was around when a child sex offender on the register would have to declare they were travelling. Currently in the bill, they would have to declare children residing at the accommodation address, but, of course, at a public house or accommodation, if there are children there, the child sex offender would not be able to name them. So the recommendation, as changed, is that they would have to declare children who were residing with them.

There is also a change around when the information that child sex offenders give to the register is not correct. That will be recorded as well—again, building up a bigger picture of offenders in order to manage them.

Just to finish off, coming back to the change of name, it was agreed, and an amendment has been put forward, that with approval from the Commissioner of Police, an offender will possibly be able to change their name. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I had the pleasure of sitting on the Social Services Committee for some of the submissions. I do not believe I was on the select committee when the report was deliberated on and brought back to the House. Suffice to say, the select committee process was fairly harrowing. There was some very sensitive material that came up and some high emotion by those people who were presenting. In my contribution I want to traverse the range of concerns that came up through the whole spectrum of issues.

I start with a contribution that really sets the tone for the community concern that we get this right. This is a quote from the submission: “I’ve had calls from many people over the years worried about a sex offender being in their neighbourhood—from headmasters, teachers, concerned members of the public and so on—many, many from desperate parents whose children have been raped by sex offenders, and when these offenders have been released the victims are petrified, scared of their own shadows, cannot sleep. All they want to do is make sure the offender is not in the area they live. Surely that is not too much to ask?”. I start with that because it does demonstrate the level of concern that there is in our communities that we do everything we can to address public safety.

It is very interesting because there was a range of views that were presented at the select committee, including views from people who had been offenders and who were concerned that they could appropriately present their concerns that the register was not going to be the most efficient way to deal with safety for our community. We looked, as a select committee, across the various other Parliaments and countries to see which ones had sex offender registers and the effectiveness of those registers. It could not be said categorically that the register provided the kinds of assurances that our community and this submission that I have just read actually speak to.

Some of the other views that were presented at the select committee said things like: “A register is actually a list of people who have already offended, and it is not proven as an effective way of protecting children from offending.” One of the pieces of evidence that came to us was about the reoffending rates of sex offenders, and I think the jury is kind of a little bit out on this. By and large, most of the submitters said that, actually, sex offenders do not have a high rate of recidivism. So what a register may do, in that instance, is actually just list somebody who has offended but it may not necessarily indicate that that person would reoffend and therefore be a threat to the community. Another submitter said that 95 percent of sex offence cases against children go unreported. That is a high level of cases that are not reported. So having a register does not actually provide any mechanism of protection whatsoever.

There is also the notion of double jeopardy where you have committed an offence, you have completed your sentence as judged by the judicial service, and then going on a register may potentially put you in a position where your freedom of movement could be restricted, so in a sense you are in double jeopardy. Another submitter said that 90 percent of offenders will not be on a register because they have not been caught yet. So there will be offenders at large who have not been caught who this register will not actually protect the public from. Those who are seeking a more robust rehabilitation process said that the register is detrimental to successful reintegration into the community.

We have already heard in the debate on the previous piece of legislation where poor sentencing and ineffective rehabilitation resulted in the tragic case of Blessie Gotingco, so if we are to do anything about ensuring the protection of our children, then surely we must look at how we sentence and how we rehabilitate people. That is where, obviously, when things go wrong, they go badly wrong, as in the case of the Gotingco whānau.

There is the notion of specified agencies within the bill, and my colleague has already mentioned those, including Housing New Zealand, the Ministry of Social Development, the Department of Corrections, and the like. One of the submitters said that there is a possibility that one of the public servants within those agencies may actually use the information that they have about a potential sex offender. For example, you may be a Housing New Zealand worker and you may see that you are responsible for rehoming a sex offender who is on the register, and you see that that sex offender is possibly going to move into your street or into a street that your family member is on. It is human nature to want to warn your family member or warn members of the public. It is human nature, and can we absolutely guarantee that public servants will not be tempted to do that? Given the height of emotion around this particular issue, I am not sure that we can.

One of the submitters said that the boards of trustees of local schools should actually be included in specified agencies. Some people would say: “Yes, that’s probably fair enough.” Others would say “Well, absolutely not.”, because then that puts the board of trustees in the position of having to hold that information private, knowing that it has a sex offender in the area of its school and around its children. There is the potential that being on the register actually punishes you for life, and I have already mentioned some of the arguments around that.

It will increase the workload of the police, and my colleague Jacinda Ardern made a really, really useful point that there is $146 million out of the police budget, out of the rehabilitation budget—$146 million over 10 years. I have the privilege of providing some input into the child protection diploma that a particular organisation, Child Matters, puts out when it is in Christchurch delivering to Christchurch students. I do a paper on legislation and the role of legislation in protecting children, and the last time I presented this paper was when this bill first came to the House. So it was an opportunity to talk to people who would be front-line workers in child protection about what they felt about the implications of this bill. We talked about the role of the register to protect children, and we also talked about the role of rehabilitation and good support and reintegration into a community and how that could work, but, overwhelmingly, every single one of those students said: “$146 million would go a long way to supporting us to rehabilitate and to work with sex offenders and actually solve some of the problem.”

💬 Ria Bond: What about the victims?

It would go a long way to solve some of the problem, because that $146 million is coming out of the police budget. That is money that we do not have for burglaries. That is money that we do not have for family violence. That is money that is taken out to actually monitor a register. I do not know, and I agree with those students that there is a much better use for that money than to provide a database. As I say, there is lots of emotion around this bill. It is a very sensitive topic, and I look forward to the fulsome exploratory debates that will happen during the Committee stage. Thank you.

Right. The question is that the motion be agreed to—oh, Jono Naylor.

Talofa lava. It is always a bit tricky at this time of the night. Mr Assistant Speaker, I was not sure whether you were standing to adjourn the House, or whether I should stay seated or not. So it is a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill. It is a very—

I regret that the time has come for me to leave the Chair and I have to interrupt the member.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.