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

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. Well, this is a good bill by my learned colleague Greg O’Connor. This bill, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill, essentially extends the provisions already existing under the sex offender register that was passed under the previous Government.

It’s important to specify, I think, that we’ve picked up this debate since a period of time has passed, and to outline what the bill endeavours to achieve and how that will be laid out by amending legislation. A registrable offender, under current law, is a person who’s been convicted for a qualifying offence and has been sentenced to imprisonment or, in fact, has been sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, as sometimes is the case, and also anyone who has been made subject to a registration order. A person is not able to qualify if at the time they committed the offence, they were under 18. So to be clear, a qualifying offence is class 1, class 2, or class 3 offences as defined in the Crimes Act, and covers a full range of sexual offending as defined in that Act where the victim is under 16 years of age.

Of note is that there’s also corresponding legislation for offending that happens in a foreign jurisdiction. But what this bill essentially does is it provides for the activities that may be conducted that are illegal in New Zealand in another country and to have those brought under the same monitoring system that is currently provided for the movements of an offender in New Zealand. The register, as it now operates, imposes on offenders reporting obligations of a number of relevant pieces of personal information that are particularly around the offender’s address or addresses, importantly, where they’re residing, where they’re visiting, and, in particular, if there’s any children that reside at those places that they may be. And these provisions are quite clearly laid out in section 16 of the Act.

It’s really important to note that this is where Mr O’Connor’s bill makes an important change. The basis is that section 21 of the Act, that the recent offender must have been intending to be away from their registered residential address within New Zealand and 24 hours before travel, they need to provide to police all of those details—where they are going, the dates on which they will travel, which addresses, whether there will be a child likely or not likely to reside at those addresses, and also the date that the registered offender intends to return to their registered residential address that the police will be aware of and monitoring that. But under section 21(4) of that, the registered offender can leave New Zealand and provided that the dates of their travel and their date are provided to police and their intent to return, that’s where it stops.

So this bill provides a bit further. Unlike such travel in New Zealand currently under the law, the registered offender is not obliged to supply police any of those details of where they are intending to reside and whether there are likely to be children at those addresses. And so it’s very important, where we know that there is a sex tourist trade, particularly in countries close to New Zealand, like Thailand and Cambodia, South East Asia, where we know that people do travel for the explicit purpose for sexual offending on those who are under the legal age of consent, that this bill seeks to extend the provisions that already exist for the protection of New Zealand children to further overseas.

This bill requires that registered offenders must advise police of all of those countries that they intend to stay in, the date they intend to travel, and the country and the date they intend to leave that country. It provides further protections. And as chair of the Justice Committee, I look forward to this bill. I look forward to hearing submissions from a wide range of groups that no doubt will have a strong view in terms of how this bill should be progressed further.

I would like to thank Mr O’Connor for using his wealth of experience as a former police officer and undercover agent in this space to be able to provide a bill that provides further protection for children, not just in New Zealand but further afield as well. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—and just to compliment my colleague Ginny Andersen for the way she has summed up the bill down to its last detail. It will save me doing the job in this five minutes I have now. I’m extremely pleased with the level of support that I’ve received from across the House, with only one party opposing the bill. It’s not a huge bill, but the passion and support of each of the speakers, even those opposing, shows an appreciation of the need to be clever and strategic in our lawmaking in order to protect society, not just punitive. I’m very pleased that my colleague Nicole McKee, speaking on behalf of the ACT Party, said that they had no intention to push that the register be made public, which would actually be self-defeating. So I’m very pleased at that stance taken by that party; I know that hasn’t always been a consistent stance. That just takes it out of the punitive into the protective. It means the protective screening that is intended.

I’m convinced this amendment, as well as protecting potential victims of child abuse in overseas destinations where a person on the child sex offender register may contemplate visiting, will also help those offenders by ensuring they are less likely to be put in a position to offend. Most of these offenders are highly flawed individuals who often cannot trust themselves, let alone be trusted by society, when they are in the presence of potential victims. Corrections research shows that a characteristic of such offenders is compulsive behaviour over a lifetime. I’ve interviewed many of these offenders as a police detective, and even knowing the consequences of being in prison as a so-called child abuser doesn’t deter them from their offending, such is their determination and compulsion. They have relatively low recidivism rates, largely because they’re removed from situations where they are likely to offend by the fact that they are registered.

Most serious and dangerous offenders actually are on extended supervision orders and public protection orders monitored by Corrections. That is why having to provide police with the full details of their whereabouts, and especially where children may be present, is good law. It’s good law to protect New Zealand victims; it is also good law to protect those overseas as well. This type of offending destroys the lives not only of the victims but also the families of the victims and even the offenders’ families. It even takes an added toll on the lives of those in Police and other authorities who have to deal with the victims. So everyone—and I mean everyone—has an absolute interest in eliminating all risk of offending and reoffending.

As the bill now heads off to the Justice Committee, where I’m confident the combined efforts of all members of that committee will see it emerge at second reading as the best piece of legislation that can be—and I’m buoyed by the fact that my colleague Ginny Andersen is chair of that committee, because I know she has experience of this in her work in policy and Police. I recommend strongly to the committee that the Police be requested to advise on this bill, and also Corrections. My colleague across the House Erica Stanford has graciously agreed to use the provisions of a similar bill she has had drawn to place before the committee as a Supplementary Order Paper in lieu of her bill, in order to potentially strengthen the bill, and I commend her for this.

In summary, I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring this bill before the House to ensure this Parliament gives New Zealand Police and other authorities the powers they need to protect potential child sex abuse victims everywhere. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Justice Committee