Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

Nothing raises the fears and anxiety of New Zealanders more than the knowledge that there are those in our society who, for any number of reasons, choose to sexually abuse children. These people, almost inevitably men, range from those with low intellect and poor or non-existent social skills and understanding of boundaries, to those who can be described as genuine predators who select their victims and work to place themselves in positions of trust and authority in order to sexually abuse those victims—often family members or those living in their household.

As a police detective, I dealt with many such offenders—and if I’m honest, rather than regarding them as sophisticated, manipulative individuals, I found the vast majority to be sad, socially isolated men, poorly equipped to deal with their sexual urges. Also, many had been victims of sexual abuse themselves and were perpetually perpetrating the cycle of abuse. I do have to say, though, that in researching for this bill, I wasn’t able to find evidence for the oft-repeated claim that all child sex offenders were victims themselves.

Sadly, the impact on the victims is the same, with the lives of these children permanently damaged physically and emotionally, especially as often the offending is only exposed some time after the offence is committed, with the damage on those victims permanently marring their lives for ever.

For this reason, society, through the criminal justice system, treats such offending extremely seriously. Those convicted of such crimes are subject to criminal sanctions which reflect both society’s abhorrence of such offending and the need to protect potential victims from such offenders.

There exists legislation such as extended supervision orders in the Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Act to deal with the most serious offenders. But those provisions are limited to those most serious offenders who present an immediate risk. Corrections manage offenders while they’re sentenced to them, and the worst offenders usually remain with corrections.

However, Department of Corrections research usually shows that a characteristic in sexual offending is the compulsive behaviour which persists over the offender’s lifetime. So it is necessary to ensure that offenders who come off sentence are monitored.

It is, therefore, that desire to prevent further offending and to protect children from such offending that led to the passing of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act in 2016. The purpose of the Act was to establish a child sex offender register that will reduce sexual reoffending against child victims, and the risk posed by serious child sex offenders, by providing Government agencies with the information needed to monitor child sex offenders in the community—including after the completion of their sentence—and to provide up-to-date information that assists the police to more rapidly resolve cases of child sex offending.

A registerable offender is a person who has been convicted for a qualifying offence and has been sentenced to imprisonment or has been sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, and has been made subject to a registration order. A person is not a registerable offender if, at the time they committed the offence, they were under 18.

A qualifying offence is a class 1, class 2, class 3 offences as defined in the Crimes Act, and cover the full range of sexual offending as defined in the Crimes Act, where the victim is under 16 years of age.

Of note is that a corresponding registerable offender is a person who, as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence, has been sentenced to imprisonment or, essentially, would still be eligible for an equivalent child sex offender register in that jurisdiction.

The register imposes on offenders reporting obligations of a number of relevant pieces of personal information, particularly around his or her address or addresses, and importantly, the name, sex, and date of birth of each child who generally resides at the same household of which that offender resides. These provisions are laid out in section 16 of the Act.

An important part of the bill—and the basis of this amendment I am introducing today—is the section 21 provision of the Act, that the recent offender must have been intending to be away from their registered residential address within New Zealand and 48 hours before they travel, provide to police the details of each address in which the offender intends to stay; the dates on which the offender intends at each of those addresses; whether any child will or is likely to reside together with the offender at any of those addresses; and the date the registered offender intends to return to their registered residential address.

Under section 21(4), the registered offender can leave New Zealand, provided they provide the dates of their travel and the date their intent to return. However, unlike such travel within New Zealand, the registered offender is currently not obliged to supply police with their intended addresses in the country they will visit, and whether or not there will be children at the address.

The bill I’m introducing today is a relatively simple one, which requires that registered offenders must advise police of the names of all countries they will stay in for more than 48 hours; the addresses they intend to stay in in that country; the date they intend to travel to that country; and the date that intend to leave that country. It also requires them, if they do not intend to return to New Zealand, to provide details of the country they intend to reside in.

The bill also requires the registered offender to provide details of all their passports held, including the place of issue and the date of expiry of each valid passport, to prevent onward travel.

This is a very simple addition to the requirements of the registered Child Sex Offender Register, but it does provide protection for potential victims of child sex offenders who travel overseas in the places they will travel. This is a timely bill as international travel resumes, and it can be expected that sex tourism in Asia, in particular, will once again become common.

As I outlined at the beginning of my speech, the essence of child sex offending is the absolute breach of trust that those who offend against children break. The obvious, and most serious, breach of trust is against the child victim, where the inherent trust children have in adults is an enabler for their offending.

Having given context to the issue of child sex offenders, I now come to the rationale for this member’s bill and the gap in the law it seeks to remedy. Many child sex offenders have absolutely no desire to return to prison—such experience being a particularly harrowing experience as fellow prisoners regularly mete out their own justice to such offenders.

Speaking with those involved in administering the register, the overwhelming response is that many of those offenders welcome the protection provided by the disclosures they’re required to make, as it removes temptation by extending the reach of the register—as the bill intends.

These offenders, who are required to provide the same details to the police as they do in New Zealand, will have their opportunities for reoffending reduced. Most importantly, New Zealand will be providing the same level of protection to potential child victims outside New Zealand as the current Act provides to New Zealand children.

I must note, the Attorney-General has concluded that the bill appears inconsistent with section 25 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act; the basis of this is its being intended as an additional punishment. I believe that is not the case. As I have explained, the substantive Act and this amendment do, in my opinion, serve as a layer of security for the child sex offenders by providing them the protection from being in a situation where they will reoffend.

I’ll also be suggesting to the committee—and by the Police and Corrections—to advise on this bill to ensure it comes back from the committee in the best possible shape to provide the protection for potential child sex victims internationally.

The bill should also provide a safety net for offenders by ensuring they are reminded, when heading overseas, the likelihood of them returning to prison increases if they offend here in New Zealand or overseas.

In summary, I’m very pleased to be able to introduce the bill, which I hope will receive the support of all parties in the House as a strengthening of the primary piece of legislation, which is now well embedded not only in New Zealand statutes but also in the minds of child sex offenders, whose actions have devastated many lives, especially those of their victims, and who may be contemplating continuing such offending while overseas.

I note that my parliamentary colleague Erica Stanford has had her bill drawn, which is very complementary to my bill, dealing with notifications to other relevant agencies, including Customs, and Ms Stanford has graciously agreed to fold her bill into a Supplementary Order Paper, which the Justice Committee will work through.

Protecting children everywhere from sexual abuse is the goal of every legislator, and such co-operation is to be commended. I commend this bill to the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill, first reading.

Can I acknowledge the member Greg O’Connor as a past member of our New Zealand Police and, as he said, a detective. Certainly, in that role, he would have had a front row seat, unfortunately, to the type of abuse and offending that went on. I remember from my time in the police that often detectives that worked in this area could only work there for a very limited period of time, normally only up to about two years, because of the stress that you take on having to deal with these types of cases.

I do agree with him, in some sense, that a lot of child sex offenders have been victims of sex abuse themselves. Some of them can be socially isolated and awkward. I agree with that. But I think more and more we see sophisticated, highly organised child sex offenders and it’s become an industry around the world. I think that we have to have legislation in place that actually can deal with that.

I noticed that in the Attorney-General’s report on the bill, he has highlighted the fact that there could be some breaches in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I think that they can be sorted out on the select committee. I think that a bill like this—we all have to remember, as lawmakers, that actually our children are our most vulnerable. If we can’t, as lawmakers, step up and make sure that we can get legislation through that puts the best possible protection around them, then we’re not standing up and actually doing the job that people expect us to be able to do.

So it is a very good bill. I won’t go into it—it was a no-brainer. It was supported by our caucus. When I took it to caucus, immediately everyone could see the sense in it. It’s extending, really, what is domestic reporting, that happens now anyway, for international reporting and people that are travelling overseas. Although it’s a very short bill and it is a very small bill, going through it, I can actually see where there’s some places I think that, if we work as a committee with Mr O’Connor, we can actually strengthen it and maybe even make it a stronger bill.

I thank Mr O’Connor for acknowledging Erica Stanford, who approached me before going to Mr O’Connor about working together on this. I acknowledge him and thank Greg O’Connor for deciding that that was a good approach, a bipartisan approach between the parties, and both he and Erica Stanford have come to agreement whereby her bill has been tabled as a Supplementary Order Paper. It allows the committee now to work on that and bring the two together.

So I just want to wrap up and finish by saying that it is a very good bill. It is good that when these members’ bills come to the House, actually, parties genuinely sit down and look at them and see what the intent is and what we can do as a Parliament, as lawmakers, and we engage in that process in a positive way and in a bipartisan way to be able to make sure that we pass good law. So I recommend this bill to the House and I look forward to receiving it on the select committee. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call and to speak in support of this bill through to select committee for consideration. It’s a select committee that I sit on, so I do look forward to considering all the issues that present in relation to this bill. I’d like to commend my colleague Greg O’Connor for championing an issue that is about protecting the rights of children, and I also want to recognise the work of other organisations like ECPAT Child Alert, who tirelessly work to end sex offending against children, including beyond New Zealand’s borders.

Earlier this year, I read an article published by World Nomads that began, “Early evening in Bangkok’s notorious Patpong Road district and tourists move through the heaving humidity, the chaos of clubs and holiday dreams. … there are two types of traveler, curious, unsuspecting visitors and more conspicuously, those [who] prowl, eager to select a girl by the number pinned on her brief costume. Just like circling the numbers on a lotto ticket but with less concern about the consequences.” It’s a story that’s being played out every night, not just in Thailand, not just in other countries, not just in developing nations. It’s an issue as complex as it is disturbing.

There is no place for sexual exploitation, especially of children, not here in Aotearoa and not anywhere overseas. Yet according to UNICEF, there are millions of children globally who are affected by sexual exploitation every year. We know that tourism isn’t the cause of child exploitation, but it can aggravate the problem. What can be additionally horrifying is the othering that sometimes happens as a justification of travelling to commit these offences. Again, don’t get me wrong, developing countries aren’t the only places where child sexual exploitation occurs, but they have become a magnet for child sex tourism. In addition to feeling that their offences may not be traceable, some might feel that part of the justification appears to be tied to the concept of othering of these children—sometimes on the basis of their race—allowing them to justify that their moral obligations might excuse those children from any crimes that they’re committing.

The truth is that in international spaces, more and more we see some of these patterns of source country travellers and those countries who might receive them, and so something must be done about that. Whereas some countries don’t accept the international accountabilities here, New Zealand does, and it’s something that we should be proud of. As part of the global community and as a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, New Zealand takes the protection of children very seriously, and it’s one of several countries that have passed legislation enabling a New Zealander who is engaging in this kind of criminal activity overseas to be prosecuted in New Zealand. As a result of those laws, it’s an offence for New Zealand citizens and residents to engage in things like sexual conduct or activities with a child in another country, to pay for sexual services of someone who’s under the age of 18 in another country, or to help people travel overseas to have sex with children in another country.

This bill does seem small, but it is attached to our desire to accept that obligation to children globally and to consider what we can do about it. Again, as a member of the Justice Committee, I do think it’s important that the committee considers the bill in its entirety, including the detail of all rights at issue here. I would say that there are examples in other countries who have put very stringent rules in this place, and Australia is one example of this where they put in significant rules in 2017, but I am very much looking forward to assessing the bill. I do believe that children everywhere deserve to be free from violence and free from abuse, and, accordingly, I commend this bill through to select committee where I look forward with my colleagues to discussing it in robust detail.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think it’s clear tonight, as it always should be, that all of us across this House, no matter the political party affiliation, care deeply about the wellbeing and welfare of our children. We all agree unanimously that children in New Zealand and across the globe deserve to live free from abuse and free from violence. We know as well that in Aotearoa New Zealand, there is an absolute epidemic level of violence against children and young people, family violence, and sexual exploitation and sexual violence. We know this well in the Green caucus, with the first ever Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, the Hon Marama Davidson—and a quick hat tip to her for the work that she’s done in presenting and getting through the first ever national action plan on addressing this exact kind of violence.

So with that, and with the sad truth that this is a problem that all of us are responsible for solving and that our nation’s heart is broken for the children that suffer across the globe but, in particular, here, where we do have this very serious problem, I would say—and this comes from about a decade of working in the criminal justice system as well as on children’s rights here and across the world. Sometimes there’s a saying that “Bad cases make bad law”, which means that when our sympathies and our prejudices are most engaged, when things are most egregious and heartbreaking, sometimes we don’t necessarily come up with solutions that are best placed to resolve these issues in a way that upholds the rule of law and upholds human rights or are the most effective or evidence-based.

Unfortunately, and with full respect to the member who has brought this bill to the House and to those who support it, I would have to say that this isn’t the most effective way forward for us. For one thing, we know that child sex registers that introduce penalties after the penalty that’s come through sentencing processes in courts of law for the actual offending often, at best, do nothing to prevent further abuse in that society or community and, at worst, undermine rehabilitation and an effective reintegration of offenders into the community. So that’s the evidence that we’re moving forward from, and as much as we might think logically and from the outside that introducing more and more and more penalties through registers like this after someone has served their sentence is going to keep children safe, the sad truth is that that isn’t the case. We have the data on that, and we know it.

So, as lawmakers, we have a responsibility to react to that, and for that reason the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. We don’t believe in re-penalising people and creating registers that we know won’t work for, I guess, in effect, the process of making politicians feel better about our work. We’ve seen that “tough on crime” rhetoric come up within the Opposition more zealously than before as we approach election year across this House, and we know that that undermines effective, evidence-based, compassion-based, rehabilitation-focused justice policy. That isn’t going to keep our communities safe, but it is going to make politicians look tough on crime and feel better.

It is unfortunate, but we know that at least the Government does have an action plan and that we are introducing solutions that will work. We are introducing solutions that partner with community-based response organisations and with evidence-based institutions that have been doing the work of keeping children and young people safe on the ground, and keeping our responses to family and sexual violence at a point where we do focus on prevention and, in particular, on rehabilitation, because it’s recidivism that this bill is aimed at addressing and that child sex registers don’t address.

I do want to note that there’s actually a bill that’s been drawn in the name of Erica Stanford, which is far more likely to align with our kaupapa as Greens because it’s not aimed at re-penalising—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. If any contrast could indicate the variation we have in members’ bills, the contrast between the last bill and now this one does that. I want first to commend Mr Greg O’Connor, whose bill this is, and also Ms Stanford, across the House, for her bill and for the fact that the two of them have decided to work together to bring together two related bills which will make each other stronger. It is my position that this bill needs to go to select committee and does deserve to go to select committee.

Sex offending is abhorrent, as we all know. It is also pervasive. The figures that over the last 40 years have been gathered consistently show offending rates against girls under 16 at about the rate of one in four, and about one in eight to one in nine boys under the same age. Most of those people—and I think this is a really, really important thing to bear in mind—most of the offenders we are talking about, are well-known to those children. Often, they are within their own families, and often, as Mr O’Connor said at the beginning, they are repetitive offenders.

I have spoken to one long-time treater of sex offenders who said that she began treating sex offenders in the 1980s, when she had her sixth child brought to her, offended against by the same man. It made no sense to continue to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. In her mind, she needed to become part of the solution and to look at how to stop sex offending. A sex offender register—and this is a bill and a Supplementary Order Paper that, effectively, extends the sex offender register we have—is one of our possible responses to sex offending. I look forward to discussing its efficacy and the efficacy of this extension in select committee.

The previous speaker from the Green Party, Golriz Ghahraman, is correct that there are differing opinions on the efficacy of sex offender registers, particularly the sort of behaviour that we see in the US, where they are aimed at naming and shaming. I do not see in my own research proof of the efficacy of a naming and shaming approach. But what people who treat sex offenders consistently say is that because this is compulsive behaviour, because it has very deep roots in the way the person sees their sexuality and the way they relate to others, it is necessary to continue to monitor that person and to keep them wrapped in layers of monitoring.

Now, a police monitoring may not always be the be all and end all, but it is certainly one of the ways that we can act as that person’s conscience, and to extend that to sex trafficking and to sex tourism, as my colleague Vanushi Walters so eloquently described the scourge that it is—that seems to me something that we really do need to consider. We will need to consider how then to activate and actualise the registration of a past offender’s intention to go overseas. That is where I think Ms Stanford’s bill, which talks about the mechanism by which that information can be conveyed to the intended destination, potentially patches and extends and encourages and makes better the original bill.

This is something we need to deal with. I think it is important that we acknowledge that disgust and emotional reaction is not the way we best design laws, but this is not that sort of law. This is not a gut reaction knee-jerk. This is one of a number of sensible, graduated measures that we can take to contain what is a scourge internationally, a crime against children that cannot be permitted. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of Mr O’Connor’s bill, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill. But before I start, I would like to make just a couple of comments on some speeches that have gone before me, including the one from the member from the Green Party Golriz Ghahraman, who actually made a comment about this bill re-penalising criminals. I’m a little bit confused by that because I actually don’t think it’s a re-penalising but rather an addition to the Act that’s already in place in regard to registration and extending it to an overseas jurisdiction. One of the other points that was made was that that member had said registers don’t appear to work. I’m a bit confused by that because there is support for a registry for firearms owners but not support for one for child sex offenders. I just have to wonder where the priorities are there. Also, some statements from across the House where the Labour members have talked about child sex offenders having compulsive behaviour and that they can’t control themselves—well, I can’t help but put in here that this is why we need to have three-strikes legislation in place to keep the worst of the worst in jail.

But let’s get back to this bill, shall we, in the name of Greg O’Connor. He and I have had quite a number of disagreements over the years, but I’m really glad to be able to support this bill in his name this evening. This bill will require registered sex offenders who intend to travel overseas to inform police of all the places that they intend to stay in for more than 48 hours while they are overseas. They also have to disclose their passport details and information within it, or them, like the passport number, where it was issued, and when it expires for any, and every, passport that they may hold, meaning that they could hold multiple passports, from multiple countries. There is a lot of information that is required: where they intend to stay, when they intend to travel overseas, and when they intend to return to New Zealand again. And, if they don’t intend to return to New Zealand, they need to provide details of which country they are intending to reside in. The important aspect here is that requirement is not for all criminals; it’s only for registered sex offenders who wish to travel overseas.

Sex tourism is an international problem. It is where overseas travel by sex offenders, who can do so, specifically for sex offending takes place. This bill will allow our agencies—the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Customs Service—to utilise their networks together, working with each other to support identification of cases where sex tourism is expected. For those at home concerned at this prospect, let us assure you that only those two agencies at this stage should have access to the information on the sex offenders register. It should not be publicly available. This bill is extending some of the current provisions in the Act to include an international lens on registered sex offender activities—what they will be directed to do if they wish to travel overseas. It’s no different to what they already have to do here in New Zealand, except details of all passports held by registered sex offenders are added to the list of requirements once they seek to travel overseas. If they intend to travel away from their home for more than 48 hours, they must inform the register at least 48 hours before they travel away. And when children are involved, we need to do what we can to protect them, whether they are our tamariki or tamariki from around the world. When they are vulnerable, changes like this will make a difference to their safety.

There are a couple of concerns about the bill, though, that I’m sure can be clarified easily through the select committee process, and that’s around the storage of addresses that registered sex offenders visit—that is, if they visit the house or the business of a friend, family member, colleague, or even a stranger, we expect that those addresses will need to be recorded and stored somewhere as being a place of interest. So we want to make sure that that information can be stored securely. We also wonder whether or not this bill, in this current format, has enough teeth in it. What is the information going to be used for overseas? So we will support this bill to select committee and look forward to working through it over the upcoming months. Thank you.

Also joining us remotely, I call Willow-Jean Prime.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you very much for this opportunity to take a call on the member’s bill this evening. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill, in the name of Greg O’Connor. I have listened to all of the contributions this evening, and want to thank all the members who have participated in the debates so far. What I think it has shown to me is that there is interest across the House in looking at all of the things that we can do to protect our tamariki, our taonga tuku iho, both here in New Zealand but also internationally.

I want to acknowledge the member whose name this bill is in, who has brought this issue forward from his experience, as we heard, as a detective and former police officer. And so with that experience, identifying that there is a gap in the current law, and proposing one tool that we can use to help address that gap.

I was concerned by the contribution from the Green Party member Golriz Ghahraman, in particular saying that registers don’t work. Yet, when we heard the contribution from Greg O’Connor, whose bill it is, he said, in talking with sex offenders, that the register removes temptations and opportunities. And so I look forward to receiving submissions as a member of the Justice Committee—hopefully a wide range of submissions. But also he said that we should invite the Police and Corrections to make submissions on this. And I look forward to that happening and to the contributions that they might make about it, particularly in light of some of the claims made in the debate this evening around the efficacy of registers. Regardless of that, though, I think that there is no harm in having in place additional tools that may help prevent further harm to children internationally, as we currently have that for children domestically.

I also want to commend the members Greg O’Connor and Erica Stanford for working together on their bills and identifying that they are potentially complementary to each other, and getting agreement that we will consider both of those together at the select committee. So I think that the invitation to Police and Corrections, as suggested by Greg O’Connor, perhaps we could add to that also Customs, which might provide us with information—talking to the member’s bill of Erica Stanford and as a potential Supplementary Order Paper.

So I just want to go back and say that I acknowledge Greg O’Connor for identifying a gap in the law, for identifying that there are further things that we could do here in Aotearoa New Zealand to protect children globally. And I want to thank Vanushi Walters for her contribution about our international commitments to protect children and to uphold the rights of children, and seeing this as yet another thing that we can do domestically as part of upholding that international obligation.

So what this bill simply provides is a clause 4 amendment to section 21 to align international reporting requirements with domestic travel; and where reporting requirements are not met without good reason, some penalties may apply. So I am honoured and privileged to be a member of the Justice Committee. Alongside of me are experts in child sex offending and Family Court issues like Dr Emily Henderson, experts in international human rights like Vanushi Walters. We look forward to scrutinising this bill and reporting back to the House with, hopefully, suggestions on how to make this the most appropriate piece of legislation.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. There were 14,047 photographs, images, videos, and pieces of objectionable material found in the possession of a 33-year-old man who was a travelling child sex offender in 2019; 14,000 moments in children’s lives in New Zealand and overseas where they were exploited, abused, where their trust was betrayed, where an adult did something to them that we cannot condone here in New Zealand or overseas—14,000 moments that were found by an investigation between Customs and the Police that wouldn’t have been uncovered if they hadn’t had the intelligence that they needed at that time.

Let me take the House through the factual specifics of that case, because this bill does not deal with a large range of cases, a large number of cases, but it does deal with some of the very worst offending that we must take action against. So in this case, in 2019, a 33-year-old Auckland man had been sentenced to 6½ years’ imprisonment for crimes relating to child exploitation images and videos, including the production of those images. The man was convicted on numerous charges and it’s relevant to note that here, because these sorts of protections that extend information on a child protection register to our international neighbours also go along with a number of other changes that people will be charged with in these situations that limit their freedoms in a much more significant way. So when we consider the extension of the child sex offender register to our overseas neighbours, we have to look at the other sorts of charges that someone in this situation will also be faced with.

In July 2018, Customs began an investigation after receiving information from an overseas agency that a New Zealander had uploaded or exported child sexual exploitation images to a Canadian based messenger app. Customs identified and searched the Auckland man’s home while he was present in August 2019. He was arrested after an interview where he admitted knowing the publications were illegal and investigators established that he had produced some of them.

In a situation like this, our current laws allow us to require information of a person who is charged with this kind of offending and limit their travel domestically. On this side of the House, and I acknowledge the member Greg O’Connor for bringing this bill, we would say that New Zealand has an obligation to make sure that children in New Zealand are protected from this kind of offending if it is someone in New Zealand, in the same way that children overseas are also protected from this kind of offending. Because in this case, it was important that we were able to cooperate with international neighbours to receive and act upon that information. It’s then on us as New Zealanders to make sure that our agencies have the tools that they need to be able to collect information from child sex offenders who intend to travel and be able to make that available to agencies in other jurisdictions to be able to use it in the same way that we did.

It is useful for us to cooperate on these types of crimes because they are cross border, because we know, and the evidence shows us, that people travel for this, that people exchange this sort of information over the internet, and that networks and linkages around the world exist to allow people to behave in this way. As New Zealanders we have an obligation to stop every single one of that type of offender, because when we stop one person, like the man who was charged in 2019, we stop those 14,000 moments that occurred to numerous children around the world. This isn’t the type of offending which has a small scope. It is global. It can affect children from many different countries and our own, and we have to do what we can to prohibit it.

Now, there’s been a lot of discussion in this House about the efficacy of child sex offender registers, and I look forward to the opportunity at the Justice Committee, which I’m a member of, to hear from submitters about whether these are working with a deterrence effect and whether they are actually working for people who are on them and changing their behaviour. My view is that they do change behaviour, and that makes it one of the useful tools that our agencies can use to implement this, but I look forward to exploring that more with my committee colleagues, and I commend this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill.

Firstly, I just need to acknowledge Greg O’Connor for having his bill drawn and just make a comment on how serendipitous it is that both his bill and then my bill got drawn at a relatively similar time, given that they are quite similar. I also just want to echo the comments of others to say that it is really nice in this House to be able to work across party, to be able to not waste the House’s time but actually put two very similar bills together to make what is a very good bill, that’s been brought by the member Greg O’Connor to the House, even better.

I won’t go into the Green Party’s comments on the bill tonight in detail other than to say that the title of this bill is the child protection bill. It is not a “further penalising the offender bill”; this is a bill about protecting children. Greg O’Connor’s changes to the Act in his bill are thoroughly sensible. As has been traversed in this House, it makes perfect sense to align the domestic settings with international settings.

In fact, when you look at section 21 of the original Act and look at subsection (2) and subsection (4), you can see that they don’t align. We brought this bill back in 2015 but, looking back now, it doesn’t make sense that those two don’t align. That’s why this bill is so good. It means that, for those people travelling overseas, those people on the Child Sex Offender Register will have exactly the same criteria that they have to abide by, as if they were travelling domestically—making sure that there is an address that they give, where they’re staying, the dates on which they are staying at each of those addresses, and whether any children are likely to be there at that address.

Now, the part of the bill that is missing, and why I said earlier it was serendipitous that my bill was drawn at a similar time, is that the person on that register is supposed to, and is required to, tell the police when they travel. But, obviously, that isn’t always the case, and it has been possible for people on that register to travel overseas without having disclosed to the police where they have been.

So the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I intend to seek leave for to move a motion without notice and without debate for the Justice Committee to consider at the same time—SOP 175 in my name—will make those changes to make sure that there is alignment with Customs and the Police so that there is more information sharing so that we can make sure that the offender on that register has indeed fulfilled their obligations and made it clear to the police when they are going, where they are going, and if any children are going to be present. That’s why it aligns so nicely with Mr O’Connor’s bill. So I will move that SOP at the required time.

I don’t need to say any more; this has been well traversed today. It’s an excellent bill. It tidies up a piece of law. It makes absolute sense. It was a no-brainer in our caucus, as Mr Mark Mitchell, previous to me, made comments on. I’m just so pleased that Greg O’Connor, who I always describe as my favourite Labour MP, was able to work with me on this bill, on such an important bill, to get the law tidied up so that we can continue to protect children—not just here in New Zealand but also overseas. So I’m very pleased to commend this bill to the House.

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō Mārie.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.