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

I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. It is never ideal to have to put a bill through under urgency, but it is vital that we put child safety first. That is what this bill does, and it is heartening to see that most of Parliament actually supports us in trying to do this today.

The aims of this bill have been well outlined today, but I will speak briefly about them again. It has become apparent in operationalising the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act that a small group of offenders whom it was intended would be covered 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 this Act came into force on 14 October last year has been put on the register. This bill relates only to a relatively small group—but I think any number would be significant—who, when the Act came into force, were on release conditions or who had been convicted but not sentenced, and in that respect it was retrospective.

We believe that the public expects these offenders to be covered by the register, so we are acting with urgency to make Parliament’s intention clear and to remove any doubt that these people are subject to registration and, as such, subject to monitoring at a different level, which goes through when they are on the register.

This amendment bill amends the principal Act to reflect the original retrospective policy intent of the legislation. It was intended that the retrospective provisions of the Act would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and who were subject to release conditions under Department of Corrections oversight. It was also intended to include all of those child sex offenders who had been convicted of a qualifying offence prior to the Act coming into force, but who had not yet been sentenced.

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

The Labour Party—let us get it out there from the start—does support this bill. We will do whatever we can to protect children from sex offenders. But our concerns still remain about why we are back in the House now, just 6 months after the initial Act was passed. We believe that is unacceptable. We also believe the time frame that we were given to respond to the amendments is unacceptable.

But, that said, it is important—I agree with the Minister of Police—that we do sort this out, although the debate in the Committee stage did leave a few unanswered questions. I would just like to thank my colleagues for posing those questions, because it is our job to hold the Government to account, and there are some questions as to why we are standing here now, in urgency, debating this.

As the Minister said, the bill relates to a relatively small number of offenders, and, again, I agree with her. Any number of child sex offenders is a number that is too big. But we are talking about 107 offenders, I believe, who sort of slipped through the gaps that the original legislation left, and we are now closing those gaps up. Some of the questions that we had during the Committee stage of this bill—and the Minister said this is about release conditions, and yet the words “release conditions” were left out of the original bill.

For those people who are listening, release conditions and standard release conditions in the Parole Act of 2002 are, for example, offenders reporting in person to probation officers in the probation area where the offender resides, or an offender notifying probation officers of his or her residential address. They are not to move to new residential addresses without prior written consent. If they do move, the offender must report to a probation officer in the new probation area not later than 72 hours after the offender’s arrival. The offender may not reside at an address that a probation officer has directed the offender not to reside at. They must not engage, or continue to engage, in any employment or occupation in which the probation officer has directed the offender not to engage in or continue to engage in, and they are not to associate with specific people or classes or people such as gang members. So those are just examples of the standard release conditions, for those people who are listening in to the debate. But the point is that something as essential as identifying the release conditions should have been included in the original legislation in the first instance. It is not something that we should be debating at this stage. It is quite fundamental, you would think, to have been included the first time around.

There is also a bit of a gap between the convictions of these offenders and the sentencing. As we know, a conviction happens first. There might be a gap of a few weeks or months before an offender is sentenced. It sounds like that gap was another loophole that people slipped through.

Then there was the issue of “conditional release” compared with “release conditions”. I have already spoken about release conditions, which are something that an offender has upon release from prison—the conditions that they must adhere to. This is a different situation from conditional release. Conditional release, to me, assumes something that is going to happen before they are released.

As Clare Curran first raised—she spoke about corresponding registrable offenders; in other words, people who have been convicted of an offence in an overseas jurisdiction. We have a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders. Clause 5, which amends section 8, is one of them, and clause 7 in Part 2, which amends schedule 1 of the principal Act by adding new clause 1(3). There are a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders—people who have committed offences overseas, and yet, when I asked the Minister in the Committee stage whether there were any people who had been convicted of child sex crimes over in Australia, had spent time in detention centres, and had been deported to New Zealand, the answer was that none of the 107 people whom we are talking about in this debate were convicted overseas.

It begs the question as to why there are a couple of clauses dedicated to something that does not exist. So what is the problem that we are trying to solve? There does not appear to be a problem, but it has been thrown in here anyway, and yet, when we tried to get an answer to those questions, the Minister did not reply. She said that this does not apply to any people deported from Australia. That is the exact question we are asking. Why have people been missed out? Why are there these two clauses dedicated to a problem that does not exist? It raises the question again about how the Government got this part wrong? Maybe there is an answer, and maybe in this third reading some of the Government members will stand up and explain to us why we are debating clauses that are irrelevant and that do not apply to any people.

It is right that this bill is going through the House. It is also right that the Opposition parties around the House challenge the Government on this—firstly, on why it got it wrong in the first place, just 6 months ago. What was the situation that made the Government realise that we need to fix something? Why is it that we are trying to fix some problems that do not exist? It calls into question what is going wrong over there, on the Government side. Oh, no offence to my colleague Nathan Guy, who has just walked in.

What is happening here, that we are having this debate now under urgency? What are the problems, in terms of the corresponding registrable offenders, that we are trying to fix? We understand that there were gaps. There were these 107 people who sort of slipped through that little window. As I said earlier, or as has been said through the debate, there are three groups of people whom this actually applies to. I will just read out who those three groups are: child sex offenders serving short-term sentences of 2 years or less imprisonment, who had reached their statutory release date before 14 October 2016, had a sentence expiry date after 14 October 2016, and were subject to release conditions at 14 October 2016. That is one group.

The next group is child sex offenders on long-term or short-term sentences of imprisonment, who reached their sentence expiry date before 14 October 2016 and were on release conditions at 14 October 2016. The third group is child sex offenders who have been convicted of a qualifying offence before 14 October 2016 and were sentenced to imprisonment after 14 October 2016, or were sentenced after 14 October 2016 to a non-custodial sentence and ordered by the court to be placed on the register.

To those people listening out there, it all seems just a bit too technical and jargony, but I guess the reality is that we have to keep our children safe from people. Offenders will be on a register, and they will have to provide the Police and the Department of Corrections with access to personal information that allows those organisations to proactively monitor an individual child sex offender’s risk of offending while in the community, and act accordingly to address that risk.

The Labour Party agrees that that needs to be done. We do not like the process by which it has been done. We do not like the bungling of the 14 October 2016 legislation, but we are glad and are happy to take our part in making sure this legislation hopefully is right this time around. Kia ora.

Thank you for the opportunity to stand in support of the third reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. It has been said time and again that the main intent of this legislation is to ensure that we protect our children from child sex offenders. As at 25 January this year, there were 1,659 people on the register that has information about these people. By gathering this information, authorities are able to keep track of child sex offenders while also being alert to any changes in their circumstances. Agencies continually gather and update the personal information of such people, which can be assessed and analysed to determine whether reoffending is more likely to take place, so that the necessary action can be taken.

We want to ensure that our communities feel safe and that there should not be reoffending. 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 be registered by a judge. They need to provide a range of information, including fingerprints, photographs, address, workplace, employer, car registration number, internet details, and passport details. All this information is registered in this register so that a track can be kept of these offenders—so that we can ensure that our society feels safe.

The register is held in a secure database, so it is not publicly accessible information. It has to be protected, and the things that are on the register are safeguarded by this. We also want to ensure that when any of the information of these people is changed, they have to inform the police within 48 hours, and some of the information is updated so that the agencies are aware of the change in circumstances of such offenders.

It is important that we should have legislation that is up to date, and this legislation is being rectified after some errors were made earlier. I commend this bill to the House.

When we first started the first reading of this piece of legislation earlier this afternoon, I started my contribution by saying that, for me, it was a matter of public safety. As legislators and members of Parliament, our primary duty is to ensure that our people are safe, and, actually, we have a real duty to ensure that our children are paramount within that. I was concerned and troubled that an amendment bill had come to the House to fix up the primary legislation, and the primary legislation was enacting a child sex offenders register. It caused me some alarm that we did not get that primary piece of legislation correct in the first place and that in the intervening months—it has not been a huge amount of time—it has allowed 107 sex offenders to not be eligible to go on the register. For me, that was hugely concerning.

During the passage of this bill under urgency, we have learnt that there have been other errors. There have been omissions, and there have been very pointed questions posed by members of the Opposition to examine and to make sure that we actually get this amendment right, so that we actually can feel comfortable that we are addressing what we need to do.

I recall that at the time we were debating the primary legislation there were a couple of cases where families were absolutely beside themselves because they had convicted sex offenders in their area. They knew about them, and they were in areas where they were close to children. Those families were looking to us to provide them with some comfort, because there can be nothing more distressing than being in fear for the safety of your kids.

So, during the passage of this legislation under urgency in the House—which we have also questioned; the need for urgency—it has become apparent that throughout the passage of this amendment bill through the House there have been some problems with process. There have been some issues with definition and there have been some concerns about policy, and, unfortunately, I do not feel that all of these concerns have been addressed adequately. However, we are required to support this bill because we want those 107 child sex offenders currently not eligible to be on the register to actually be on the register. We also want to ensure that others who may fall into the gap that is created by those issues with sentencing dates and the phrase “release conditions”, as opposed to “conditional release”, which was in the original legislation—that those issues are tidied up so that we actually have a piece of legislation that functions well, to ensure that those people who are required to be on the register are on the register.

But I am not comfortable that we have got it completely right, because even in my last contribution in the Committee of the whole House, I discovered that the Minister, at 5.34 p.m. this afternoon, was making an amendment to the proposed amendment because we have not even got the date of sentencing correct. We have it in the legislation—in the amendment—as “October” when it should read “October 2016”. So I am not comfortable that we have actually done everything we can, and I have been expressing this view through all of the calls that I have made in this House.

Urgency is required for a purpose, yes, and I believe that it is useful and right that we use urgency when it is required. But, in this particular case, I think that we should have allowed for some further examination. We should have allowed for a select committee process, we should have allowed for submissions to be made, and we should have allowed for some examination and questions to officials, which did not occur in the first select committee stage, because it might have been that the Social Services Committee was not the most appropriate committee to review the primary legislation. Those are the arguments that have been traversed across the House this evening.

I do not want to hold up the passage of this bill, but I did want to continue to register my concern that we may not have got this entirely right. Urgency should be used for an appropriate purpose, but I am not sure it was entirely appropriate in this case. I hope we have got it right, because, actually, the safety of our kids is the most important job that we can do. Thank you.

I rise in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in its third reading here tonight. Tonight we have heard quite a bit of debate and criticism of the Government’s handling of this bill, but I would just like to remind the House that when the bill was going through the select committee stage, members of other parties were present as well. We all received the draft report and the tracked report, and we all approved, in the Social Services Committee, the final report, which led to the passage of the legislation.

The bill tonight—the amendment bill—is simply adding clarity to some wording that was in the legislation. It does two things. It clarifies that those people who were released from prison but who were subject to release conditions—and those conditions could be that they attend counselling or that they are not able to be alone with a child under 16—are to be captured by this register. It is also clarified, in this amendment bill, that all offenders who were sentenced after the commencement of the Act but who had been convicted prior to the commencement of the Act are also captured in this legislation. There are 67 offenders who qualify for that.

This is a sensible amendment bill. We stand in support of it, and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.

At 5 to 9 on a Tuesday evening, this House sort of lives up to its one-time reputation as the fastest legislature in the West. It has been significantly less than 12 hours since we first saw this bill. It will pass, and then only requires Royal assent to become law. We think that that is unfortunate. Having said that, I must comment on the tone of this debate this afternoon—albeit it is unfortunate we could not have a real debate, including a select committee hearing, public input, and all of those good things—but it has been respectful and I contrast that, having earlier today read the Hansard, with when the principal legislation was debated in this House.

There were rather some unfortunate, and one would even say objectionable, comments made at that point about the position of various parties, not least of all the Greens. I am pleased to say that although the Greens’ position has been critiqued—I see the Hon Judith Collins assuring us that it was not her. I will not go there, but thank you for that reassurance. Today the Greens’ position has certainly been critiqued—that is fine; we take that on board—but it has been a moderately respectful debate, and I think that is a good thing.

This bill that is about to be passed corrects problems—it corrects mistakes that were made—and, indeed, it almost made another mistake, but that was caught at the last minute, literally. But we believe that it is correcting a primary piece of legislation that is fundamentally flawed. We believe that because—the point I have made earlier in the debate—this is a one-size-fits-all approach. It is a blanket approach to say that every single person who has been convicted and sentenced to a particular class of offending is forever doomed—or, at least, doomed for a very long time—to be tarred with that brush. It has been called a predictive model—that is to say that this person has been convicted of an offence of this nature, therefore they are almost certain to reoffend and we must impose these very intrusive restrictions on them.

I recall—again, I was reminded reading the Hansard today—that it was referred to by one submitter as “correctional quackery”, which is to say it is a practice in corrections that is based, really, on quackery. It is not actually evidence based or substantive. There is no proof that this is the appropriate way. When the original Act, the primary legislation, was passed not all that long ago, the Law Society made a very strong submission that the purpose of the bill—the outcomes that we are all pursuing—is about the safety of children. Nobody can argue with that as a purpose, as an aspiration, but we could achieve that much, much better and at much less cost by creating an opportunity for the parole board and judges to determine, at the completion of a person’s sentence, that they are still representing or constituting a serious risk to children in the community and, therefore, should be subject to some form of very intensive supervision, which could even include a register of the sort that we currently have.

But it is this blanket approach, which is not really backing Corrections, is it? Saying that a person can be convicted, serve a sentence, undertake rehabilitation treatment, but nevertheless we are saying “Well, that’s going to fail.” before they have even begun. It is suggesting that no matter what progress a person might make when they are being treated—and often these people might be sentenced to quite long terms of imprisonment—no matter what Corrections or anybody else might do with those people, and no matter what efforts are made to change their behaviour, they are, nevertheless, not going to be trustworthy on the day they leave prison. So we do think that it is a wrong approach. It is misguided. In our view, the principal legislation is fundamentally flawed, and this process we have been through today to correct errors in it does very little to improve on that. It simply broadens the scope. It increases the number of people who will be immediately subject to the conditions of the bill and placed on the register.

The final comment I would make is about the privacy concerns we have expressed through this debate and indeed in the original debate on the principal legislation. The Privacy Commissioner at the time made a very strong submission saying that the procedural and governance safeguards for information-sharing arrangements were inadequate. The Privacy Commissioner made a number of recommendations, most of which were not picked up and incorporated into the bill, and we are quite convinced that (a) the protections built into the legislation are weak in themselves, and it is almost inevitable—in fact, I would say it is inevitable—that details of individuals who are named on this register will eventually leak. That will have serious negative consequences for them and probably even more so for their families. I have made the point earlier. The families of people who are associated with people whose names appear on the register—when, inevitably, those are leaked, because you have literally tens of thousands of people who will have access to this register—will suffer as well, and we think that is unreasonable. So we are continuing to oppose this legislation. Thank you.

New Zealand First has an absolutely zero-tolerance approach when it comes to sex offenders. That is why we supported the original legislation and why we will support this amendment bill. Registration of offenders can, we think, make a worthwhile contribution, and even if it was only to be effective to a relatively small degree, it would still be legislation and an amendment that would be worth having. So we think that we have got to do all that we possibly can to minimise the effects of child sex offending in the community, and a system of monitoring is essential in order to achieve that. If we are going to have a system of monitoring, it is also essential to have a system of registration, and that, in fact, is what this bill sets out to do.

In fact, this particular bill applies only to amend the retrospective application of the principal Act, and actually it does extend its purpose. One of the speakers opposite said that it was only a clarification. It is not, actually. It does, in fact, extend the scope of the legislation so that all child sex offenders will be registrable, as was intended under the principal Act.

Under that Act, it was intended that registration would be for all offenders subject to imprisonment, and it was intended to include those yet to be sentenced when the Act came into force who would have been registrable offenders had they been convicted after the commencement of the Act. So, actually, it is an extension over the original legislation, but it was intended in the original legislation, so I think this amendment is consistent with that original legislation. Some groups would, otherwise, fall outside the scope of the Act, and they would number, we are told, something in the vicinity of 130 individuals. That is a very significant number of people who should be under the Act to be left out. It is a hole that needs to be plugged, and it needs to be done urgently.

So, for those reasons, we in New Zealand First certainly do want this amendment bill to correct that defect. We think it is important that child sex offenders who are serving a qualifying sentence or who are still subject to conditions or requirements relating to a sentence or who were yet to be sentenced for a qualifying offence when the Act came into force must go on the register, and that is what this amendment bill will actually achieve. It is essential for those reasons.

I want to particularly comment on the Greens’ position, because it is a bit different from ours. We respect their position. However, we believe that the reduction of offending, and the monitoring of it to prevent reoffending—and that is the ultimate objective—has an importance far above the incursion into the privacy rights of the individuals concerned. So it is a matter of what is the predominant interest? We feel that the public interest in protecting children against child sex offenders is by far the predominant consideration, and the relatively minor reduction in the privacy of individuals—even if it does mean, in practice, that some names get out into the public arena—is still not as great as the need to protect children against those offenders.

We think it is a balancing act, but this bill achieves the right balance. It is not a public process, even if, in effect, it is likely that there will be some leaking of names. I do not disagree with that—that is quite likely. But I do say, once again, that the need to protect children against sex offenders—and, therefore, that they should be monitored and, therefore, that they need to be registered—is the predominant consideration. So, for all of those reasons, New Zealand First will continue to support the bill and vote in favour.

I am very pleased to stand in support of this bill, and I do agree with the previous speaker, Denis O’Rourke, that this bill does strike the right balance. It is important to understand that children in our society are treasures—they are taonga—and we must do everything we can to protect them in their innocence, in order to ensure that they grow up healthy and successful.

One side of this bill that I think can be overlooked is the fact that when sex offenders are registered and monitored by Corrections and by a dedicated unit of the police, what that does is maintain accountability. What that actually does is give them a greater incentive to live an overcoming life, which, in the final analysis, protects their freedom. We have got to see that a bill like this, which the Green Party may say sounds Draconian, actually balances the freedoms of people in the best way possible. But we on this side stand on the side of the innocents and the young. We say that, given the balance of rights, it leans their way, obviously. I am very happy to stand and support this bill in the House.

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

I will take a brief call, again to express the Green Party’s opposition to this bill. Just to correct the assertion of the previous speaker, Jonathan Young, that, for us, our opposition is based on the belief that we think this is too Draconian—that is not at the heart of our opposition. The heart of our opposition is that we want our resources going to things that are going to be effective. We oppose window dressing and political grandstanding at the expense of solutions that we know will work. We do not support money going towards something that has no evidence base when we desperately need it going into treatment and prevention services. So that is at the heart of our opposition.

But to this specific bill, I do also just want to recap the process that we have had so far, which also goes to our opposition. The legislation was introduced and sent initially to the Social Services Committee, which does not have a background in dealing with—or does not deal with every day—law and order issues. I think it was sent to us because we had done the inquiry into funding for specialist sexual violence support services. We had about a thousand submissions through that inquiry, and we considered the range of issues around sexual violence that we needed to consider as a country. This was not anything that was mentioned at all in that process, and that needs to be restated.

At the end of that select committee process, the legislation came back to the House and was passed with our opposition, which was based on the evidence. Now, about 5 months later, we have legislation back in this House that extends the initial legislation and also seeks to apparently clarify mistakes that were made in that initial drafting. I think that is a concern. We also understand that there was a Supplementary Order Paper for this bill, but have not seen it. My understanding is that it does not seem to be up on the website, and that, again, is also a concern for us—that a Supplementary Order Paper has been added to a piece of legislation at that stage and not everyone has seen it, and yet we are about to pass this legislation.

I want to thank the Minister of Police for taking the chair during the Committee stage to answer questions, but I will point out that there are several questions that were asked by this side of the House that still remain unanswered. One of them is: why is this legislation retrospective? If we have been told that these people whom this is now being extended to cover were not actually put on a register in the interim, what is the need for the retrospectivity in this legislation? That is an unanswered question. We have not, to my mind, been told why this needs to pass under urgency, and we asked the very clear question. We also have not had explained to us how the sentence “imposes on a person a non-custodial sentence in respect of a conviction for a qualifying offence” is actually any different from the sentence “convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence”. This bill is seeking to change language when actually none of us have heard any explanation for how it is at all different. So it is a bit worrying that we are passing this under urgency, without proper scrutiny, and the questions remain.

This legislation has a clause in it that, supposedly, clarifies that the date on which a person is charged is irrelevant. Again, I cannot see, actually, how it would have been considered relevant and why that is needed. We have not been given examples of that. So these questions remain. They have not been answered by the Minister, and this House is about to pass a piece of legislation that we have no sense of comfort has been properly thought through. It is, to me, a real shame that Parliament has wasted time on something that is, in effect, window dressing, and is again passing legislation under urgency with questions—significant questions—remaining.

The member mentioned a Supplementary Order Paper that was not on the website. It was a tabled amendment, and tabled amendments do not go on the website. I call Carmel Sepuloni—5 minutes.

We are supporting this bill, just like we supported the original bill, but I do need to state really clearly again that we did have some major reservations about the original bill. We supported the bill in the end because of the fact that it was agencies that would have access to the data. We were really concerned during the process that the public would have access to it. We were not convinced entirely that it would have the impact that the Government had set out, because the evidence that we had set before the select committee did not really support to any great extent that it would have the impact. We were really concerned about the amount of money that needs to go into this—it is $146 million over 10 years—and we knew that we had different organisations that work with people who are victims of sexual abuse come through telling us that, actually, this money could be better invested in different places. But, in the end, we got a point where it is one measure. It is not necessarily the most effective measure, it is not necessarily one that we would have prioritised over anything else, but it was one measure that was set up to manage the risk posed by serious child sex offenders, and so we did support it.

It is disappointing now to see, though, that here we are less than 6 months later back in the House having to amend the bill because there were things that were overlooked and now there are changes that have to be made. Going back to a point I made earlier in the night, one of the reasons why we have to question why it may have happened is that this bill, which now has been put forward by the Minister of Police, was originally put up by the Minister for Social Development and was sent to the Social Services Committee. We questioned that decision at the time and really had to question whether or not that was the place for this bill. Now to hear in the chair tonight the Minister of Police saying that she has taken over this bill because the sex offenders’ register sits better with her ministry makes us throw our hands up because we tried to say that over a year ago when it was sent to the Social Services Committee. So we have to wonder at what point the Government worked out that this was the better place for this bill and this issue to be situated.

Also, I am a little bit concerned that we are hearing nothing from the Minister for Social Development, who was responsible for seeing this bill through, and now here it is back. We would think that, actually, the Minister for Social Development would be standing up in this House and explaining to the House and to the public how we got to this point, why these things were overlooked in the process, and why, less than 6 months after the bill was passed, we are back in the House having to amend it because some serious oversights have now been found.

I do not have much to say about this bill except for the fact that, yes, we will support it because it is important that the amendments are made, but the mistakes should not have been made in the first place, and the Government is responsible for that because it made the decision to send it to a select committee that it was not suited to. We made that point right at the beginning of the process. The Government now acknowledges that, with Paula Bennett saying that this is better situated with her in her ministry. So, yes, we will be supporting it, but, as I said, the Government has made an absolute mess of this. It will not be the first thing that it has made a mess of, but it has made a mess of this, and it needs to be very careful in the future about which committees it sends things to, and needs to just make sure that the correct process is followed the whole way through so that we do not end up having to waste the time of the House and the time of the public by having amendments made to legislation within 6 months of it being passed. Thank you.

There is no doubt that there is universal agreement on one thing in this House tonight, and that is—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Yeah, it’s sloppy.

I was thinking that this bill could have been referred to the Primary Production Committee. That would have solved the problem. We all agree that one of the top priorities for this Parliament is protecting our children from harm.

This Government has, in its time in Government, made many changes to the law and order sector, and every little change makes a difference. This amendment bill, which is fixing a bill that was designed to establish a child sex offender register, is a really important piece of legislation for this House. It is an important little piece of legislation in the law and order tool kit. I have a great deal of pleasure in commending it to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, kia ora tātou katoa. This is not the first time I have taken a call in this House to amend either a technical mishap or a minor oversight, something that was missed when the original bill was going through. So I rise to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in its third reading. I agree with many of the members of this House—with all of the members of this House—in our concern for the public safety of our tamariki and our families throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. It is in this vein that we in the Labour Party will be supporting this bill.

My colleagues have mentioned our disappointment in having to come back and revisit something so important, something that I know my colleagues—in particular Aupito William Sio, in Māngere, South Auckland—have been dealing with in their communities around the place, the monitoring of sex offenders and, more importantly, the kind of resources that are available to ensure that it is done effectively. In that vein, any information sharing between ministries of the Crown—between any agency or local organisation—that will ensure the safety of our communities is a good move. It is a step in the right direction. In this particular instance, the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections will have that ability to share information to make sure that those people in our communities will be kept safe and, of course, that those offenders who require such strict supervision are able to have that service afforded to them to keep them safe and, of course, to keep the community they live in safe.

One of the key parts I noticed in a report from the police was about proactively being able to monitor—proactively being able to do that. I wonder, in much of the debate that has taken place over the past few months about resource and capacity—and I have said this before in the House around bills of this nature, whereby we are asking the question of whether or not the kinds of resources that we expect for such an important job are made available to the ministries, to the departments, and to the services we expect such high levels of monitoring and high levels of service from. Funding cuts, cuts in police numbers—these are issues that have happened within the time frame from when the Act was first passed to this point in time this evening. So these are all concerns that we do have and that have been raised and, I think, for the most part, adequately answered given the truncated time frame for this particular bill. We want to also reiterate our concern around the democratic process, which is about making sure that all of those stakeholders who do have a part to play in this particular bill are heard from.

Without going on too much longer, we want to see this type of bill enacted as soon as possible to keep our communities safe. We want to make sure that that happens, obviously, as soon as possible, because managing the risk posed by serious child sex offenders by providing Government agencies with the information and the tools is very important. It is important to the Labour Party, I am sure it is important to all parties across the House, and, more importantly, to the communities where our people reside. I think about the community of Tāmaki Makaurau. I think about the high-density population. I think about the proximity of community members within their community. There is going to come a point in time when we are seriously going to have to consider the best way of dealing with serial sex offenders and serious sex offenders. This particular bill is a step in the right direction. We support this in its third reading, and I want to commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

I rise in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in this, its third reading. It has been canvassed quite strongly today that when the principal Act was passed last year, it was the intention of Parliament that it would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and were subject to release conditions at the time the Act came into force. It was also the intention of Parliament that it would apply to child sex offenders who had been convicted of a qualifying offence but who had not been sentenced at the date the Act came into force.

Unfortunately, as the Act has been operationalised, concerns have been raised that perhaps the wording of the law did not give the true effect to that intent, and so we find ourselves here today as a result of 107 offenders having been taken off the register who were intended to be on it. It is important to note that they have been under monitoring conditions by police and Corrections, but they would have and will have additional monitoring should this bill pass into law. This amendment bill will confirm that these child sex offenders should be on the register, and I commend it to the House.