Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

If I can start by one statement that I think will be pertinent to this whole debate over the coming hour: informing schools when a sex offender is being placed in the community is not a new practice for Corrections. They already do it, so there is no argument for why they can’t do it mandatorily. This is what my bill does: it makes it mandatory that, when a sex offender is placed in a community, the local school is notified.

I am a parent. Many members of Parliament are parents or grandparents or have nieces and nephews. I believe New Zealand parents send their kids to school with the expectation that, if a sex offender was housed in the local community, that school would be informed. I believe parents expect that, and when I’ve talked about this bill to people such as school principals, to parents, and to a whole range of other stakeholders, the feedback I get is that, in fact, people are surprised this isn’t happening already. And what do we get? A Minister of Corrections, Kelvin Davis, with his head in the sand, saying, “I would want to know what issues with the current system this bill is trying to fix.”

Well, if he wants to know the issue this bill is trying to fix, go and talk to Mark Brown, Newtown Primary School Principal. He had a paedophile who was deemed high risk of reoffending placed near his school, and that principal found out via social media. Corrections apologised because that sex offender should not have been placed next to that school, down the road from a day care, down the road from a playground. If my bill was legislated, that placement would not have happened. Mark Brown was surprised, as a principal, to learn he wasn’t given the respect to be informed that that high risk of reoffending paedophile was placed next to his school. That is why Mark Brown backs my bill, and I back him.

Notifying local schools of the placement of a sex offender nearby is already a working practice of Corrections. My bill just makes it mandatory. Like Mark Brown, Newtown Primary School Principal, most people are surprised this is not already happening. Parliament has an opportunity tonight to rectify that and to support parents so that they know, when they send their kids to school, that schools have been notified when a sex offender is placed in that community. Kelvin Davis, the Minister of Corrections, with this head in the sand, said he believed the current law was strong enough to ensure the safety of the community; yet, when I asked how many schools had been notified of sex offenders in their community, he doesn’t know as the Minister. Why? Because that information is not held centrally. He told me, through written parliamentary questions, it’s held in manual casefiles. There is no oversight of notification of schools of a sex offender being placed in their community. There is no auditing of it. Yet he believes the current law is safe for the communities. Well, how did that happen in Newtown? How many times is Corrections going to have to apologise to school principals.

Then, to cap it all off, because all this information is too hard to find, the Minister didn’t want to spend any time finding it, I asked a written parliamentary question. It revealed that 455 people whose lead offence was a sex offence were released from prison during 2019-20. Three hundred and sixty-three of them whose lead offence is a sex offence were on parole. Yet, when I OIA’d the Ministry of Education, they came back and said, in a similar time frame—and this is the time when 455 were released, 363 on parole—do you know how many times the Ministry of Education were informed to notify schools? Seven. Seven times, when 363 were released on parole. Now, I don’t doubt for a second that some sex offenders need to be managed in the community. That is realistic. What I expect, like every parent in New Zealand, is that their local schools are notified.

Principals telling me they’ve had 50 years’ experience in teaching; one principal has had 33 years as a principal. She said she’s never had State agencies alerting her to a sex offender being released in the communities. She said principals had not been informed adequately about offenders before. Another principal—22 years—he’s never been notified. Another principal, in Auckland: “Anything that was going to endanger children, we would want to know.” That is why school principals are in support of this bill. They want to protect the children that they are entrusted with by parents—Kiwi parents, hard-working parents that send their kids to school expecting that schools are notified when a sex offender is placed in the community. I want to know how we’ve got a system where Corrections can release hundreds of offenders with their lead offence being a sex offence, yet the Ministry of Education says they’ve only notified or been part of a notification seven times. That does not add up. That puts our people at risk.

And I come back to that original point, because, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to hear it all tonight. We’re going to hear every excuse for why this law can’t be passed. I’ll reaffirm my first point: informing schools when a sex offender has been placed in the community is not a new practice; it happens sometimes. This bill only makes it mandatory. And do you know why I brought this bill to the House? Because I had Corrections come to me, and it’s going to happen to every MP in this House if it hasn’t already—if you’ve had those meetings before and they turn up and they talk casually and then half way through a conversation they drop in, “Oh, we’ve just placed two sex offenders in your community, in your electorate.” Well, that’s fine; I accept that they need to be responsibly managed in the community. What I don’t accept is when those staff of Corrections told me they had done the due notifications. I didn’t accept that verbally, and I asked them to put it in writing. And do you know what happened? They stalled me for months. Finally, they wrote to me, and what did they tell me? They hadn’t notified like they said they had. That’s happening up and down the country. That’s why it’s important to pass this bill tonight to make sure that, when sex offenders are placed in the community—even when they’ve been rehoused; there’s a provision in my bill: within 72 hours that local schools are notified. Parents expect this. New Zealanders are surprised this is not mandatory now.

I’ll finish with a quote. The mother of a girl abused as a child, who supports my bill—her daughter is the victim of a child molester. She was surprised to hear principals are not already routinely told. She wants political parties to unite and pass laws to keep schools better informed. “They should be a sensible Parliament,” that mother said. Tonight, we have an opportunity to be a sensible Parliament and to ensure that it’s mandatory, when a sex offender is being placed in the community, that the local school is notified.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Child sex offending is abhorrent, we all know this. As a mum of four kids, as an auntie of 14 kids, it is one of my greatest fears, as I am sure it is one of the greatest fears of every parent in this House, every auntie, every uncle, every nana and poppa across this country. We also know that is hugely prevalent. We know that about one in four girls and one in nine boys—sometimes the figures are a little higher: one in three girls; one in seven boys—over the last 40 years or so, those are the figures that have been found consistently across the OECD. Sex offending against people under 16, at some level: very prevalent. We also know that the harm can be lifelong and extreme.

I have spent my whole adult life working to make it easier for child witnesses, and especially child sex abuse witnesses, to be heard in court when they have the absolute bravery to try to tell their story. I have spent my life working on that issue, and I look forward to discussing that work and I look forward to the support of the member opposite, Matt Doocey, when we come to discussing the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill, because there is a bill that will actually do something to protect child sex victims and to stop child sex offenders, unlike this one.

A wise man said to me recently that we should respond, not react. I suggest to you now that this is a reaction of a bill, not a response based on the evidence and what is sensible. But we are lucky because there is a lot of evidence—there is a lot of evidence because this sort of community notification bill has a long history in the US, in particular, but also in the UK, and there are numerous studies. One of the findings that those scientists have made is that this sort of bill makes people feel good. It is something that raises confidence from the public, and people feel like something is being done. The sad, sad truth, however, is that when you investigate the actual efficacy of this sort of bill, it has minimal to no impact in reducing offending.

Now, I rose last week to talk in support of the strengthening of the child sex offender register in this country. I did so because that bill, unlike this one, was a proportionate, evidence-based response. This bill, with its blanket requirement of notification to schools, is not evidence-based. It may make us feel good; it does nothing to protect children. I strongly suggest to this House that what we need to be doing is not about what makes us adults feel good; it is what actually works.

So the member opposite has already referred to the fact that there is, in fact, already a system to notify schools—

💬 Simeon Brown: It doesn’t work.

—as to sex offenders. Now, he says that it doesn’t work. My suggestion is that that is actually a misunderstanding. Of course there are mistakes. Those are operational matters which are about the guidance given to police. But if you have a look at what this bill does—this bill—this bill is an undifferentiated, one-size-fits-all, knee-jerk reaction that will do nothing to increase the safety of our children. In the first place, it covers all sex offences—not just child sex offences; it covers everything from rape of adults through to bestiality. It is not specific to child offending. And when we do that, we are not assisting; we are just making ourselves feel better.

The next problem is: it is not differentiated as to whether the person is regarded as a threat. We are going to, for example, force the notification of sex offenders who are medically incapacitated, who pose no threat whatsoever. There will be no judgment. There will be no flexibility. There will be no rationality in the regime proposed under this bill. It is disproportionate. It is one-size-fits-all. It is inappropriate.

And when I move on through the research on this, I come to the next problem with it: there are no safeguards. When you look at the response here, it is not only a one-size-fits-all but there are absolutely no safeguards as to what principals are supposed to do with this information. When a principal is given this information, how is it that they are supposed to address it? There is no guidance here. How are they going to protect privacy? How are they going to ensure that their response does not become the nexus and the catalyst for vigilantism? Because that has happened. I would refer you to the well-known example of the Welsh doctor who was a paediatrician whose house was attacked and who was attacked because people misunderstood. There is an unfortunate fact that in the studies—and there are many—of these sorts of responses, these sorts of registers, between three-quarters and about a third of the information is often out of date and wrong. In the US, there are many examples of innocent people being attacked who happen to live in a house where an offender used to live. Is that the sort of thing that is going to protect children? Absolutely not.

Furthermore, the laws requiring notification, as I’ve said, they have a long, long history in the US. So let’s have a further look at what they’ve done, because the fact is that in those studies, we haven’t been able to find much of a lift in reconviction for sex offenders. If the intention of notifying the public and the school is to reduce the incidents of child sex offending, this is not going to work—and we have over 20 years of international experience to say that. I say again: it might make us feel good; it is not going to do anything.

What is going to do something is treatment. We know that treatment works. There are multiple studies, including of New Zealand programmes such as Kia Mārama. Now, what these studies show is that in the first 300 sex offenders who went through Kia Mārama, for example, in the first nearly three years, there was under 3 percent of reoffending, and the conviction rate after five years was at 8 percent. Lambie and Stewart looked at three community-based sex offender treatment programmes here: the overall reconviction rate was 8 percent over four years. Now, that’s compared to the control group of 19 percent.

Now, why am I talking about treatment? Because registers are shown to disrupt treatment. The sort of public notification that we are talking about here, it disrupts treatment, because other studies have looked at what happens to the sex offenders themselves. What it has found is that one-third report job losses, housing losses, harassment is very common, the majority experience the loss of their social supports, and they experienced a massive increase in stress and in shame.

Now, if you talk to sex offender treatment providers—and I have done today; I have spoken to two senior, senior clinicians in this field, and what they say is that if you are going to shame these people publicly, if you are going to put them under stress, you raise the potential for them to fall back into offending ways, and you lessen their ability to join into treatment. Again, it may make us feel good; it ain’t going to help.

And furthermore, what we know about sex offender treatment is that we really need that social support around our offenders if they are to rehabilitate. But do you know what this also does, when you end up notifying of a sex offender? It shames their family. So we have multiple children in the US who experienced harassment. We have family members who would otherwise be helping the sex offender to rehabilitate who are instead experiencing social isolation and shame.

This is a pointless overreaction. If you want to do something for child sex offenders, support the sexual violence bill and support rehabilitation in treatment.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise again. It feels like a little bit of a déjà vu to be speaking about this bill after the night we had under urgency when the Government passed its child sex register bill into law, because it deals with much of the same themes. So it’s a little bit surprising to hear Labour Party colleagues acknowledge the research and what we know about the way that child sex offending works, the way that it is rarely prevented through publicised registers of offenders implemented after people have served their sentences. That has nothing to do with rehabilitation—positive, successful reintegration of anyone back into the community—and certainly does not relate very directly, if at all, to the types of causes that we know underlie this type of offending.

Of course, this bill, as has been pointed out, doesn’t actually just cover child sex offending; it covers a range of other offending, and that’s one of the problems with it. The other is, as the member who’s just resumed her seat, Emily Henderson, pointed out, that it introduces or seeks to introduce a blanket requirement that people’s names are disclosed to the nearest school without the discretion of law enforcement, corrections, and parole officers, with all of the expertise, all of the experience, that they have with both protecting the community and bringing together rehabilitation measures that’ll help that person move forward from their offending and to bring down recidivism.

Currently, Corrections has a discretion—and I’ll read that—in some cases of sharing information when it is in the best interests of everyone, including the person released from prison and their family, to schools, and where they assess on an individual, case by case basis that that’s required or necessary for both rehabilitation and for that community to be kept safe. To move away from that seems, at best, unnecessary lawmaking and, at worst, something that could fundamentally undermine what our justice system is about, which is to keep the community safe through rehabilitation and successful reintegration of offenders. It can lead to hysteria, as has been mentioned, to isolation of entire families, to harassment—and all of that without having actually any kind of a measured or effective response to child sex offending any other kind of offending.

So we know it doesn’t work. I think, again, as the member before me mentioned, this might be the kind of thing that makes us feel good, because we all do care so deeply about child sex offending, but it doesn’t work. I think I would go further, even—and I think she was being kind when she said that it would just make us feel good without being effective, but I think at this point it has actually become callous of us as lawmakers to keep telling the community, to keep telling victims, that we’re doing something to keep them safe when we know that we are not, when we know that we have not, as members on this side of the House should keep reminding themselves, in fact invested in what keeps communities safe.

When the hospitals are falling apart, when there’s no inclusive education, when there’s no jobs and homes when you come out of Government, you know that’s what contributes to crime. When our prisons are second only to the United States in being overpopulated already, and we haven’t kept any children safe, we know that we need to invest in what actually prevents child sex offending. We know that the joint venture on sexual and domestic violence is the biggest that this country’s ever seen. We know that’s where our investment should be going as both lawmakers and people who can put actual resource into the front-line services that have been there for decades keeping our kids safe, keeping families safe. When you defund those and then you bring bills like this to the House, it is callous. So the Green Party won’t be supporting this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and take a call to the Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill—a bill that I cannot recommend to the House. But I do want to start by acknowledging the space that this bill has come from, which is really a concern for community safety, a concern in terms of sex offending, a concern in terms of child sex victims in particular, and I think across the House we all share those concerns. But as lawmakers, as parliamentarians, when we are making law in the House, we have an obligation to turn our mind also to what is reasonable and evidence-based, what is fair, and have a consideration for the relevant community safety issues at a broader level.

I think, as the member who introduced this bill, Matt Doocey, made clear, this isn’t a question about whether schools should be notified or not, actually, Corrections already do have a process of notification. We already have, also, a sex offenders register in place. The question is really around the blanket notification and whether that is reasonable, whether that is evidence-based, and whether that takes into account all the community safety issues that are at play.

So I wanted to just, at this stage, make clear what happens in the current process. So notifications are supported by a district planning panel, comprised of a senior district manager, psychologists, police, and probation staff, and the discussions that that qualified group of people have centres on a person’s pathway into the system, their supports, but also whether the notification for that particular person being placed in a particular community causes issues, and whether notifying would mitigate the risks that are present. So it is a model that actually looks at the evidence and at the circumstances. And, I mean, I think that that’s really the real difference. We have a system in place that has that robust analysis.

But turning to the proposals in this bill, I think there are a number of issues it presents. The first is around that evidence-based decision space. What the member has, with good intent, I’m sure, done through this bill is propose a blanket solution that doesn’t look at the evidence and that doesn’t consider the individual circumstances of each offender. My colleague has spoken about the fact that there is a scale of people who we’re talking about here. It’s not one type of offence, it’s not even just previous offenders in the sexual violence space, and that is problematic in terms of taking an evidence-based approach.

The other thing that I’ve been reading about in terms of what some academics say in this space is there is evidence that blanket notifications don’t work because many, if not most, child sex offences occur where the young person is known to the offender, as opposed to them being a stranger.

The second issue is really around that community safety piece, but looking at the broader issues around community safety. There’s an article that I read recently by Lasher and McGrath, where they reference a stat that says 24 percent of mental health professionals said in their view that community notification reduced community safety—not even left it neutral but reduced it. And we can speculate at the reasons why. To my mind, I suspect it’s around a resulting community anxiety that, again, some colleagues have spoken about that might result in incidents of assault, not just against an offender, but individuals believed to be the offender. And the same article also spoke about the impact on family members when their address is notified. Let’s remember sometimes there are young people living in those family homes as well.

Finally, I’d just like to say that this bill isn’t using a fair and reasonable lens, and we’ve seen the Attorney-General’s view on this. He says that it’s overly broad, that it’s insufficiently flexible, and that it’s lacking safeguards. And we’ll remember that when we had the discussion about the register in 2016, we considered mandatory public reporting and disagreed. So I’m sorry that I cannot recommend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call tonight on this bill. I’ve heard many arguments in this House tonight and some of them have surprised me, considering the great paths that have been happening since I’ve come into Parliament. We’ve had talks on child sex offender registration. We’ve had talks about sexual violence bills, and we’re talking about making our children safer in many, many ways. We’re talking about making our community safer in many ways.

This is the first reading of this bill, and, yes, there may be some issues with it, and, yes, there may be some concerns with it, but shouldn’t we be taking it to select committee to work through those concerns and hear from different people their opinions on how they feel they could fix this bill? Even when we don’t agree with each other, sometimes listening and hearing what people in the public have to say is important for them too, so they can have a voice and they can voice what they feel is concerning them.

Sometimes it’s not up to us to make these blanket decisions on behalf of the people of this country. It’s up to us to listen to the people of this country and come to a decision together, rather than just saying, “We don’t like this. We’re not going to do it.” If we’d gone further and this bill had come back to the House for the second reading, maybe, just maybe, I would say, “Yeah, no more.” But this still has the opportunity to be worked on. It still has the opportunity to become a good bill that can protect our children. I just wish that we would spend more time listening to the public and listening to the public’s opinions rather than just making blanket decisions in this House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a brief call on this bill. I’ll just gather my notes. I do want to acknowledge the member Matt Doocey for advocating for an issue, which, I think, we, as we have heard in the debate tonight, are all concerned about. We just have different views on the approach in which we could take to address these issues in our communities. We want to ensure that our children, our families, and all of our communities are safe.

And I want to start by saying that the bill, what it is actually proposing to do—it is proposed that the bill will amend the Corrections Act to require that when a sex offender is placed or released into the community under the supervision of a probation officer, that probation officer must notify, as such, every principal of every school located within 5 kilometres of the offender’s residence. A key point that I want to make is if there are no schools within 5 kilometres of the offender’s residence, then the probation officer must instead notify the nearest school, however far away that is. And if you think about an electorate like mine in Northland, it is many, many kilometres between our small communities and schools. And so I think practically when this is applied, or what is proposed is applied, I think that’s unfair. I think it’s also unfeasible.

The key point that I want to make is that we have a section 7 report on this bill. The report identifies that the bill is deemed to have disproportionately severe treatment of sex offenders to what we are trying to achieve with them, and that’s their successful rehabilitation or reintegration, which is one of the most important roles of our justice system, without any regard for the actual risk. And so the report says that the bill breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act because it infringes on the right to not be subjected to disproportionately severe treatment, as affirmed in section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I do want to note that the sufficiency of the current system was supported by the previous National Government, from whom we inherited these processes, and who, we can only assume, deemed it appropriate at the time.

In addition, I want to say that we do have a system in place. We have heard about its imperfections tonight. We have heard about one case where this has not happened. But do we need to go to the other extreme and make it mandatory for all sex offenders, regardless of whether they offended against children or not, being notified to school principals within a 5 kilometre radius, or, if there isn’t one within 5 kilometres, the next school, the closest school to them.

So we do have a system. We have heard that there has been a flaw in that system. But the current system does allow for community notifications to schools, in relation to child sex offenders, to happen on a case by case basis. And the existing systems are sufficient to address the need for school notifications as and when it arises.

Furthermore, the next point I want to make is that the bill would implement a system considerably worse than the current system used by Corrections. And we’ve heard what some of those things are. We have heard that it will now apply, or it is proposed that it would apply, to all sex offenders, not just those who have offended against children. And the processes set out in this bill are totally inflexible, and that inflexibility, that severe treatment of sex offenders, I want to reiterate, has been highlighted in the section 7 report as breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act again, an Act that we all in this House, I’m sure, have huge respect for. And so, I will not be commending this bill to the House; I will not be supporting this bill.

Can I start by acknowledging everyone whose lives are affected by the topic which we have been debating here tonight. There are many, many triggers here tonight that may have been mentioned that may have brought back memories or fears, and I’m sorry. I just wanted to say to everyone who’s listening here tonight that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this has happened to you. I’m sorry that through no fault of your own you have to live with the consequences. But can I ask one thing of these people tonight: understand that we are trying to find the best solution and, ultimately, achieve a safer community for our country and for everyone here.

I believe every member comes to this place with the best of intentions, and we’ve heard that in the last few days with the last batch of maiden statements in the class of 2020. We know that here everyone gives their best effort to try and find what is the best solution for our country. But tonight I can’t commend this bill, the Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill to the House, and I just wanted to lay out the reasons why I don’t believe this bill is the best solution for everyone.

There is a difference between a bill that goes the extra mile and a bill that has gone too far, and I believe this belongs to the latter. I have long held the view that every offender was once a victim, and I formed that view when I was working in the District Court and the High Court in Auckland as a court-appointed interpreter, specialising especially in criminal trial cases. As I worked on a lot of these cases, I was able to witness firsthand the importance of rehabilitation for these offenders and how important it is for them to reintegrate back into the community, for them to have the support of their whānau, so that they are able to readjust into a normal life. Look, the reason why I believe that this is so important is because I have seen over and over again their repentance and their struggle with behaviours that they themselves are absolutely horrified by.

I think tonight we have to look at how proportional the means of this bill is to the end that we want to achieve and whether this type of punishment is effective to the goal we’re trying to achieve. I have labelled this as punishment because, as we’ve heard from my colleagues, there are a lot of reactions from the community that over-punish an offender, someone who is trying very hard to get back on to their own feet. Right now, this protection that we have in terms of our corrections system is in place, and that is a balanced approach.

We want to help sex offenders get back into a normal life as soon as possible, because that is, we believe, the best solution for the whole entire community. Also, on this bill, I just wanted in particular to raise that we have received an opinion that this bill does breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, in the right not to be subjected disproportionately to severe treatment, as affirmed in section 9 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I just recall that Mr Doocey also said today that the schools must manage the offender, and in his anecdotes he has named people who support this bill, being educators who support this bill. I just wanted to speak to that, because I think they are educators—principals of schools and teachers of schools—and they should be tasked with teaching our children instead of dealing with offenders. Our corrections officers in our corrections system in our country are facilitated, resourced, and professionally trained to deal with offenders, and we should leave that job to them for them to protect our community. We should be resourcing them more. We should be able to resource them so that they can do their work, and we should be able to trust them to protect our community, as they have already adequately done.

Finally, I just want to finish with a point that I believe a world view of not just black and white should be what we should be showing to our children but that people are multi-faceted and belong to a spectrum, and we should always look at every problem with a pragmatic view of what ultimately achieves the purpose that we want to—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for an opportunity to take a short call on the Corrections (School Notification of Sex Offenders) Amendment Bill. I’ve sat here and I’ve listened to the contributions from members in this debate, and I am astounded by what I’m hearing. I just want to start by acknowledging my colleague Matt Doocey for bringing such an important piece of legislation to this House to put in place a requirement for Corrections to notify schools when a sex offender is placed within 5 kilometres of that school. He’s put the argument very clearly. He’s shown the evidence that this is not happening.

It’s happened seven times. We heard just from the member across there that there’s a balanced approach being taken by Corrections. Well, a balanced approach wouldn’t just happen seven times when there are hundreds of sex offenders being released from prison into our community, and I am astounded by some of the comments that have been said by the Green Party tonight where not only have they said that they think this won’t work but they’ve said that this piece of legislation is callous. A callous piece of legislation—a piece of legislation which tries to support schools, families, communities, and, most importantly, protect our children from sex offenders who are placed back into our communities; a piece of legislation which tries to give principals the information they need so they can provide the support that is required for their community.

Matt Doocey provided the very unfortunate situation which happened here in Wellington, where a primary school principal was not notified when a sex offender was placed within this community with 62 children living nearby. That person then had to be moved to an undisclosed industrial area. These are the types of mistakes which get made when you don’t have a balanced system. When you don’t have a balanced system, people don’t get notified and young children get put at risk, and, as a parent of two young children—of two young girls—I’m not going to stand by tonight and say no to a piece of legislation which is going to make the community safer for my daughters.

I find it absolutely abhorrent that the Green Party has the audacity to come in here, week after week, and vote against legislation which protects our children from sex offenders. I know that people have a right to defence lawyers, but I’m going to stand on the rights of children and families and communities, and that’s far more important. That’s something that I’m so proud to be standing up on this side of the House for.

This is an important piece of legislation. It’s not callous; it’s about making our communities safer, and it’s about making sure that we hold our corrections system, our corrections department, accountable so that they are actually doing the job that they should be doing, which is keeping New Zealanders safe as their number one priority.

I’m not going to listen to the people on the other side of the House who make apologies for offenders, who say that every offender has been a victim. I find that absolutely offensive. When there are victims out there in our society, they are the ones who should be at the heart of our justice system and they are the ones who we should be putting first, and then we should be making sure that we don’t have new offenders being created because of the decisions which get made, because we’re not notifying schools and we’re not doing the job that the Government should be doing.

So I commend this bill to the House. I reject the Green Party calling this a callous piece of legislation. I’m sick and tired of them standing up on their side of the House, standing on the side of the people who are offending in our community and not on the side of victims. I’m sick and tired of that sort of behaviour. That is the truly callous behaviour which I think needs to be denounced by this House.

I hope Parliament votes for this bill and sends it to the select committee so we can hear from parents, we can hear from schools, and we can understand what the situation is out there, because I would say we’re only scratching the top of the surface with the number of cases and situations, awful situations, which are happening out there. We need to be able to have the opportunity to ask the questions of the officials so we can get the answers and hold them to account, so I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for allowing me to take a short call and the opportunity to speak to this bill. As a mother and as an educator, I cannot recommend this bill to the House. Everybody in this House wants to keep children safe. That is a given, and to imply otherwise, in rejecting this bill, isn’t helpful.

It is interesting to hear the member who is sponsoring this bill suggesting that the only difference this bill brings is compulsion. It is broader than that. It isn’t just the compulsory notification; it is about the compulsory notification of a much broader range of offences than is currently part of the system. As he has noted and many have noted, Corrections already has a notification system in place. It has a process for notifying schools when a child sex offender is placed in the community under supervision, on a case by case basis. What he’s suggesting with compulsion is that every time there is a sex offender under one of those 17 offences listed, a school will be notified. It doesn’t matter how far away from a community that person tries to remove themselves; there will always be a school somewhere that will be notified. This is very broad and very blunt and will not be helpful.

The current approach enables a framework that helps to balance that public safety with maximising the possibility of successful reintegration into the community as well as minimising the risk of reoffending. When we can provide the continued support to offenders to ensure their best chances of reintegration and rehabilitation, we are actually more likely to better protect our children, and that is the goal, is it not?

Compulsion has consequences. Blunt processes have consequences. There is evidence, and we’ve heard from many of you in the House who know much more about laws and the academic rigor behind this than I do, but I’ve done a bit reading, and there is clear evidence. Rather than the gut, the evidence says that while notification doesn’t appear to reduce recidivism with regards to sex offenders, it does actually lead to an increase in other offending. When there is a failure of communities to support the successful reintegration of offenders, they are more likely to not be able to form healthy connections, to have a roof over their heads, to get a job, and to actually build or rebuild relationships with their families, with their whānau. It is more likely that their families, that children, will also struggle with social and economic engagement.

This bill, with its compulsion, with its blunt and broad approach, and with its inflexibility and, quite frankly, reckless plan, will not help to better protect our children. And I’ve got a question for you. I know we’ve talked about principals. As someone who has been an educator and a board of trustees member, I am curious about what you expect principals to do with this burden. The general policy statement and the explanatory note say that “local schools will be able to make informed decisions about the risk of the sex offenders placement” in their communities. They’re going to be told, because they will get this notification when they are within 5 kilometres—or, as I said before, the nearest school—of every sex offender that is convicted of an offence listed in section 107B(2) of the Parole Act 2002, and it’s a big list. There’s 17 offences, and not all of them are clearly suggesting that children will be the target of reoffending.

So these decisions, these informed decisions our principals are going to be burdened with making—what are they going to be? Will it help them avoid unknowingly employing or accepting the volunteer that rocks up on their doorstep? Well, we’ve got a police vetting service that does that already, and what else are they going to do: warn the board, put posters up around the community, label the offender? That does not help. There’s clear evidence, again, about the negative impact and the increased likelihood of some sort of reoffence. We cannot put this burden on to our schools and their communities. You are suggesting that it is more likely—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Don’t bring me in. “The member is” or “The House is”.

Sorry, I apologise. Thank you for your guidance. The member is suggesting that principals are better qualified to help these offenders and protect our children and—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. Firstly, can I congratulate Matt Doocey for focusing on our children. I know he, as a father, is incredibly passionate about ensuring that our children are safe. But I really want to start my contribution with a quote from Waikato University Professor Devon Polaschek, who was asked to comment on this particular piece of legislation—and I quote—“We need to do more than just vilify sex offenders to make our children safe.” The reason I chose to start with that quote is because the theory of the proposition that principals should be notified so they can better protect our children in theory is a good one, but the reality of child sex offenders is actually quite horrific, and I’m going to now read some of the research about who our child sex offenders are.

In New Zealand, about 90 percent of child sexual abuse is committed by someone known to the child or their family. Australian researchers are a lot more specific, and I particularly want to focus on misconceptions about child sex offenders by Kelly Richards. It’s a piece of Australian research. Ninety-four percent of child sex abusers are known to the child or the family. So who are they? Male relative, not father or stepfather, 30.2 percent; family friend, 16.3 percent; an acquaintance or neighbour, 15.6 percent; another known person, 15.3 percent; the father or stepfather, 13.5 percent. The total is actually over 100 percent because in 3.7 percent of these cases the young person is abused by more than one perpetrator, and I want to note from the Australian literature that less than 1 percent of the perpetrators of child sex abuse are woman.

So the reality of the situation is that strangers don’t commit child sex abuse against our children. You know, the people that are closest to them do. I guess the only relevance was the acquaintance or neighbour at 15.6 percent. But what it really speaks to is the vigilance of every single parent in our community to make sure they know who has access to their children, and the proposition that my colleague Matt Doocey—and I want to acknowledge Matt’s passion and why he’s doing this. But I think the current mechanism, to be quite honest, on a case by case basis will allow the Department of Corrections to do their job, which is to ensure that our child sex abusers do have support through the Kia Mārama programme based at Rolleston Prison, and also Te Piriti, which is at Auckland prison.

Our recidivism rates are 7 percent, so we know some of our child sex offenders are going to be recidivist sex offenders, but I think the hysteria around this type of legislative solution actually isn’t helpful. But what it should do is inspire all parents to know who within that child’s sphere are the adults within that child’s sphere and to be incredibly vigilant about who our children are being accessed by, because, unfortunately, when you look at the literature, abuse is actually a matter of opportunity.

So if we know where our children are every single minute of the day, we know who’s with them, and we obviously trust the people that are looking after our children, then, actually, not only can we be much more vigilant about preventing child sexual abuse but we actually have to realise that for some of the people who are in our prison system, they have the opportunity of rehabilitation to understand that what they’re doing is wrong, because—believe it or not—some people don’t understand that taking advantage of a child is wrong. And therein is another issue—I mean, it’s two to one, basically, in terms of our child sex offenders compared to adult sex offenders because there aren’t any consent issues. I guess with adults, it’s a lot more complicated in terms of those victims going to the police and proving that they said no. So that’s my contribution and rationale, unfortunately, for not supporting this bill. Kia ora.

Matt Doocey—five minutes in reply.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I just say to Louisa Wall, who I have the utmost respect for, thank you for your contribution, but I respectfully disagree, because what we have heard tonight very clearly, if you want to talk out there to those principals who support this bill, is the Labour Party knows best. Principals supported this bill, but Labour knows best. What we heard tonight—to those parents who expect that, when they send their kids to school, if a child sex offender or a sex offender has been placed near that school, that school is notified; parents expect that—is the Labour Party knows best. What I say to those communities who support the bill because they want their schools informed—tonight, we very much heard it loud and clear—the Labour Party knows best.

What is the point of New Zealand’s Parliament when it’s called the House of Representatives? What do we do in here? We represent the people. We represent their views. What we had tonight was an academic argument. Well, I stand up here tonight, I stand beside the principals who are concerned, I stand beside the parents who are concerned, and I stand beside the communities that are concerned, because I’m prepared to get up and represent their views, because parents expect, when they send their kids to a school, that those schools are notified when a sex offender is placed in the community. What is very clear from the research into this issue is that we’ve got a Minister with his head in the sand—Kelvin Davis, the Minister of Corrections, who says there is no concern. He is satisfied the system is safe, yet there are glaring gaps in the system. There is no oversight in the system if corrections, who should be informing a school currently, do not inform that school. There is no auditing of the files to make sure that corrections, who should be notifying schools, notify that school.

How can you have a system where there is no oversight, no auditing of the system, and we find out through written parliamentary questions, Official Information Act requests, over a time period that there were hundreds released into the community under parole whose lead offence was a sex offence, yet the Ministry of Education could only recount seven instances where they were involved in notifying the schools? There is a big gap here and a risk, and I’m warning corrections: don’t come back into my electorate and tell me you’re putting sex offenders in my electorate and you’re notifying schools, you’re notifying local residents, and then you don’t do it. Don’t come to any MP’s electorate and tell them that you are doing the due notifications, and then you don’t do it, because you are putting our children at risk.

Finally, I do want to acknowledge the ACT contributor, Karen Chhour, who I think very articulately said that this is a members’ day; this is a members’ night. I’m not a Minister. I don’t have a fleet of officials to call at the drop of a hat and write a bill. If there’s any issue in it, you send it to select committee, you let stakeholders and you let the public have a say, and you kick the bill round.

Look, if it doesn’t work after the select committee stage, that’s the whole point of the legislative process. It comes back to the House—vote it down in the second reading. But don’t expect every member’s bill to be 100 percent, and the arrogance I heard tonight from Labour Party members of Parliament, who had the nerve to critique whether the subject of someone else’s member’s bill was valid or not. Everyone in here has the right to turn up to Parliament, put whatever subject they want in a members’ bill, and put it in the ballot. It’s not for you to decide whether that’s right or wrong. Thank you, Mr Speaker.