Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill

I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill be now read a third time. This bill will enable the establishment of the Child Sex Offender Register. The register will address the current information gap around the movements and activities of child sex offenders living in the community, particularly after the child sex offender has completed his or her sentence. The ability for specified agencies to share a centralised source of information, coupled with the ongoing risk assessment of registered offenders, will allow agencies to effectively monitor and manage child sex offenders in the community. This inter-agency process, operating alongside other Government initiatives like the Vulnerable Children Act, will reduce the opportunity for child sex offenders to reoffend, and increase the safety of our children. As set out in Supplementary Order Paper 183, which was introduced during the Committee of the whole House, the legislation shall now come into force 30 days after the date on which it receives the Royal assent, rather than on 1 July 2016. Can I take this further opportunity to thank the members of the Social Services Committee for the way in which they have dealt with this bill. I believe the resulting amendments have strengthened the bill.

As we all know, child sexual abuse is a serious problem in New Zealand. It is also a complex problem that requires a careful balance to ensure the maximum effectiveness of measures aimed at reducing offending. 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 an 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 and directed to be registered at the discretion of the sentencing judge; or convicted of a child sex offence in an overseas jurisdiction, if that offence is similar to a qualifying offence in New Zealand and if they intend to reside in New Zealand; or if they are currently serving a custodial sentence, including parole, or are subject to an extended supervision order or public protection order, including an interim 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 will be for class 1 offences, which are non-contact enabling offences: 8 years. For class 2 offences, which are indecent assaults and indecent acts: 15 years. Class 3, which are sexual violations, sexual connection offences, or attempts: 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 provide a range of personal information upon their release from prison, their commencement of a non-custodial sentence, or arrival in New Zealand, if they intend to reside 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.

The bill provides for authorised information-sharing of registered offenders’ personal information between specified agencies: New Zealand Police, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, Housing New Zealand Corporation, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the New Zealand Customs Service; between the Commissioner of Police and overseas law enforcement agencies; and between police and third parties or affected persons, where it is deemed necessary to protect the safety of a specific child or children. 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, or providing false or misleading information. There is an offence of unauthorised disclosure of information on the register by agencies or affected persons to whom information has been disclosed.

The bill emerged from the Social Services Committee with a number of changes as a result of the committee’s careful consideration. As I said earlier, this has strengthened the bill. In the bill as reported back a registered offender convicted of a class 3 offence, 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 the offender to prove that they no longer pose a risk to the life or sexual safety of a child or children.

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. The bill provides a list of the matters that the commissioner must consider prior to granting approval. The bill also now includes matters that the court must consider when considering 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 that the bill as introduced was inconsistent with section 9 of that Act, which is the right not to be subjected to “disproportionately severe treatment or punishment”, and with section 26(2), which includes the right not to be subject to retrospective penalties. The bill now 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 sentenced to imprisonment for a class 3 offence. This has been modified with the new provision I discussed earlier, enabling those with lifetime reporting obligations to apply after 15 years to the District Court to have those obligations suspended. The bill, in my view, rightly has retained the substance of the retrospective application to remove the immediate risk of previously convicted child sex offenders who are still serving a sentence of imprisonment when the legislation comes into force.

The bill presents a careful balance that recognises the rights of children and the community to be protected from child sex offenders, as well as the rights of the offender and their families. The bill requires child sex offenders to report a comprehensive range of personal information to police annually, and upon any change to the information provided. The bill also allows agencies to share this information even after the offender has completed their sentence with corrections. This information will assist agencies to protect the community from the risks posed by child sex offenders. At the same time, the bill recognises the rights of offenders and their families by prohibiting public access to the information on the register and allowing for those on the register for life to apply to the District Court for a suspension of their reporting obligations. I commend this bill to the House.

I want to begin by putting on record the strong view of the Labour Party that the primary goal in this debate, of course, needs to be protecting children from harm, protecting children from becoming victims, and, as much as possible, reducing the potential of future offending from those who are found to be child sex offenders. There is absolutely no dispute from us that that has to be the aim when debating legislation like this.

I have heard some commentary in the media, that, somehow, what has been prioritised in the debate are issues of privacy and confidentiality. The primary driver for us has always been protecting children. That has to mean making sure that we make the most of the evidence and research that is available to us around what works best when it comes to protecting children. Sometimes that research might tell us something that will seem counter to our intuition. But that does not mean we have the luxury of ignoring it.

I want to go into a bit more detail on that. Essentially, what the Minister presented to us, with this bill, is set out in the purpose clause. What she was trying to achieve were admirable but broad aims. The purpose clause reads: “The purpose of this Act is to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims, and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders,”. Those are absolutely the aims that we should have. But the question we need to ask is how best you achieve that, when what you are simply doing with a register like this is ensuring you keep up-to-date names and addresses that are shared between Government departments.

We are not arguing that that is something that should not happen. In fact, most people would probably think it already does. Keeping names and addresses and up-to-date information, but just within Government agencies, is useful information, for instance, to make sure that they are complying with their parole requirements and that they are following conditions, as in not being located close to schools and areas that would inhibit their rehabilitation and potentially put children at risk. That is useful information. We need that information. No one is denying that. But does it reduce sexual reoffending against children?

For us, the add-on that has always been most important is the kind of rehabilitation and community focus work that happens around the offender upon release. Not every child sex offender receives a charge that allows them to be kept in prison for life. Let us be honest. There are some for whom we absolutely need to do a proper risk assessment to know for sure whether this is someone who should even be released. But after that point there will be those who will come under the view that they can be reintegrated if they are monitored correctly and if they have access to programmes that are proven to work. A database on its own does not achieve that. Our contention in this debate has been: what are we doing beyond the database? What are we doing beyond the register?

I want to speak to that using the evidence that was provided to us at the Social Services Committee, and in particular the submission that came to us from Ms Gwenda Willis. She is a registered clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at Auckland University. She was awarded the prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship for her work on what stops convicted sex offenders from reoffending. If we are going to listen to anyone, it should be to this individual.

Her first point to us was how important it is that we take into account individual differences and risks in sexual reoffending. We have tools available to us in New Zealand—are used in New Zealand—that can reasonably successfully analyse the risk of reoffending for different offenders. However, what this bill did was just, carte blanche, use conviction and put anyone within particular categories of conviction on to the register. That is one way of doing things, but the argument that was being made here by Ms Willis was that we actually have much more accurate tools, and those tools can also tell us whom we need to target the most, who might actually be a higher risk offender, and whom we need to monitor to an even greater degree than others, and to what degree we are using that information and that research. There was good reason for that. Even the New Zealand Police vouch that “The Register would be supported by an offender risk management framework … that targets resources to where the risk of re-offending is greatest …” It would have made sense if we integrated that risk assessment into the register system as well, but we did not do that. So that is perhaps a missed opportunity.

Remember, the register that this bill establishes costs $146 million. This is not a cheap exercise. That is money that we forgo out of the corrections budget, and it is money that potentially we are forgoing out of rehabilitation, which is something that we absolutely were very keen to make sure we placed greater emphasis on. Why is that? Why would we be so keen to focus on something that people will, no doubt, say is airy-fairy, it does not protect people, and it does not prevent people from harm. But, actually, the reality of this—it is not great politics—is that it does far more than registers do. Here is the research and evidence: “Circles of Support and Accountability is an example of an alternate measure for reducing sexual reoffending that has produced much more promising results. … Research has demonstrated that [this programme] is associated with reductions in sexual reoffending exceeding 70%.” That is higher than for any of the rehabilitation programmes in prison, and is a much better result than we ever achieved behind the prison gate. It proves that, actually, there is work that we should be investing in that will make a difference.

The STOP submission outlined this also. It stated that “Community based sex offender interventions have a key role in contributing to the assessment and management of risk of those offenders required to notify. Research has consistently found that contemporary cognitive-behavioural treatment is associated with statistically significant reductions in recidivism …”. So we can reduce recidivism. In fact, it found a reoffending rate of only 3.2 percent on 534 treated sexual offenders—a reoffending rate of 3.2 percent. You will not get reoffending rates reduced to that extent almost anywhere else. If we make sure we invest in programmes that we know work, we can reduce harm and we can prevent risk. These, again, I want to reiterate, are for those who have not got, for instance, preventive detention—the ability to keep them behind the prison gate.

The other point that I want to make, because this came up a lot, is: should this be a public register or should this be a register for only Government departments? We felt so strongly about ensuring that this stayed a Government agency register only that we said to the Government “Please entrench this in the name of the bill.”, and I give credit to Anne Tolley for agreeing with that. The bill was renamed the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill to ensure that you cannot, by the stroke of an amendment, change the bill to make it public. It is entrenched in this bill that it is a Government department - only register. Why is that important? Because evidence shows that you can get a nominal reduction in harm through a Government register that is only for agencies—a small reduction in harm. The moment you make it public, you increase risk. All of the evidence that has been undertaken overseas, where they have created publicly available registers, has increased the likelihood of children being harmed and sexual offenders reoffending.

💬 Darroch Ball: Rubbish. That’s rubbish.

Darroch, it is not rubbish. I could quote you the number of—

💬 Darroch Ball: I’m going to quote you some when I stand up, so just wait.

Go right ahead, but our eminent researcher in reducing sexual offending presented evidence to the select committee that said it increases harm.

It might be good politics, for some members of this House, to play into the idea that simply giving this information will make everybody safe, but we have a responsibility in this House to not play politics with children’s safety. We know from what has been presented to us that making it public would put kids at risk. That is why, ultimately, we have supported this bill, but we want to make sure that we do more—much more—to protect children.

I rise to take a call in this third reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill. I want to agree with the comments that were made by the previous speaker, Jacinda Ardern, that this is too serious a bill for us not to contend with it with the most serious concern. It is to ensure that we do the appropriate and right things in regard to the safety of and concern for our young people, our families, our whānau, our children, and our tamariki inside our communities. We know that, just of late, there have been heightened concerns from communities—like my good friend and colleague Chris Bishop down here in Lower Hutt, and other members of Parliament who are here who have had concerns from their communities—when there is a reintegration of a sexual offender into their community, and the concerns that that raises.

The intent of this bill is to ensure that, with what we can do in our roles and our responsibility to ensure that legislation plays its role—to ensure that safety concerns are at the heart of this bill. The heart of this bill is to both enable and establish what I would say is another tool. I know that the comments from the previous speaker were around the register on its own. A register on its own will not solve the issue; we do acknowledge that. Instead, what this tool does is it adds to a suite of other tools to ensure that there is adequate information. In 2013 the Centre for Impact on Sexual Offending was established. What was clearly realised in that period of time, leading to the initiation of this legislation, was the lack of current and up-to-date information, so that is the reason this register plays an important role in that regard.

We had over 140 submissions—22 oral submissions—and a number of those submissions addressed a number of key issues, and I want to just highlight some of those. Some of the concerns that were raised—and I am sure that my colleague Darroch Ball will raise them—were in regard to making the register public. When we think about judiciaries across the world, there is not an example of one single judiciary that is able to give information about how the registry will play its important role, as far as whether it is confined to Government agencies or open to the public. But there is enough information to say that the registry, in itself, plays an important role to reduce offending, and it does that by providing information with which the Centre for Impact on Sexual Offending will be able to create a profile of risk and then initiate a management profile and opportunities to ensure that it addresses these key issues. That is the key role of this register—that is the role it will play.

I do hope, though, that in the seriousness of this, New Zealand First will consider not voting against the bill because of this one point of the register being public, because there is so much more to this that actually makes sense. There is so much to this bill that actually makes a difference, and I want to highlight some of those points if I can.

One of the things that came out of the recommendations from the Social Services Committee was around the importance of the information for a judge’s notes. We know that when this information is put forward, often the profile agencies of the police and corrections are not privy to that information, so those notes are important because they not only give extra guidance to the judges but allow, in the making of a profile, for some of the inherent details that are quite critical in the importance of that profiling.

The other important aspect of this register is that it also ensures that up-to-date information around the children who may be around the offender, both in the house and in the surrounding areas, and also when the offender is travelling—if there are children at the residence of the offender, where they may be, that has to be notified. So we are gaining more information, and that information is going to be critically important as well. We have covered issues around, for instance, access to social media and internet accounts. Those are going to be critically important, too, to ensuring that the information is updated in the risk management profile—this profile is important as well.

We have also ensured that all the conditions that are part of the offenders’ non-custodial duties are in the bill as well, to clarify when offenders must report, to clarify reporting obligations, and also to allow offenders who are on the register to also apply to the district court—due to the fact that the suspension of their appearance on that register is available for them as well. I do want to commend this bill to the House. I think it is an important bill. As I have said before, it is part of a suite of tools that are critically important. It is not the silver bullet. It will not answer all the questions.

The last thing I want to address is the comment that Jacinda Ardern had made that maybe there was a missed opportunity. I do understand the point she is trying to get across, and one of the tools is around predictive profiling, which means that we can gather that information. For those who have a tendency and could be prone to this sort of behaviour, we can potentially short-circuit that by putting some wraparound support and looking at ways in which we can divert that type of behaviour. There is still the provision to be able to do that within those different current agencies. This register, again, is a register—it allows for updating of information. It is going to be critically important. It is part of the suite of tools that are critically important to the child sex offenders unit and we think that is important.

Just one last comment: people were talking about the $146 million. We in the select committee know—members may have forgotten, but we were informed—that two-thirds of that cost actually is already consumed in current operational costs at the moment. So we are not talking at the larger end of this. In fact, it is only one-third of the $146 million, which we think is well spent on this register. I do commend this bill to the House.

I am just supporting all of what the last Labour speaker said and also most of what the chair of the Social Services Committee, Alfred Ngaro, said as well. This bill does address a really emotive issue, and the submission process and the submissions that we received on this bill were at times incredibly emotional. We got submissions from a range of different people: people who work with sexual offenders, people who have been convicted of sexual offences, people who have been victims of sexual crimes, and people who work with those victims. So I think the submission process allowed us to actually explore this area quite thoroughly and we all got to the point where we thought that, OK, this is one measure but, as Alfred Ngaro said, it definitely is not a silver bullet to resolving the issues that the bill seeks to address.

I need to say that one of the things we need to keep in mind here is that the purpose of this bill is to decrease the chances of reoffending. The concern that was raised the whole way through the consideration of this bill is that we are actually talking about a very, very small group of people, in the scheme of sexual offending. We are talking about the fact that only 1 percent of sexual violence cases will actually lead to a conviction, so we are talking about a very small group of people who have actually been found out for having committed a sexual offence.

The concern when we were discussing this was really that we do not want to give people a sense of false security—that actually somehow their children will be protected because of the fact that we are now going to have better data-sharing between Government departments. In fact, the reality is that, although we all hate to acknowledge this, the real risk lies with close friends and family who have never been convicted or suspected of a sexual offence. That is something that we need to ensure that families remember—that it is not actually the ones who have been convicted who pose the biggest risk; it is the people in our own circles who pose the biggest risk to our children. So we do support this bill with reservations, as has been mentioned before.

We support it now because it is much clearer around the fact that this is a register that will be about data sharing between Government departments. As has been raised earlier, it would not do us any favours if we had a public register. The research and evidence show that that actually does increase the chances of reoffending, and we do not want that to happen. I know that there are lots of people out there and many in the general public who would think they want to know and that there should be a public register so that they can find out.

Of course we can understand why people would think that. But we have the privilege of getting information, of having the evidence put in front of us, and we have to make the decisions that are best for New Zealanders and actually do protect the people whom we are setting out to protect. That means, actually, that it should not be a public register. That is the conclusion that the committee got to and that is definitely what the evidence that we were presented with said. So we are at the point where we agree that it is just a data-sharing register between Government departments, and that is OK with us.

It is just that we need to be clear, as Alfred Ngaro said, that this is not a silver bullet and it is not going to have very much of an impact at all. There may be a nominal impact but it will have very little impact in respect of reducing sex offending against children. We did raise the concern around the false sense of security—I have spoken about that.

But also there were other concerns, and one of them was actually just the sheer amount of money that is going to be put towards this. Looking at it, the budgets that will have their base lines affected are these: $70.6 million from the corrections system, $14.1 million from police, and then $380,000 from the courts system. So that is $14.1 million. It is a lot of money for something that actually, as I said before, may have a slight impact but will not really do much in terms of reducing actual sex offending against children.

We needed to take that into consideration as a committee when we were considering this bill, particularly in light of the fact that it was not that long ago when we had the inquiry into the funding of the sexual violence sector. So many recommendations came out of that, in terms of what should be funded, how things should be funded so that the sector can be more effective and address the needs of the people concerned. Unfortunately, there was very little that came out of that in respect of Government action and Government taking up the recommendations that came out of the inquiry, and so that is disappointing.

💬 Poto Williams: A missed opportunity.

It was a missed opportunity, as my colleague Poto Williams has just said. It was a missed opportunity, and we have seen, I think, a slight injection of funding into the sector.

💬 Poto Williams: About $10 million over 4 years.

About $10 million over 4 years, but here we are taking about a data-sharing register that is actually going to cost $14.1 million—[Interruption]—a year, Poto is telling me. It is $146 million over 10 years. So Poto Williams is part of this process too, so we are just having a conversation as I do this speech in the House.

💬 Sue Moroney: Talk amongst yourselves.

We are talking amongst ourselves. So $146 million over 10 years is a lot more than the $10 million that we have seen injected over 4 years for actions that actually have been advised on and that we have evidence to support would actually be much more effective than this particular measure. That is disappointing.

I am not completely disregarding the work that the select committee has done on this bill to bring it to this place because, as I said, we will be supporting it. It is just when you weigh it up with regard to the other actions that could have been implemented, and the need for that sector to have a much larger injection of funding, then, of course, you cannot help but wonder how we reconcile these two things a little bit. That was a concern.

Our other concern was that the submitters did articulate the need for the Government to place a high emphasis on investing in research and evaluation of other means of reducing offending, such as specialist offender treatment, primary preventative education, as well as working with children, young people, families, and communities about recognising harmful behaviour. That all makes sense to us, but there is money required in this sector to ensure that those things can be done better.

I am going to leave it at that, and just say that I actually really appreciated going through this process with the select committee. I think that we did a good job considering this bill. We do support it with reservations and I have explained why, and, you know, if it does have a slight impact, then even a slight impact with regard to our children and what this is attempting to do is worth something. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

I am taking this call to support the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill in its third reading. When this bill came before the House, it was called the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Register) Bill and now it is called the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill. Often we say: “What’s in a name?”. For the Opposition, the name of this bill was important, and, yes, as a result of that, we have changed the name of this bill, and I want to thank the member, Jacinda Ardern, for her contribution. I also want to thank all submitters for their contributions. I also want to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Anne Tolley, for this very, very thoughtful bill, because this bill is focused on the safety of our young people.

Sex offending against children is a serious crime, we all agree. It does a huge amount of damage to our society, and we want to do things to stop the damage that is happening in society because of these criminal activities. As we have heard from other members, this bill is going to be a tool that will help us reduce offending and reoffending by child sex offenders.

This register is not going to be publicly available, as is now very, very clear from the name of this bill. The objective of this bill is not naming and shaming, as the New Zealand First Party wanted. The objective of this bill is the safety of children. Naming and shaming, in my view, is a very, very short-sighted objective, because we need to look at the wider picture. We need to think about people related to offenders; we need to think about long-term consequences of making their information publicly available. We need to look at the wider picture, and that is why we think that this register should not be publicly available. On the other hand, information on the register will be available to third parties if it is felt necessary. It does cover that bit—without the unwanted consequences of making it publicly available.

We have heard about the funding that will go into setting up this register. Budget 2016 allocates $8.2 million for the development of this register, and also goes towards the operational cost—and, yes, there will be ongoing costs, but the safety of children is important to us. This National Government is very responsibly managing its finances, and so we have choices, and we can invest in things such as improving public safety. Thank you. It is a great bill. I commend this bill to the House.

As we have heard this afternoon, the purpose of this bill “is to establish a Child Sex Offender Register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders”. I think the deeper purpose of the bill is, of course, to protect our children from a particularly abhorrent form of offending, which is sexual offending against children. The register in itself is purported to be a mechanism to achieve that outcome. Nobody in this House, I am one hundred percent convinced, from any political stripe or colour, would argue with that very worthy intention—to protect our children from this form of offending.

Sadly, we have no confidence at all that the establishment of a register will take us one step towards protecting the well-being of children, particularly not when one does consider the financial cost of it. We think the opportunity cost of spending on this form of response, or this mechanism, is simply taking funds and resources away from programmes and interventions that actually would have a much, much higher likelihood of protecting our children and ensuring their well-being. We see this as a particularly expensive means of delivering, at best, a false sense of security, and we have heard that phrase used already.

Members of the public might believe, and in good faith, that having a list of names will somehow protect children from or prevent this form of offending. Sadly, there is no good, compelling international evidence to that effect. The false sense of security I refer to—too often people assume that children are attacked or offended against by somebody unknown to them. The very sad truth is that most sexual offending is done by people who are known to that child, which makes it all the more offensive, obviously. Nevertheless, it is true that this is a form of offending that is often concealed under the guise of family or friendship. The whole “stranger danger” concern, while not entirely discredited by any means, is certainly to be downplayed. That is not the trouble. That is not typically the source of the offending.

As I have said, we see this register as being a particularly costly way, particularly in an environment—I think Jacinda Ardern in her very useful contribution mentioned the circles of support and accountability, which are a means of ensuring that when people are released from a custodial sentence there is a group of people who share responsibility for looking after that person, in the sense of keeping them out of situations where they might offend, doing some monitoring of them, and encouraging them into positive behaviours. At the same time that we are about to invest—or spend, I would call it, rather than invest—close to $150 million over 10 years, some $15 million a year, on this register, one very good community entity delivering a programme of Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) has stopped delivering that programme for want of about $25,000. That is most unfortunate—25 grand, against $14.6 million a year, for a programme, the CoSA programme, with, again as Ms Ardern said, an extremely high, unusually high, rate of success in reducing reoffending. Where are our priorities? We believe that that money could be much better spent elsewhere than in creating this register, which in itself is going to achieve very little.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act section 7 critique from the Attorney-General, which the Minister referred to, did say that the Attorney-General’s position was that the bill as originally drafted did compromise section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to the extent that the punishment was disproportionate—the fact that a person could find themselves on this register for life with no means of appeal or review to be taken from that register. That is particularly so when you consider the level of intervention into a person’s life. It is extraordinarily intrusive. There will be very little privacy for people who are on this register, to the extent that if they even choose to spend a night or two away from home they are obliged to give advance notice of that to say where they are going, who will be in that house, and whether or not children, particularly, will be present. If they are online their digital world or footprint will be entirely available to authorities—so it is an incredibly intrusive means.

The so-called compromise, or the way of meeting the Attorney-General’s concern, was this right of appeal after 15 years. On the face of it that seems not unreasonable, except that after 15 years there is no obligation on the Crown, or the Department of Corrections, or the Parole Board, or whomever to prove that that person is a risk, but, in fact, that person has to prove their innocence. There are very few points in our statutes where people are obliged to prove innocence. How does one prove that they are not going to offend tomorrow? How many of us can prove that we are not going to commit some form of criminal behaviour tomorrow? It is an unreasonably high bar, and I think it really does not meet the objection of the Attorney-General in terms of compromising the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The Human Rights Commission said in its submission that the implementation of this register would be costly, and suggested the money would be much better spent on preventative and treatment measures. That is a position we entirely agree with. Treating offenders is costly. It is long term. It requires very close supervision. It requires ongoing, highly skilled treatment. It is not cheap, but it does get outcomes. We think the money would be much better spent there, and also, as I think one other speaker mentioned in terms of community education, in educating people how to keep their children safe and what risky or inappropriate behaviour looks like, because it is not always apparent or obvious to people.

The Law Society, equally, came out expressing serious concerns. In fact, it expressed opposition to the bill as it was drafted, on the grounds that it did not see a particular likelihood of it succeeding, and it proposed what we consider a much more appropriate response, which was to give judges and the Parole Board the authority or the right to put individuals on a register if it is deemed that those individuals do present a significant risk, and that risk is likely to be ongoing. What we have now is more or less a blanket approach. Anybody convicted who serves a term of imprisonment, for example, will immediately go on to the register for periods of 8 years, or 15 years, or up to lifelong—whatever it might be. We think the Law Society came up with a much more workable and a much more appropriate level to say: “Yes, we know that some people are going to continue to be a high risk. Let’s put those very few individuals on a register and continue to monitor them.”

We have heard some extraordinary claims from some organisations I will not bother to name that sex offenders cannot be rehabilitated. That is patently wrong. There is a small minority of offenders who do not respond to treatment and will continue to be risk factors over their lifetime, but there are also many more instances where that sort of behaviour can be changed, where people can be removed from that sort of behaviour and can become trusted citizens again.

Finally, I would say that we support Labour’s intervention in terms of the name of the bill. It does nail down very clearly that this is intended to be a register that will be shared only within and between Government departments. Our confidence in the likelihood of that information remaining secret, actually, is very, very low when one considers that the agencies that currently will have access to that information include police and the Department of Corrections, which both have a culture of securing information as well as people. We also have the Ministry of Social Development, which, sadly, does not have a great history of protecting private information. We have the Housing New Zealand Corporation. Again, I do not know how many people work in that organisation. I suspect it would be many hundreds, potentially thousands, and I do not believe that within that organisation there is a particular culture of securing information well.

Alongside those agencies there are the Department of Internal Affairs, the Customs Service, and “any public sector agency … that the Minister, after consultation with the Privacy Commissioner, identifies as a specified agency”. What that says to me is that literally tens of thousands of people, potentially, will have access to this register, and we do live in a village, and in villages people gossip. I think it is inevitable that individuals’ names at least will be leaked from this register, and the likelihood is that blocks of the register will at some point become available. Again, as Jacinda Ardern very rightly pointed out, when the names of people are released, that increases the risk factor. The Greens, with some regret, cannot support this legislation.

It is my pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the third reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill. I will be addressing a few points of the bill. We will be supporting this bill. I will be addressing some of the points that we do agree with. I think it has mainly been said by previous speakers that New Zealand First would have liked this register to become public and publicly available to parents and to communities in order for them to be able to protect their children.

Before I do that, I would just like to highlight something that I did highlight in the second reading, and in the Committee stage as well, and that is something that is in the departmental report. It is about all of this research and the evidence that we have been hearing that a public register does not work, and, in some instances, we have got some members who have been saying that a register itself does not work. I would just like to read this. It says: “There is a wide range of international research available … against the effectiveness of sex offender registers. However, most of the evidence that is available comes from the United States, which is not a jurisdiction that is fully comparable with New Zealand. … There is little evidence available that pertains specifically to child sex offender registers in like jurisdictions.” It is talking about “like jurisdictions” being New Zealand, because we are quite unique in the way that we run our jurisdiction compared with other jurisdictions that run child sex offender registers, whether they be private or whether they be public. I cannot stress that enough, because even after I mentioned this in the second reading, there are multiple members from the Labour Party, National, and the Greens standing up and directly quoting research and evidence from the United States about how ineffective it is for a public register, but it is right here in the departmental report. I would just like to say that first.

Secondly, a number of the Labour members also talked about this not being as important as rehabilitation and reintegration. That may be true, but this is not what this discussion is about; this is not what this register is about. This register is a monitoring tool that will be used in conjunction with a myriad of other tools that are being used. If the Labour Party and the Greens want to concentrate on investing in and expanding the current rehabilitation and reintegration programmes that there are, then that is fine, but that is an absolutely, totally, mutually exclusive issue to this register and what this register is intended for.

The purpose has been mentioned about what this register is about. When it boils down to it, it is about protecting our children. It is about ensuring that our children are safe. No matter which way you spin it, no matter which way you look at the register, it is about the information. It is not about how the information is collected or what the information is, necessarily; it is about the information. The information is what keeps the children safe. At this stage, and the way that this legislation is written, the officials are making those decisions based on the information in that register to keep our children safe. What New Zealand First is saying is: why is it only the officials have access to the information to keep our children safe? Why can parents not have access to the information to keep our children safe—because that is what it is. The rest of what the Labour Party and the Green Party are talking about is the fact that it is a register. What we are talking about is that it is information that parents have the right to know, to ensure that they make proper decisions about the protection of their children.

I, for one, would want to know if a convicted child sex offender was living next door, living down the street, living next to one of my daughter’s or son’s schools, or living in our community. I would want to know—not because I want to go down there and beat him up, not because I want to go down there and burn his house down, not because I want to hurl abuse at him, and not because I want to name and shame. The only reason why I would want access to that information and to know where they live is to protect my children. I challenge anyone in this House to stand up and say anything different, because everyone in this House would want to know where the child sex offenders are in their communities—not for any other reason but to protect their families and protect their children.

I also mentioned in past readings—and Alfred Ngaro mentioned this—that we had 147 submissions, and 125 of those wanted this register to be public. They could see the need to have that information available to them, to protect their children. But more than that, we had a number of victims of child sex abuse give evidence. Every single one of them, bar none, wanted this register to be public, because they knew what they went through, and that if their parents had had the information publicly available to them, they may have been protected. They were firm on that. We also had a number of convicted child sex offenders give evidence. Every single one of them, bar none, did not want a register. They did not want this register made public. Too often we have comments from the public that politicians are out of touch with what the public wants and what the public needs. Here is demonstrable evidence that there is overwhelming support and need for a public register. Every single other party in this House, apart from New Zealand First, continues to be out of touch and ignoring them. This is not about rehabilitation or reintegration, it is not about punishment, and it is not about naming and shaming. It is about listening to the public, it is about listening to the victims, and it is about ensuring that we put the protection of our children first. The only way that can happen is if this is a public register.

There are a couple of issues about why there is actually a need for it to be a public register. I would just like to highlight that not every single convicted child offender will be on the register, only those who have been given a prison sentence or a non-custodial sentence that is directed by a judge. That means that the only offenders who are on this register are either high-risk or they have committed a high-level offence. Yet we have got parties and members in this House who do not even want a register of those high-level, high-risk offenders who are living in our communities.

In addition, one of the great concerns that we have is the fact that the offenders themselves are the ones who have to update their own information. They are the ones who have to let the officials know where they are, where they are travelling, or which children they are going to be associating with, if they are. In fact, it is not until something happens that the police or the officials need to react to that anything is done. It states here in the actual bill itself that if the Commissioner of Police believes there to be an offender who “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 could be informed. But not until that child’s safety has been put in danger does this monitoring tool, or this register, actually fulfil its purpose, whereas if it were public, the public would be the eyes and ears for those officials, and they would know who offenders were and what they were doing at all times. This register will not work if it remains the way that it is written in this legislation, which is that the register is restricted from the public.

I would just like to finally say that at the moment we hear arguments against it being public because there is some sort of ideology that the rights of the offender to privacy, or the human rights of the offender, come anywhere near the rights of the child. What New Zealand First is saying is that if we are serious about this issue of child sex abuse then we must make the child the centre of that conversation, and the only way we can do that is if we make this one public. Thank you.

It is my pleasure to stand to speak in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Bill today in its third reading. I would like to begin by acknowledging the work of the Hon Anne Tolley and the Social Services Committee on this bill.

This bill provides for the establishment of New Zealand’s first child sex offender register, and its purpose is to give authorities another tool for preventing reoffending—with the ultimate aim, of course, of keeping our children safe. Currently, offenders can disappear back into communities when they finish a sentence or an order. This bill will allow for the ability to create a centralised inter-agency information database available only to a dedicated unit of police and corrections staff—and only this unit will have unrestricted access to the information contained on that register.

This register will not be made public, and there are really good reasons for that. Offenders have families as well, and they deserve to have their privacy protected. A public register would also increase the risk of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands, and the consequences of that would be that we would drive offenders underground and authorities would then lose the ability to manage and assess their risk. Of course, keeping the names confined to this register also helps protect the victims, and their privacy, I believe, is completely non-negotiable.

Cabinet has dedicated $35.5 million to the ICT for the implementation of this register over the next 10 years, and I understand that work on this ICT work is already under way in preparation for populating the register. At the end of the first year of implementation, there will be approximately 568 names on that register. This is a fabulous tool for the team to be able to monitor and protect our community with.

This bill also ensures that the legislation balances the rights of the offenders with the absolute rights of the victims and the children to be kept safe. By having a repository for the information on convicted child sex offenders, authorities can keep track of these offenders, be alert to any changes in their circumstances, and thereby assess whether any action is required. This bill is a sensible way of giving authorities another tool for keeping communities safe, and I take pleasure in commending it to the House.

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

I rise to take a short call for the Green Party on this bill, which we are, unfortunately, unable to support. I would like to recognise that we are the only party in this House voting against this bill, also recognising that I am sure every member in this House has the best intentions and is wanting to protect the rights of victims of sexual violence, and that includes us. The Green Party has taken a very, very strong role in this House on advocating for victims of sexual violence and domestic violence, and I have a very long history of working alongside victims of sexual violence. That is where I am standing, in that knowledge and experience, in my opposition to this bill.

I do want to talk about the reasons and explain why we are opposing it on the grounds of concern for victims. The evidence was provided to the Social Services Committee from one of the services, START, which works with sexual violence offenders and supporting children, in particular, as well as adult survivors of sexual violence. It opposed the bill, and it opposed it on the grounds of US research, and it outlined that this model was not effective. I have heard New Zealand First members speak and say: “Yes, but the US jurisdiction is very different to ours, and we do not have any evidence that says that this does not work in like jurisdictions.” We do not have any evidence that it does work, either, and there is a very real concern, with a 1 percent conviction rate, that this will create a sense of safety for other offenders who have not been through our courts, which is 99 percent of them—that it will actually give them a cloak.

Another very real concern with this is that it will cost $146 million to implement. That is about three times the amount of funding that we got out of the sexual violence victim survivors inquiry, and that was based on years of evidence and advocating for survivors. Here we have an unproven concept—that will look good politically—that is getting about three times the amount of funding than is going towards victim survivors. We also have $86 million of that coming from the existing police baseline.

I really want to remind members in this House that in the front page of the Dominion Post today was a report that showed that detectives in this country are swamped with increasing numbers of child abuse cases, with 313 cases yet to be assigned to an investigator—with 40 officers trying to investigate five or more cases. So within that budget, the police are now being told to take resources from an essential part of our systems to hold perpetrators to account, and to put it into a register that has absolutely no evidence that it will provide any value in terms of protecting the victims in our society.

Now, I call that out. That is not what is in the best interest of victims and survivors in this country. When we have a 1 percent conviction rate and a proven programme called Circles of Support and Accountability, which was costing $25,000, I understand, and it had that funding withdrawn even though there is evidence to prove it works and when only 1 percent of Government funding is spent on prevention and the national roll-out recommended to the Government from the select committee inquiry has gone to 10 percent of our high schools when what was recommended was a consistent programme from early childhood right through—I call out the spending of $146 million on something that has no evidentiary basis. This Government says it is all about an investment approach and putting money into what is proven to work. There is no evidence that this is proven to work, and the Government is taking money from things that do.

I call Kelvin Davis—5 minutes.

When I was the principal of Kaitāia Intermediate School I heard in the course of 3 weeks of 13 instances of sexual violence against children—not all from my school, but across the Kaitāia area. In every single one of those 13 cases of sexual violence against children, not one of those children was offended against by some dirty, sleazy person in an overcoat jumping out from behind a bush in a park. The offender was somebody whom they knew, whom they loved, and whom they should have been able to trust. All they wanted was for the offending to stop. They wanted to feel safe. They did not want their family’s name to be dragged through the courts or put on a register that is open to the public. They did not want themselves to be identified as children and have their character, perhaps, put under the spotlight. They simply wanted the offending to stop and to be safe. If this register was to be made public, it would be a disincentive for people, for children, to report that someone in their family or some friend had offended against them. It would be a disincentive and, therefore, it would, in fact, make children across New Zealand even more unsafe.

We want children to be safe, but doing something or implementing something that has no research to back it up is just silly. According to the member from New Zealand First Darroch Ball, we have research, albeit from overseas, that does not back these registers, but he did not present any evidence saying “Here’s the evidence that says that these public registers actually work.” When we walked last year from Auckland to Cape Reinga to raise awareness around sexual violence we had three mantras. We want people to speak out if they are survivors of sexual violence, we want people to speak out if they are bystanders around sexual violence—so if they see something they speak out—and we want people to speak out if they are perpetrators or have harmful sexual thoughts and are at risk of actually harming. If somebody is going to disclose “Yeah, I actually have really inappropriate thoughts about my grandson or granddaughter.” or “I’ve actually offended against them.” but they know that their name may go on a public register, that will be a disincentive to people saying “Hey, I need help. I need help. I want to stop this offending.”

💬 Darroch Ball: Who says that, Kelvin? Who says that?

Who says that? Go and talk to Russell Smith from Korowai Tūmanako. Talk to WellStop. Have you spoken, Darroch Ball, to anybody who actually works with offenders? You are standing up there and you are spouting off about research that does not exist, and I am saying to go and talk to the people who actually work in the field, who actually work with offenders, who actually know what they are talking about. I will give you Russell Smith’s phone number right now, and you go and talk to him. These people know what is going on. They work with offenders. They work with teenage offenders.

I know that this bill would not put a child, or someone under 18 years of age on a register, I believe. But Russell said to me: “Kelvin, this is a really complex issue.” There is no sort of silver bullet. There is no sort of blunt instrument that can be used, because when we are talking about sexual offenders, what do we label the 8-year-old child who has actually offended against somebody? Do we label them? Do we put them in this box of a sexual offender when they can actually—if you work with them early and rehabilitate them—grow up to be perfectly functioning adults. But if you put this label on them, and that label sort of sticks, it just absolutely makes it impossible for people to be rehabilitated.

The practical application of a public register would be really difficult. In my street there are about 40 houses. What happens if a neighbour moves out and another neighbour moves in—do all 39 other households then go and check this register? What happens if the person is not an offender, then another neighbour moves out—do we go and check the new neighbour? It just ends up being almost impossible to manage checking every single person who moves into your street or into your neighbourhood—

I am sorry—the member’s time has expired.

Family violence, sex abuse, and elder abuse are three of the most dastardly crimes that I can think of. I think anything that we can do to deal with a crime, with the partial protection of a victim, and even with the rehabilitation of an offender, has got to be positive. It was Alfred Ngaro earlier who said that this bill is not the answer to the problem; it is a piece of the answer—and I am quite sure it is.

I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points that have been made. I have to agree with Kelvin Davis: I think that the issue around having a public register for this is that it would just be far too dangerous, in my view, for the victims of this crime—and it would preclude, in many ways, I think, a satisfactory resolution or satisfactory opportunity to rehabilitate sexual offenders. Whatever we think of these people, we have to give them an opportunity to rehabilitate in our communities and to lead a life as normal as possible. So I certainly support the fact that this register is not public. I think that it is common sense in many ways.

I also just wanted to very briefly refer to some comments that David Clendon made earlier on. He thought that this was a very expensive way of dealing with this issue and that we could do a lot more with that money. I think whatever we do in public policy around this type of offending is always going to cost us a lot of money. As I said myself earlier, I think that when picking up the bits of it and making it all work, we do not know what is going to be effective sometimes when we put these bits of legislation in place. But collectively they all play a part in it.

I certainly—with what experience I have in this field—support this bill. I think it is a very useful piece of legislation, and I think it will play a part in what can only be considered to be one of the worst types of crime, I think, people could commit against a human being. I support this bill as it becomes law. Thank you.

Firstly, I want to commend all those fantastic women and men who work in the sexual violence prevention sector, because there is no doubt that their job is one of the hardest jobs there is—supporting the victims of sexual violence to be able to feel whole and well again after the trauma of what is probably one of the most horrific personal crimes that can happen. So I send my awhi and my aroha out to those people who work in the sector.

Secondly, I want to say that child safety is paramount, and that this Parliament should ensure that all of its efforts go into the most important of jobs, and that is protecting our children. In this regard, as a party, we are supporting the efforts, with regards to this particular piece of legislation. But we have some significant reservations around the full impact of this legislation and the cost.

There is nothing that is more emotional to a parent than the harm that can come to their child. When we look at the impacts of recent news events about sexual offenders who have been housed in the community—and I reference Māngere and the Hutt when I am talking about that. The news reports that we got about the emotions of those parents who were concerned about having an offender within their community. They were very compelling. They were very compelling stories. But the perception of safety that a register may give to a community does not ensure the safety of that community.

When we look at the impact of spending $146 million on a list that gives us an idea of people who have offended in the past but does nothing to support the prevention of future harm, we have got to question the validity of that wisdom. It is very difficult to move past that hugely emotional barrier of thinking that a list that has someone’s name on it is going to keep your child safe, when the evidence was not compelling at the Social Services Committee. What was compelling was what our sexual violence prevention sector told us about what they could do with $146 million. That was compelling evidence, when we consider what is actually being funded to our sector.

I had the privilege of hearing part of the submissions that were made to the inquiry into funding for the sexual violence sector. The hundreds and thousands of people who work across this country—not only to rehabilitate offenders so that they can become fully functioning members of our community, but to actually prevent the harm from happening in the first place. What has been missing from this debate—and I really support my colleague Kelvin Davis, because he brought this into sharp relief—is where the money is to support the children who are victims of sexual violence. Where is the money to support the children who are victims of sexual violence? I do not see evidence of that.

There was limited discussion by the Government when we were looking at this bill, but there is the opportunity that has been, sadly, missed by us all. Unless we do everything we can to help these children get some relief from the trauma of their experience, those damaged children will grow up to be damaged adults, and we will perpetuate the cycle of sexual violence in this country. Where is the $146 million that we are committing to our children who are the victims of sexual violence? That is the missed opportunity.

When we talk about public registers, what we are talking about is the ability to identify people who have offended in the past. When we looked at some of the evidence that was presented to the select committee, it told us quite clearly that reoffending rates do not warrant the register of sexual offenders—reoffending rates do not warrant it—and that, actually, what we do know is that the harm of sexual offending comes from people who are close to that child, whether they are family members, part of that social circle, or people who are professionals who work close to the children. My colleague Kelvin Davis spoke about the incidents that happened in Northland. We know that there are teachers, coaches—people who are close to children—who harm our children who will never make it on to a register, but that will not prevent the harm from happening in the first place.

In summing up, I want to call on this Government to actually put its money where its mouth is and do the right thing by putting money into the prevention of harm, into the rehabilitation of offenders, and into supporting our children who have been victims of sexual offending. We are supporting this bill. It will have some small measure, but $146 million could do so much more in preventing this from happening in the first place. Thank you.