Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Police: I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The aims of this bill have been well outlined in the first reading, but I will briefly speak to them again. It became apparent in operationalising the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act that a small group of offenders whom it was intended to cover may not be able to be put on the register.

I want to make it clear that everyone convicted of a qualifying offence and sentenced to imprisonment since the Act came into force on 14 October last year has been put on the register. This bill only relates to a very small group who, when the Act came into force, were on release conditions or had been convicted but not sentenced. We believe that the public expects that these offenders would be covered by the register, so we are acting with urgency to make Parliament’s intentions clear and remove any doubt that these people are subject to registration.

This bill amends the principal Act to reflect the ongoing retrospective policy intent of the legislation. It is a straightforward amendment. It clarifies those subject to registration under the Act so as to ensure that the original policy intent of the legislation is given effect. I commend the bill to the House.

It was interesting that the Minister, the Hon Nicky Wagner, sort of downplayed what we have here. The Minister who spoke just then said that this is a small change, it is no big deal, and there is nothing to see here—move on. If that is the case, why are we passing the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill under extreme urgency? As I think I said last time, the last time I remember a bill being passed under urgency in one sitting was when we passed the increases in excise tax on tobacco because we knew the consequences of not doing so would result in market manipulation.

This bill is being passed under urgency, in one sitting, in one go because it is not an inconsequential amendment to an Act; it is absolutely serious. The fact that it has gone from the Hon Anne Tolley through to the Deputy Prime Minister just shows how serious this is. The fact that a number of Government MPs have actually lauded the Minister—and I accept that fact, and I will as well—for saying that as soon as she found out about this she brought this amendment bill to the House because it was so serious. Let us not downplay what we are trying to achieve here. The Minister is a very experienced and capable politician. She knows that what we are doing here is absolutely representing what our communities want to see. There was a fundamental mistake in the original bill that was before this House less than 6 months ago.

The original Act talks about conditional release. As a consequence of that terminology, which is throughout the Act—“conditional release”—it meant that three different types of offenders actually did not come under the auspices of this Act, when they were supposed to. So what we have had to do is change the term “conditional release” in this bill to “release conditions”. So what happened is that “conditional release” meant that if a person had been convicted and had served their statutory prison term before the bill received the Royal assent, they would not be subject to the provisions within the Act.

What we have had to do is say: “Wow, we got this wrong—fundamentally got this wrong.” There is a group of people—and it does not matter whether it is two, 20, 62, or however many; the Minister has outlined that it is over 60—who are not covered by this Act when, in fact, they should be. So throughout this bill the term “conditional release” has been replaced with “release conditions”. What that actually means is that people whose statutory prison sentence expired before the original bill received the Royal assent on 14 October 2016 but who were released on release conditions still come under this bill.

The reason this is being rushed through is that this is the will of the community. No one wants to see, hear about, or know that there are convicted child sex offenders in our community who may not be being monitored. The Green MP Jan Logie stood up and gave a passionate speech around the fact that this is not good and we have not got the evidence. I would disagree with that. I would say that maybe as we assess the impact of this bill, we will develop a data set of evidence that says it is the right thing to do. Maybe we will find out it is not. But what I think we need to do is put processes in place that seek to protect the most vulnerable in our community, and that is our children. That is why Labour is supporting this bill. It is not saying that this amendment bill is the be-all and end-all, because it absolutely is not. It is not saying that we cannot do more as parliamentarians, because absolutely we can. In fact, mental health, no matter what guise it comes under, has been absolutely neglected by this Government. A total of 8,500 prisoners who have an existing mental health issue enter our prison system every single year.

The fact that we are actually debating an amendment bill less than 6 months after the original bill came to this House is just sloppy—it is sloppy. We are taking 6 hours, or however many hours it will take, to pass this bill through the House when we could be debating other stuff, which is, for some people, more important. This is important, obviously, but all this remedial legislation—all this amendment stuff that we are continually debating in this house because of sloppy process—is not right. In fact, I actually think it fails the expectation of what New Zealanders expect of their MPs in Parliament. They do not expect taxpayer money to be spent doing this when it should have been done right in the first place.

I just want to reiterate that we are supporting this bill—Labour does support this bill. We just wish that we were not here debating this, because it should have been done properly the first time. A number of other speakers have outlined a different process that perhaps should have been followed. We are all wise in hindsight, but, again, this is not rocket science. A bill like this that was put up by the Minister of Police should have gone to either the Law and Order Committee or the Justice and Electoral Committee, where officials with the competencies of understanding the complexity of this sort of legislation reside. Instead it went to a select committee that a number of my colleagues and other members have highlighted perhaps did not have the competencies to understand that the legal term “conditional release” did not actually meet the statutory requirement of the bill. So we are back here. Again, this is not rocket science; this is just really sloppy process.

We are supporting this bill with no ifs or buts, but I just hope that in the future the Government starts getting this sort of thing right. I have no appetite for coming here debating a bill that I spoke on 6 months ago that should be out in the community. The community should be safe. The Act should be out there being implemented in a way that we intended 6 months ago. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak at the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Stuart Nash, mentioned that the Government is trying to downplay the importance of this bill. We are not. We understand the importance, and that is why the Minister, the Hon Paula Bennett, brought this bill forward under urgency. We want to ensure that our community is safe and people feel that safety is the priority for this Government.

The two things that this bill has got—the amendments that are in this bill—are that prisoners or convicts who are released on condition will become subject to this bill. What are examples of the conditions? If a convict is released on the condition of attending counselling, if he is going for counselling he is subject to come under this register and his information will be available on the register. The second amendment is that he should not be allowed to have access to children under the age of 16. If the conditions are on his release order, then he becomes subject to this legislation and his information—all the details—is available on that register.

The second clarification that this bill will be making is that if a convict is convicted but has not been sentenced then this register will also hold his information so that the agencies, whether it is Police or Corrections, can have direct access to that information. The previous condition that I mentioned, the first one, will bring 107 more people on to the register, and the 67 convicts who are yet to be sentenced will also be part of this register.

It is very important that the Government is trying to ensure the safety of the community, and this bill, in urgency, will ensure that those errors that have been made will be fixed. This bill went through the robust process of the Social Services Committee. These errors were left out, unfortunately, but today we are fixing them. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I did speak on the primary piece of legislation, and I note that the primary piece of legislation was passed on 8 September 2016. So it has not been that long a period of time before we have had to come and seek a remedy of the House—amendment legislation that is incredibly important. It is important whom this law applies to, and that is the essence of why we are here today.

The essence of whom this bill applies to ensures that all those who have committed sex offences—and, actually, the justification for this bill on 15 September 2015, when the Minister introduced the bill to the House, was that in 2014 alone we had 455 offenders who were convicted of child sex offences and, of those, 307 were sentenced to imprisonment, and 294 offenders were released from prison back into the community. So this amendment bill actually now clarifies whom that primary piece of legislation applies to. The reason I read those numbers out is that they are not insignificant, and if we do not get it right in terms of whom the law applies to, then, actually, we do not have a register.

It seems that 107 people who should be on a register are not. The reason I have highlighted that is that the principal legislation was very clear about the requirements of people who were sex offenders—what they had to do. I am going to read out some of that, because they had to, within 72 hours of being released from prison, go to the police and tell the police where they lived, where they worked, what memberships they had, and what their car registration was, and they had to provide all their contact information to the police.

So what this legislation is admitting is that the people whose names should be on the register are not, because we stuffed up the primary piece of legislation. So I think it is incredibly important to note some of the rationale for the legislation, which is about protecting children and mitigating risk. The whole reason we are having a register is to make sure that people who have offended do not offend again.

In fact, the requirements around those offenders are quite—for some of them they are on the register for life. If you have committed a class 1 offence, you are on that register for life. If you have committed a class 2 offence, you are on the register for 15 years. If you are on a class 3, you are on for 8 years. In the Committee stage debate I am going to ask the Minister how many of those 171 people who are not on the register fall into each of those categories—because that is why we have the piece of legislation. That is why we have invested, as a Parliament, $146 million over 10 years to make sure that we address the issue of sex offences against our children.

This piece of legislation is ensuring—and I want to do a little bit of reading, because I think people need to know that what the original bill failed to do to was include many people who were sentenced before the Act came into place on 8 September—or I think it was—

💬 Hon Member: 14 October.

—14 October 2016: any child offender who was no longer serving their sentence and was still subject to release conditions, and any person released from prison where the sentencing judge had put conditions on their sentence. Those conditions were about where they could live, not being able to go near certain places, and not associating with certain people or working in certain areas. We have completely undermined the whole integrity of the legislation by excluding, at this point in time, 107 people. So we are here to rectify this mistake by the Government.

I know a lot of people have talked about the fact that the bill went to the wrong select committee. I want to actually highlight the fact that we are here under urgency and this Government is wanting us to pass this piece of legislation by the end of the day. Where is the due process in that? There is none, and the reality is that we are going to support the legislation because we have to, otherwise those 107 people do not have to comply with the law. They do not have to register, and they do not have to be monitored.

The other intention of the legislation, in establishing the child sex offender register, was about enhancing the communication between agencies. I can actually, to some degree, see why it did go to the Social Services Committee, because two of those agencies are the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand. The other two are Police and Corrections. This is supposed to be a collaboration across the public sector under the guise of mitigating risk and protecting our children.

I stand here not as a member of the Social Services Committee, which heard the primary piece of legislation—and I again want to reiterate that it is not going to a select committee. No select committee is going to scrutinise this particular bill that we are debating, this amendment bill, which is why, I think, some of us who were involved in the process—because I certainly partook in the Committee stage debate—are highlighting and remembering the 2-year process that we went through to get to where we are today, and why some of us are actually incredibly irate that we have had to fix this stuff-up, this bungle by one Minister and, now, this bill is being introduced to the House under another Minister, which for all intents and purposes would have gone to either the Justice and Electoral Committee, of which I am a member, or the Law and Order Committee.

So I really do not want to highlight anything else, other than that whom this law applies to is incredibly important and that if we do not get it right, then it actually undermines the whole integrity of this piece of legislation. As a Parliament it is great that we can come together and actually resolve the issue, but I do have to say the Government should really look at itself, because our resources, and the time of this Parliament, could be spent debating so many other things. Thank you.

I rise again in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill, now in its second reading this afternoon, just to clarify that this bill does not actually introduce new policy. It is simply clarifying and giving effect to the original policy intent of the legislation that was passed last year. There has been some confusion about two aspects of the original bill, which has allowed some offenders who should have been on the child sex offender register to have been removed from it.

The two compartments are those who have been convicted and subject to release conditions—there are 107 of those offenders who have been taken off the register as a result of that confusion—and, also, those who were convicted but not yet sentenced. Of those, there are 67 offenders who qualify in that category. So the intent of this amendment is to clarify for all concerned that all of those offenders should be on the register and will indeed be on the register.

This Government has invested half a billion dollars in its Safer Communities package and part of that includes 74 additional specialist investigators who are targeting the serious offending against our children and our most vulnerable people, and that includes sexual assault and family violence. So this bill clarifies the intent of the original policy and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.

A couple of speakers have just made the point that this bill seeks to clarify the scope of the retrospective provisions of the primary legislation, and indeed it does that. In so doing, it will increase the number of people who will be subject to the provisions of this bill—the very onerous provisions of this bill. So the reality is that this will increase the blanket nature of the legislation, if you like. More people will be captured by it.

The bill also, in the explanatory note to the amendment bill we are debating now, makes the point that it creates an information stream platform, so that personal information—a great deal of personal information drilling down even to people’s phone numbers, the name of their IT suppliers, and other matters that we would normally consider private—will be available on this register. There are a number of organisations to whom this register will be available: primarily, Police, Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), and the Housing New Zealand Corporation.

It is concerning also that there is a sort of catch-all phrase in the primary legislation that says that all of that information, which will now be gathered about more people than was happening up until the passing of this bill, will be available to people for reasons other than the original purpose of this Act if, in the best judgment of some qualified person, it is appropriate to do that in the interests of public safety. There is no definition either in this new amendment or in the primary legislation about what public safety looks like.

The point I would make is that there are a large number of people who will have access to the information, and we are told there will be over 100 people who will be newly admitted to that rather unfortunate roll-call of people who will be named and have their information on this register. I think we can be reasonably assured that Police and Corrections have a bit of a track record in keeping confidential information confidential. It is probably imperfect; few systems, few organisations are 100 percent effective in keeping confidential information private. But I have to say, equally, that those two organisations do it as a matter of course—it is part of their core business, if you like.

The Ministry of Social Development: to some extent, yes, it is always going to have access to people’s private data—quite intimate information, one could say, about incomes, health statuses perhaps, and all the rest of it. It has perhaps not quite as good a record of keeping that information secure. When we get to the Housing New Zealand Corporation I suspect that there is no culture in that organisation of particularly protecting people’s information, people’s data, and we are talking about very, very detailed information about people—just about every aspect of a person’s life once they are added to this register—and of course under this bill there will be more people in that situation.

The likelihood of leaks is almost 100 percent. It is almost inevitable. We did a quick calculation—assisted, as I recall, by the now Hon Alfred Ngaro, the member who gave us some useful numbers—that indicated that in MSD alone something in excess of 10,000 people potentially could have access to this information, and Police and Corrections of course have very large staffs. It is almost inevitable that the information will leak. The consequence of that is significant. We know that not only the offenders themselves then become subject to condemnation through to, potentially, physical violence in the community but, sadly, so too do their families, who are tarred with that unfortunate brush, even in situations where families are doing their very best to take responsibility for their family member who has offended, who are working very hard with that person to get them back, to prevent any further behaviours of the sort that got them into trouble in the first place—trying to redeem them, trying to rehabilitate them.

Nevertheless, when this information almost inevitably leaks, the impact on those families will be significant. Children at school and women and men just going about their daily business in the community, be it shopping or as members of sports teams—whatever it might be; expanding the scope of this legislation, which, effectively, is what this amendment bill does, simply means there will be that many more people and their families subject, potentially, to that form of abuse in the community, unfortunately, and that is not a happy situation. That is not based on supposition; we know from experience internationally, anywhere and everywhere these registers have been incorporated. In some countries, in fact, they are public registers. Mostly there is an attempt to keep them private but, in reality, the contents inevitably do leak and that is a very unfortunate outcome for those people who are subject to them.

The matter of cost has been touched on. Again, with the expansion of the catchment, if you like, the increase through this amendment of the number of people who will be subject to this legislation—it is more and more of the justice dollar that is being spent on, we are told, proactively monitoring these people. There is really nothing in there that is likely to deter, in fact. We know from all the evidence that the best way to spend the dollar in that area—in that justice sector; specifically in the management of sex offenders—is in treatment programmes. That is simply the reality. The amount of money we were given a year or so ago was to the tune of slightly under $150 million as a cost of establishing and running this register. That is an enormous amount of money put alongside the—I will not say trivial—very small amounts of funding and often insecure funding sources that are available for agencies endeavouring to deliver the sort of treatment to offenders that is likely to deter their reoffending and to get them back into our society with a very low-risk, and even, ultimately, perhaps, a zero-risk, profile.

So the so-called clarification of the scope of the retrospective application of this Act will actually increase the mischief—in the way we see it—that potentially will, and very likely will, directly result from the application of this bill, from the provisions of the primary legislation and of this new proposed amendment. Thank you.

I want to look, in this second reading speech, a little more into the detail of the bill, but, before doing so, I would like to comment on a couple of things that we have heard the Green Party MPs talk about. I appreciate their point of view. I think it is a point of view that they are entitled to have. It is not one that we in New Zealand First agree with, but they are certainly entitled to it. I think that they have stated very well why they are opposed to this bill, and I want to respond to only two aspects of that.

One is that as I listened, particularly to what Mr Clendon said, it seemed to me that there was an insufficient appreciation that the people we are dealing with here are not normal, ordinary, everyday people. They are people with problems; they are people who need to be dealt with differently from other people for that reason. I think that, by implication, what the Green MPs seem to be saying is that the standards that apply to the community generally must be maintained in every respect in terms of those people who are in that position. I do not think that is actually possible. They are people with significant problems. They are people who need monitoring and who need support, and if we do not do that, I think it is not going to be good either for them or for the potential danger that they represent to public safety. I think that we all do understand what public safety means in this context; I think we understand that very well. That is one thing.

The other thing I want to comment on is that if there is no register, then I do not see how it is possible that those people can continue to be identified for the purposes of monitoring. I would agree with one thing that Mr Clendon said, which is that we should be concentrating on treatment for those people. I do not disagree with that; I think that is fine, but I also think that those who are living in the community certainly need monitoring as well. But without a register you cannot actually do anything much at all. I think that it is good, basic common sense. There is a need to have basic information. Who these people are and what their circumstances are is necessary information, if we are actually going to have a chance of doing anything at all in this area.

I want to move on, as I said, to some of the detail of the bill. It is true that it is not just a correction; it is an extension of the terms of the original legislation to a wider group of people. I particularly want to refer to clause 7, which replaces clause 1 of schedule 1. New clause 1(1) of schedule 1 “extends the retroactive application of the Act to persons whose sentence expiry date has passed (in relation to a sentence of imprisonment for a qualifying offence) but who are still subject to release conditions”. I refer in particular to new clause 1(1)(b), which says: “This clause applies to a person who, on 14 October 2016, is, in respect of a qualifying offence,— … (b) serving, on parole or on release from custody on release conditions, the sentence of imprisonment that was imposed for that offence;”. That is what was not in the original legislation, and those people—probably a relatively small number in relation to the whole—will now be included.

I also wanted to refer to paragraph (e)—so, just reading new clause 1(1) again—“This clause applies to a person who, on 14 October 2016, is, in respect of qualifying offence,— … (e) no longer serving the sentence of imprisonment that was imposed for that offence, but still subject to release conditions following the sentence expiry date of that sentence.” So these people would still be subject to conditions. Obviously, if there are going to be conditions, they have to be monitored, and, if they have to be monitored, it seems to me that there has to be a register; otherwise, the whole thrust of the legislation really does not make sense.

Furthermore, we see that new clause 1(3) “makes the same clarification in relation to corresponding registrable offenders under section 8.” If you look at section 8, which is amended by clause—I am just looking for that; just give me a moment there. Section 8—yes. [Interruption] No, I am just getting the right page. Anyway, section 8—here it is—clarifies that “the definition of corresponding registrable offender turns on sentencing or being required to report, not on conviction”, and that it is the conviction that is the precondition. I think that is a very important change. That is a clarification, but it also does extend the number of people to whom this particular legislation will apply.

I think that when you do actually look at the detail, you can see that this bill really is essential. Otherwise, there are, in fact, potentially three gaps where people would fall through the cracks, and that is not what was intended in the original legislation. We are not here to debate the merits of the original legislation—we are here to debate this bill and whether it does what it is claimed to do. I think it does. I think the clauses that I have read out demonstrate how there are gaps and how this particular bill plugs those gaps and fixes the legislation.

Although it is a bit sad that we have not had the time to put this through a select committee process, it does not really take very long when you read it—it is a relatively small bill—to see what it will do and why it is necessary, if, in fact, the whole legislation is really required in the first place. We in New Zealand First, as I said in my first reading speech, do believe in this legislation, and, therefore, we do think it is most important that this amending bill be passed tonight, because it is urgent, it does need to be done quickly, and those gaps do need to be filled. For those reasons, again, New Zealand First will have no hesitation in voting for the bill.

I just want to acknowledge the previous speaker. I think he has a good grasp of the intent of the purpose of this bill. I cannot quite understand, and still do not, why the Green Party has objections to it. Just briefly, how the register works: there are 1,659 people on the register as at 25 January this year, so there are a substantial number of people whom this applies to. However, there are 107 child sex offenders who ought to be on this register, as intended by the legislation, but are not. That is a substantial number of people, and this bill is to ensure that those who are intended to be on the register are.

By gathering information, authorities are able to keep track of child sex offenders while also being alerted to any changes in their circumstances. Agencies continually gather updated personal information, which can then be assessed and analysed to determine whether reoffending is more likely to take place, so that the necessary action can be taken. This is all intended to be preventative, not punitive. It is to protect communities and also to put the necessary support around those sex offenders who have come out of prison or who may be, in fact, on a non-custodial sentence.

All registered child sex offenders are required to report to the police within 72 hours of their release from prison, or after receiving a non-custodial sentence if directed to register by a judge. They need to provide a range of information including fingerprints, photographs, aliases, addresses, workplace and employer, car registration, internet details, and passport details.

The register is not open to the public, but in some cases where there is a threat to the safety of children, information may be released to a third party, such as the parent or guardian of the child, or a teacher or caregiver responsible for a child. The reason why it is not made public is that a public register would increase the risk of vigilantism and have the potential to drive offenders underground, where authorities would have no information on them and would not be able to manage and assess their risk.

As I said before in my first reading speech, this is one of the most complex areas of justice regarding our communities, and I believe that this bill lands it in the right place, and we are ensuring that.

This is a split call, and I am calling Jan Logie—5 minutes.

I rise to take another short call on this amendment bill. In my first speech I outlined some of our concerns with the initial legislation. I will try to keep this speech a little bit more focused on this bill, while addressing some of the views that have been brought up by other members. What we are being told is that this bill is to clarify the original intent of the legislation and that as it was drafted there has been some ambiguity over three different categories of child sex offenders: those serving short-term sentences who have reached their statutory release date before 14 October and had a sentence expiry date after the 14th and were subject to release conditions, offenders on long-term or short-term sentences of imprisonment that reach their expiry date before 14 October 2016 and were on release conditions at that time, and child sex offenders who were convicted of a qualifying offence before 14 October and sentenced to prison after the 14th or sentenced after the 14th to a non-custodial sentence and ordered by the court to be placed on the register. We are told that it is about the intent.

I did not sit on the initial select committee, but I did follow this quite closely, and I also have not actually heard exactly why we need to be passing this bill under urgency. I understand the fact that we would not want to be wasting more of Parliament’s time on something that has so recently been covered in a select committee and that so much resource went to, but I am not actually, still, quite sure of the urgency. If it is a matter that some people have been on the register where, legally, there was no justification or legal grounds for them to be on that register, and it is this House protecting the Government from appeals on that basis and possible calls for compensation, then I would be interested in hearing that, or if it is a matter of making sure that the time of the House is spent efficiently, then I would also like to hear a very clear rationale for that.

It has been raised by other members that it is possibly a result of the legislation having been sent to the Social Services Committee that we are back dealing with this. There were some questions at the time as to why this did not go to the Law and Order Committee, where there is a certain expertise around sentencing and those related issues. My understanding was that it went to the Social Services Committee because we had done the inquiry into specialist services for sexual violence, which the Greens had initiated. That certainly gave us a lot of information about what we need to do as a society to address sexual violence and to reduce the level of offending in our country, but I would say to this House that a sex offender register was not anywhere in those discussions. Nobody was suggesting it as a good idea, at all, in that very in-depth inquiry, which had almost a thousand submissions. So the Greens have opposed the initial legislation, and we continue to oppose it because this is an extension of that initial legislation.

I would just like to address specifically one of the points made by a previous member from New Zealand First who was saying that we in the Greens do not seem to recognise the potential danger of child sex offenders and the fact that they are not normal and that they do need monitoring. I think that there is a very real danger in that kind of statement of creating the sense, again, that all child sex offenders are of the same type and are not rehabilitatable, and that actually flies in the face of all the evidence. There are very different categories of offenders, and the more we create a stigma and create them as “other”, then, actually, the less likely it is that people will come forward voluntarily to get help. We know that that is actually what we need to be driving towards, because so few cases make it to court, so it is a problem.

I call Jenny Salesa—5 minutes.

Thank you for this opportunity to make a speech on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I think you will find agreement from most members of this House, because protecting our children is absolutely the right thing for all of us to be doing. As parents and as caregivers—as a mother of two young daughters—we usually do whatever it takes to protect our children. Indeed, it is crucial to manage any risks posed to all of our children, especially risks posed by convicted child sex offenders. This bill we are debating today is supposed to manage the risks and harm that might possibly befall our young children in the community—risks that might be posed by convicted child sex offenders who have finished their sentences, as well as those who are serving their time out in the community.

We know from coverage in the media that there have been many, many cases where convicted child sex offenders are sent out into the community, and some of them—in South Auckland and Māngere, specifically—have been placed right opposite schools. There are some out in my area, as well, who have been placed right next door to various families.

It is unfortunate that this simple measure with such a large impact has been botched up and we are here today debating this bill in urgency in order to ensure that the law works properly. Due to faulty drafting, the principal Act, which was passed in October of 2016, has meant that some of the offenders who were meant to actually be captured by the register may not be registrable, which is why we are debating this under urgency. Labour does not have a problem with Government agencies sharing information. However, we do have a problem with shoddy legislation like this, which requires urgent fix-ups. It is what we are having to spend a few hours today debating.

One of the non-governmental agencies—just yesterday, actually—referred to my office for me to go and check out a boarding house. This is a boarding house that is not even, in my opinion, safe to walk into. You walk up to the front door and you cannot even walk up and knock on the front door, because the front door itself has been taken down and made into a plank so that it is safe for you to walk into the building. These are the sorts of boarding houses that a lot of our convicted folks are sent out to. There are seven different individuals living in this particular place, not just in the house but in sheds outside, as well as in caravans.

Labour supports this bill because it is absolutely the right thing to do. However, we want to make it absolutely clear that mistakes in drafting legislation such as this—potentially very serious ones—are not OK, and the public should be made aware of that. Thank you.

My very brief contribution to the second reading of this bill will primarily concern the need for some urgency around correcting, I suppose, mistakes that from time to time occur in the drafting of legislation anywhere. That is not unusual—well, I suppose it is comparatively unusual, but it is certainly not completely unusual for that sort of thing to have happened in this House over the last many, many years. But the need for some urgency in correcting this, in my view, relates to the fact that when you have got a piece of legislation that is intended to deal with a set of circumstances and it does not do it, then it is urgent that we recover that position, and that is, in fact, what this bill is doing. It is a very simple piece of legislation. It does not change the intent of the policy or the intent of the legislation—well, it does change the intent of the legislation somewhat, but I think it is a common-sense bit of legislation. I commend it to the House.

I am very happy to rise and say that I do support the legislative provisions of this bill. I do not support them going through all stages under urgency today. It is important to remember that the provisions of this bill apply retrospectively. They would continue to apply retrospectively whether the bill is passed today, whether the bill is passed in 3 or 4 weeks’ time, or whether the bill is passed in 6 months’ time. Is there a degree of urgency to ensure the law operates as intended? Yes, there is. But that does not prevent the bill from being given the scrutiny that it deserves so that we do not end up back here again in another few months to amend another mistake.

Lack of scrutiny and Parliament not doing its job appropriately is why we end up with so much legislation to fix up mistakes that were unintended. The original bill clearly did not get the scrutiny that it deserved and, therefore, we are back here amending the legislation, and we are amending it by not giving the amendment the scrutiny that it deserves. I think—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: So what’s likely to happen?

So what is likely to happen? We could well end up back here again.

The important thing to remember, as I said, is that this legislation will apply retrospectively. So let us say that today the Government introduced it for its first reading and said that there is a degree of urgency to get this legislation in so that the original law could work as intended, and the Parliament, through its processes, as it has in the past, agreed to a very shortened select committee process so that the bill could be adequately scrutinised—let us give it 2 weeks—and the bill then came back to the House after 2 weeks and went through the remaining stages of a second reading, a Committee stage, and a third reading, in accordance with the regular processes of the House. It would make no difference whatsoever to when the bill would take effect from, because it is retrospective legislation. But it would mean that it got some proper scrutiny so that we minimise the chances that we would be back here again, doing this all over again.

The problem with rushed legislation is that when you have only a few hours to look at it and decide which way you are going to go on it, and pick up any errors that might be in it, you do not know what you do not know and therefore we are going to vote in favour of this bill because we support the intent of it, and we support what we have been told about what it will do. But we actually, as parliamentarians, cannot say, hand on heart, that we have had time to consider all of the ins and outs and all of the implications and get all of the feedback from the people who might work with this piece of legislation, to ensure that it does do what it is intended to do.

So this amendment, to fix up a mistake in a primary Act, or a primary bill, is now going through even less scrutiny than the bill with the mistake in it went through. So what is to say we are not going to end up creating more problems? There is no guarantee of that.

I think this bill should go through, but it should not go through under the process that the Government is pushing it through. I think it says everything about this bill that the Minister who was in charge of the original bill, Anne Tolley, is not in charge of this bill and is not speaking on this bill to fix it up the mistake that she made in the original legislation.

I think that the mistakes made by the Government and the Government’s desire to get those out of the way and avoid embarrassment as quickly as possible are not good reasons for truncating the parliamentary process. If this bill is as uncontroversial and as simple as the Government claims it is, then it would sail through a regular process without too much difficulty. But it does not need to be going through under urgency, because the urgency will have absolutely no impact on the practical effect of the bill because the provisions in it are retrospective.

Retrospective legislation is something that I also have some uncomfortableness with, but in this case I think it is justified because it is about making sure that information that the Government already holds on offences that have already taken place and have already been appropriately dealt with is taken into consideration, to keep children safe.

Ultimately, on the balance of weighing up everything, I would say we should certainly err on the side of doing things that are going to keep children safe. I do not think that children will be any less safe as a result of this bill being properly scrutinised by a select committee over a period of a couple of weeks than they would be if this bill goes through under urgency today. I support the bill, I support the provisions in the bill, but I do not support the process the Government is using to get this bill pushed through the House.

This is just a short call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. The amendments are being introduced today to make it clear that the registration requirements apply to all child sex offenders who were intended to be on the register when it came into force on 14 October 2016. It is about protecting children from harm. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.