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

I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to address this in three parts. Firstly, I’d just like to talk about sex offending and child sex offending, and my experience and what led me to bring this bill to the House. Secondly, I’d just like to talk about the bill itself, what the bill does, and the good work done by the Justice Committee to get it to this stage. And, thirdly, I’d just like to explain how I believe the bill can work to ensure that it does what it’s meant to do and make our victims much safer.

When we think of child sex offenders, often thoughts go to the stranger in the park or the chap in the blue campervan trying to pick up children near schools, but they are a relatively rare type of sex offender, particularly these days. The real sex offenders, the real danger, lies much closer to home. The vast majority of sex offenders know their victim, the victim knows them, and certainly, more ominously, the offender often knows the family and the caregivers of the family. That’s where we need to direct our protection, direct our laws, to prevent further offending.

In my years as a detective, I interviewed many of these people, and I found them not to be the well-organised criminals that they often are painted to be. They’re often quite pathetic individuals. Often they’ve been abused themselves. Often they’re quite inadequate and struggle to exist within mainstream society. And, for various reasons, they predate and victimise those most vulnerable in our society: our children, the very people we really need to protect from them.

Now, the law is pretty well established in this area. There are plenty of offences on the statute book to deal with them, and when they are located, they will go to prison, often for a very long time. Sadly, the way these things come to light, often because of the trust situation involved, it can be some time between the offending and the disclosure. My own experience was often, when an offender was located, they had been suspected before and may have been moved to another family, moved to another situation, and often the disclosure would come. It was often through the schools, often to a school friend, and the schools would bring the information to the authorities, either then social welfare or one of the agencies or police.

Sadly, in my early days, if it came to police, police would deal with it as a criminal justice issue. Often the other agencies would deal with it as a protection issue. And I have to say that it’s only in recent years that the way of dealing with victims and offenders has improved considerably, and I think people generally are much safer—our way of ascertaining, of identifying these individuals, the warning signs going off. I think we’re much more professional and better at that. However, we still need to ensure that we have the means and the protection to deal with it, and that’s where this legislation comes in.

In 2016, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act was passed. There’s been a couple of amendments since, but, essentially, the purpose of the Act was to establish a child sex offender register to reduce sexual reoffending against children and provide the Government agencies the information they need to protect our most vulnerable. A registrable offender is a person who has been convicted of 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 registrable offender if, at the time they committed the offence, they were under 18. The qualifying offences are class 1, class 2, and class 3 offences as defined in the Crimes Act and cover a full range of offending where the victim is under 16.

Of note and pertinent to this bill, a corresponding registrable 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 be still eligible for an equivalent child sex offender register in that jurisdiction. It’s important in relation to this bill, as it acknowledges the need for protections to exist beyond countries’ borders. The register imposes on offenders reporting obligations on a number of pieces of information, particularly around their addresses—importantly, the name, sex, and date of birth of each child who generally resides in the same household as that in which the offender resides, laid out in the Act.

An important part of the Act—and, again, touching on my amendment—is that the registered offender, if intending to be away from their registered residential address within New Zealand, and 48 hours before they travel, must provide to police the details of each address at which that offender intends to stay, the dates the offender intends to stay at those addresses, whether any child will be or is likely to reside together with the offender at any of those addresses, and the date the offender intends to return to their registered address. They can leave New Zealand, under the existing Act, provided they provide their dates of travel and the date they intend 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 or whether there will be children at the address. My bill as it’s reported back requires offenders to advise the police of the names of the 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 and leave that country, and, if they do not intend to return to New Zealand, provide the details of the country they intend to reside in.

I want to thank the very hard-working Justice Committee of both this and the last Parliament, led by James Meager and Vanushi Walters respectively. While it was a relatively small bill, it wasn’t an easy one. The Attorney-General was concerned about section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Those same concerns existed when the original bill and the subsequent amendments went through, and they were considered by the committee. I’m sure there’ll be committee members later on who will talk about that. To their credit, they have decided that the same reasons that were used in the main legislation and subsequent amendments still exist today. And, while there were concerns in that area, the risk to the potential victims outweighs the rights of the offender or the freedoms of the offender.

A second part of the concerns dealt with by the committee were police concerns about the ability to actually monitor the bill when these offenders are overseas without any reciprocal amendments or legislation. I can say that most of the Australian states have similar legislation. The Canadians have just passed some very similar legislation, and they too, without reciprocal arrangements, rely on, as the New Zealand Police can, Interpol. They can rely on the fact that most police forces have a good network of liaison officers working out of embassies in most countries and develop the sorts of relationships necessary to have the offenders checked.

But an important part also is that this actually, while giving protection to potential victims and victims, gives protection to offenders. Offenders don’t do good jail time, and most don’t want to go back. They’ve got a very low recidivism rate—again, as I talked about before—because they do the programmes and also they don’t want to go back. Often, by the time they’re found, also they are older in life and the risks of offending have reduced. So the offenders, by knowing the authorities know where they’re going to be, have been known to talk about how that was a protection that they themselves enjoyed having.

I could speak for much longer, and I’m sure others will, but this bill and my amendment is about ensuring that for those victims, potential victims—say, in New Zealand, in places like Napier or Oamaru—we’re offering them, often family members, those known to the offender, the same protection in places like Mooloolaba, in places like Perth, because that’s where the real risk lies. And so I commend this bill to the House, and I look forward to it going through to the committee of the whole House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Can I begin my contribution tonight just by acknowledging the member responsible for the bill, Greg O’Connor. We had quite a bit to do with Greg throughout the passage of the bill in the last four to five months, and it was a pleasure having him join us at the Justice Committee—the very busy and hard-working Justice Committee, I might say. It’s a real pleasure to see one of our many, many bills that we’re considering at the moment pass through the select committee stage and be presented here to the House to finally debate it—one off our list, and there are about 12 or 13 more to go. So we’ll be working our way through those over the next week while, but it was a real pleasure to have Mr O’Connor with us, not just for his latent cricketing ability but also for the fact that he comes to this bill with many, many years of what you might now call lived experience in this area.

The fact is that the member for Ōhāriu has been operating in this area in the past previously and knows what it’s like to deal with the individuals subjected to this legislation. He knows that the purpose of this bill ultimately is one thing, and the member discussed it very well. The purpose of it is that it’s all about protecting children. That is the single purpose of this bill and it was outlined relatively well by the member that while it is a small bill, it does make some significant changes, and there are some section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights implications that the committee grappled with, which I’ll touch on in my contribution. But I just wanted to acknowledge the way that Mr O’Connor engaged with the committee, provided his input into the bill, and provided his actual experience and recommendations as to why some of the concerns about officials may not be justified.

One of those that, I think, was raised well during the committee process was this question of enforceability, and this idea that we could pass these laws and we could require registered sex offenders to provide this information, but there was no way of enforcing it once they were offshore and we would have to have international enforcement agreements. If I recall correctly, it turned out during the committee process that the same issue of enforceability may well exist on our own shores in that registered sex offenders onshore in New Zealand are also required to provide similar information, but the ability of law enforcement here to follow that up and to check on that may well in itself be enforced. So we felt, as a committee, that any issues around enforceability could be addressed and could be solved through operational processes and that that should not get in the way of supporting a bill like that through the committee and into the House today.

Can I acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee and—with your indulgence, Mr Chair—try and take our processes through as to how we came to the conclusion of supporting the bill unanimously through to the House today. As this is one of our first contributions on the second reading, my understanding is that we are to discuss what happened in the committee: the bill as presented, the changes—significant changes—we made, the submissions we received, and anything that we wanted to bring to the attention of the House. So can I acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee members—Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, National, ACT, and New Zealand First colleagues—for their contributions and for raising very serious and real issues and trying to work through them in a detailed and methodical way.

Can I also acknowledge Minister Erica Stanford, whose Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—well, it was a Supplementary Order Paper at the time; I believe that now we have amended them to be called Amendment Papers themselves—was put forward to the committee and was actually adopted without any real contest. That SOP, or Amendment Paper, aimed to ensure that individuals listed on the register were subject to Customs Service border alerts, which was a small hole that the previous member but now Minister identified and put forward to the committee, and we were very glad to be able to work that into the process too. Can I just also acknowledge the work of the officials and our clerk, Liam, who, essentially, held our hands as new committee members through this process over the first wee while.

So, as I said, this bill is about protecting children. It is a very simple, straightforward bill. It requires registered child sex offenders to provide additional information when they are travelling overseas for more than 48 hours, and it actually struck me as quite interesting that we didn’t require this already. I would have assumed that we would have had some sort of system where those individuals that we see as posing a significant risk to the community post-incarceration would be subject to these kinds of restrictions and requirements to report their whereabouts, their intentions for travel, and where they were going to go. I think it surprised many on the committee to realise that this wasn’t in place already, and the member has done a very good job in identifying that hole in the law and seeking to remedy it.

As I mentioned before, there were some concerns raised by the Attorney-General at the time, the Hon David Parker—who I acknowledge has been in the Chamber today—and I will go through the issues because I think they are important to raise. I think it’s also important for me to try and explain why I think we get through this issue of—and it may be just that we disagree on whether or not the restrictions are an unjustified limitation on those individuals’ rights. But I have a view on this, which is that this legislation has been before the House in 2015, again in 2017, in 2021 with amendments, and now, in 2024, it is, hopefully, passing through the House with support, and at some point we must recognise that what does qualify—putting the Hansen test aside—as being demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society should at some point be able to be endorsed by the Parliament itself. It should not be up to a technical test on a breakdown of Oakes and Hansen on the minimal impairment and proportionality and rational connection, but at some point, Parliament should be able to decide for itself, over multiple iterations of the same types of limitations in legislation, that it, as the holder of parliamentary sovereignty, has deemed it to be worthy of a democratically justified limit.

Those limits that were raised by the former Attorney-General and officials were around the right for offenders to benefit from the ability of a lesser penalty where two penalties were available. The second infringement raised was the issue around double jeopardy, in that once you have been convicted and sentenced for a crime and you have served your time and are released into the public, and then Parliament comes along and applies another law which is further seen as a penalty, it could be seen as double jeopardy, and I think the courts have made that case out relatively well. The third one was this issue of retrospectivity and the uncertainty when the bill first came through as to whether or not it would apply to just those offenders being released from the date or who go on to the register from when the bill commenced, or if it was every offender on the child sex offender registry. I think the bill was a little unclear at the start about that, and officials made the very good point that when you are legislating and you are going to imply that it has retrospective effect, that retrospective effect should be made explicit in order to reduce the damage or the infringement on those rights.

So the select committee report outlines the committee’s views on those three issues fairly clearly. They were ones that we grappled with throughout our committee, and I’m sure, knowing what is ahead of us on our legislative timetable, that it may well be that we return to the well of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act analyses quite a few times in the next years, but that’s the nature of the Justice Committee, I think. When Parliament decides or the House decides to put forward proposals in the justice sector, they are inevitably going to infringe somewhat on people’s liberties and freedoms, and we are going to have to have that balancing test around there.

I just want to conclude my initial contribution while in this reading to just very, very quickly go over some of the statistics around our submitters. So, from memory, I don’t think we had any oral submitters. It may have been in the interregnum between the two terms of Parliament, because this bill came before us in the previous Parliament and is continuing on now. I understand from the report—I believe that Mr O’Connor made an oral submission in the Ministry of Justice’s submission’s support of the Attorney-General’s report, but otherwise there were not that many submitters who expressed a view on the bill. I think there were about 10 written submissions, eight of which were in favour, one, I think, was neutral, and maybe one or two more were opposed. So the bill appears to have at least support from those members of the public institutions that did raise concerns.

I’d like to acknowledge the submission from, I believe, the Law Society, who raised a number of very important points—that was Caroline Silk. This was around the infringement on freedoms, retrospectivity, and consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and, hopefully, we’ve done enough to address some of those concerns.

Finally, in the last few seconds of my contribution, just to summarise the main changes that were made around the bill, in clause 2, we did extend the commencement date to allow the New Zealand Police time to manage their operational requirements to implement the bill, and we did strengthen some of the information-sharing requirements, or clarified what it was that departments could do—what information Police and the Customs Service could share about child sex offenders when they are leaving the country.

So I commend the member for bringing the bill to the House. I apologise that he couldn’t quite get his last one across the line. I think he haunts me in the hallways with cries of “Jock McKenzie saved the land throughout the country!”, but I’m happy to support this bill today, and I think one from two is not a bad hit rate. So I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s a pleasure to rise and speak in support of Greg O’Connor’s bill. It is a relatively small adjustment to the existing register and requirement of sex offenders to notify the Police, in some cases, of their movements.

I would say, I’ve just been reading—and my friend’s got it there—Amendment Paper 175, which I see the Minister of Immigration has tabled. I note that it looked to allow, essentially, information matching between Police and Customs. I must say, I’d be interested to hear members from the other side speak to this, because we had plenty of opportunity, as the chair has noted, to discuss this at the Justice Committee, including an opportunity for the Minister—it’s in the name of Erica Stanford, the Minister of Immigration—to come to the committee and talk to it. So I’m surprised that it’s popped up at this late notice. After discussions with the member in charge of the bill, I understand that it wasn’t signalled to the member, which is a breach of courtesy, if nothing else.

Now, it may be that this Amendment Paper will not raise any concerns when we get to committee stage, but it would have been good to see this kind of step go through a full and robust process. In particular, information matching does raise privacy concerns, and I’m sure the Privacy Commissioner would have liked to have had some discussions around this Amendment Paper, had in fact it been drawn to the commissioner’s attention, as, of course, would the member in charge. So I do hope that the Minister will actually come down and speak to this Amendment Paper and exactly why it is needed.

The chair of the Justice Committee was perhaps a little dismissive of the Attorney-General’s report, and I can see why, but I do think we need to take statements from the Attorney-General—after all, she is, she is a King’s Counsel, if you hadn’t been told already. But the fact of the matter is that the Attorney-General points out a couple of things of concern. I guess the one that I think is most concerning, and the thing that in criminal law we need to be most aware of, is retrospectivity—that people have had a punishment meted out in the courts, which was the appropriate punishment under the law at the time, and we then go back and make it even more stringent. So there are people who are currently subject to the restrictions that being a sex offender places on them. Those restrictions are now going to be increased by this notification provision, and that’s going to be done retrospectively.

In some ways, I guess, one of the things is whether you see this notification regime as an element of punishment or whether you see it simply as a community safety measure, but certainly it is a constraint on the liberty of the offenders that’s being placed retrospectively. The way I get around that, I guess, is to say, well, it may have that effect, but, certainly, its dominant purpose is to protect potential victims, if you like, and that, in terms of proportionality, the burden on the offender is quite low. Because we’re not refusing the ability to travel, we’re just requiring certain notification provisions.

So with that, really, I wanted to say that I think this is a good bill. It went through the select committee and actually did have a fair bit of working over. And anyone who reads the select committee report will see that there are some substantial changes, including the removal of some clauses, such as clause 4, where an amendment to section 21 was removed, where the kind of detail that perhaps was needed was actually watered down a bit so that you didn’t need to know every element of the person’s travel. Rather, it was simply the date they were to travel in and out of New Zealand and where they’re going to predominantly be residing and when they’re intending to return to New Zealand, and a few other bits and pieces in there.

But, look, again, I congratulate the member on a useful addition, because we absolutely endorse the need to reduce the number of victims that are out there. But, as the member in charge of the bill, Greg O’Connor, said, it’s also about assisting offenders to not put themselves in situations where risk is created, so it’s actually good for the offender as well. So, once again, congratulations; I commended it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Greens want a world where all children, here and across the world, live safe lives, free from sexual violence and abuse. We know we must strengthen and work to prevent sexual violence from ever happening in the first place. We want to see justice for all survivors of sexual violence and abuse, especially children. People who have sexually violated children must be held accountable for the heartbreaking and enduring harm that they have inflicted. Offenders must be accountable and supported to stop their violent behaviour, and there must be restoration and reparation directly to the survivors and their needs.

We wish to state our position unequivocally, because the research and evidence spells out very clearly where the real levers for protecting our children are. The issue of ending violence against children has been a longstanding priority for the Green Party and will continue to be. Under the country’s first ever Minister for the prevention of violence, Marama Davidson, Marama Davidson was able to pull together the country’s first ever 25-year nationwide strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence—eliminate.

Unfortunately, and with respect to the member, this bill is not the most effective way forward to protect children from sexual violence and abuse, so the Greens will not be supporting this legislation. At best, this bill will do nothing to improve the safety and lives for children. At worst, the bill will disrupt genuine rehabilitation approaches for offenders to change their harmful behaviour. The Greens cannot in good conscience support any legislation that risks prevention of violence work and does not improve the prospects of survivors.

The bill amends the Child Protection (Child Sexual Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016 to “require registered child sex offenders to provide additional information to … Police before travelling overseas”. This information includes addresses of all the places they will stay for more than 48 hours, the number identifying the country of issue of all passports they hold, timely and reasonable explanation of any changes to this information. Currently, child sex offenders are already required to provide this type of information for some travel or changes of location within New Zealand. This bill will remove disparities in reporting requirements between domestic and international travel. The penalties for failure to report will also be comparable: failing to comply with reporting obligations, a fine of up to $2,000 or imprisonment for one year; and providing false or misleading information, a fine of up to $4,000.

This bill only applies to known convicted offenders. The aim of the Child Sex Offender Register is to improve child safety by having up-to-date information available on known child sex offenders living in the community that can be used to monitor risk of reoffending. Who’s registered? People who have been convicted of sexual offending against children—specifically, those offenders who have been convicted of a qualifying offence and were aged 18 years or over, and the victim was under 16 years when the offence was committed, and were sentenced to imprisonment or sentenced to a non-custodial sentence and directed to be registered at the discretion of the sentencing judge. So this bill only captures convicted known offenders, which, while important as a capture as it is—we have to be explicit about the confines of this bill and who it relates to.

At best, registers like this do nothing in and of themselves to reduce offending and, at worst, undermine rehabilitation efforts and safe integration into community. We have that evidence very clearly. This is an example of flawed legislation that will make politicians feel better about themselves and look tough on crime while there is no substance behind this action. This bill is only aimed at revictimisation, and there are far more effective and proven ways to address revictimisation, and some of those are addressed in Te Aorerekura. Te Aorerekura is the all-of-Government, prevention-focused, Tiriti-centred, strength-based, community-led, and whole-of-whānau embraced and embedded strategy to eliminate violence over the next couple of generations.

The Green Party remains strongly invested in enduring work to ensure children are safe, not just make politicians feel like they’re doing something. This bill will not resolve the significant harm of children being violated by sexual violence. While this bill offers no substance to safe responses to violence or prevention of violence, it is also regrettable and substandard lawmaking. As legislators, we must uphold a high standard of lawmaking as the cornerstone of a modern and functional democracy.

In a second reading, it is appropriate to refer to the select committee report. After the first reading, submissions are heard from the public and interested agencies. It is really important to put on record here that both the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Justice were at pains to highlight that this legislation is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA) and therefore risks a dangerous precedent if we want to be serious lawmakers. The Justice Committee’s own report noted the statement of the Attorney-General that “the evidence is limited as to the effectiveness of [sexual] offender registers in improving public safety.” The report quotes that “he”—the Attorney-General—“considered that the intrusion on that right”—to benefit from lesser penalty where penalties charged—“was not in due proportion to the importance of the objective of the bill and could not be demonstrably justified.” This is from the Attorney-General.

Now, we do in this House weigh up public interest and public benefits whenever we have to consider breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but the Greens have already been clear that this bill does not offer effective solutions to keeping children safe and, even worse, risks disrupting the meaningful work of offenders to stop using harm. Any inconsistencies with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act would have to be conditional on a proven, effective reason for public good. There is no such reason in this case, because, as stated, there is not enough evidence that this bill will be effective in keeping children safe from sexual violence offenders, and we all in this House are unified in agreeing that we want to keep children safe from sexual violence and offenders.

I want to highlight that the select committee in its report did note the inconsistencies with BORA, but the report chooses to take the inconsistencies into consideration but not make any changes to achieve consistency. That is why the Greens must put on record, on the Hansard and in this House, that we do not support ignoring inconsistencies.

So, in closing, I repeat the Greens’ value: the Greens want a world where all children here and across the world live lives free from sexual violence and abuse. We know we must strengthen the work to prevent sexual violence from ever happening in the first place. We want to see justice for all survivors of sexual violence and abuse, especially children. People who have sexually violated children must be held accountable for the heartbreaking and enduring harm that they have inflicted. Offenders must be accountable and supported to stop their violent behaviour, and there must be restoration and reparation directly to the survivors and their needs. Unfortunately, this bill, at best, will not make life safer for children. At worst, it will disrupt genuine rehabilitation for offenders to stop using violence. The Greens instead will keep advocating—[Time expired]

Thank you. I rise today in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill on its second reading, presented by Mr Greg O’Connor.

This bill helps to address a critical issue that has been plaguing our society—child sex tourism and the exploitation and abuse of children is a huge issue. I agree with the member who has just resumed her seat, Kahurangi Carter, that this is not going to solve the bigger issues. However, this is one of the critical steps and I was actually really surprised that this isn’t already happening. It will provide Police, Customs, and specified agencies the ability to share details of a convicted child sex offender when travelling to other jurisdictions, and this is really important.

I also extend my appreciation to the past and present members of the Justice Committee for their work on this bill. I know that I’m not part of that committee and my fellow colleague Todd Stephenson was, and I’m just stepping in tonight because we thought he wouldn’t be in the House. But I want to acknowledge you guys and acknowledge the issues that were raised within the committee: the issues around the bill of human rights and the retrospectivity, and also what info was shared about offenders.

The impact of child abuse, particularly in the form of sexual exploitation on young lives, cannot be overstated. Children who are victims of such crimes often suffer long-lasting physical, mental, and sexual health repercussions. The trauma inflicted on these innocent souls can be so severe that it amounts to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It is alarming to note that child sex tourism is actually a significant component of the sex tourism industry in certain regions such as Thailand, where hundreds of thousands of children are estimated to be working in the sex trade. This is a heinous crime that preys on the most vulnerable members of society, and I cannot allow previous sex offenders in this country to travel to countries like this, unknown, to be doing harm to other children overseas. I think that is absolutely critical.

Social attitudes that tolerate or ignore such crimes provide offenders, especially travelling sex offenders, with a sense of anonymity and impunity. It is heartening to see that efforts are being made in the private sector on global and regional and national levels to help address these challenges. We’re seeing hotel chains coming up with management around identifying potential issues when it comes to this industry.

This bill seeks to amend the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016 to require registered child sex offenders to provide additional information to the police before travelling overseas. This is a step in the right direction as it will enable law enforcement agencies to better protect children in countries the offenders travel to, and help identify cases of sex tourism.

As a party that stands firm against crime, especially crimes against the most vulnerable, we must support measures that restrict the freedom of those who seek to harm our children. However, we must also acknowledge that this bill may not be a panacea. Some offenders may still choose to travel overseas for shorter periods to avoid detection. Therefore, I urge the Government to consider extending these requirements to all registered sex offenders travelling overseas, regardless of the duration of their visit. We must remain vigilant and proactive in our efforts to protect our children and ensure that perpetrators of such heinous crimes are brought to justice.

I just want to highlight that the registered sex offenders are the ones that have been caught—the ones that we know to be perpetrators. It is the ones that walk around amongst us that we don’t know about that must be our biggest focus. The World Health Organization reports that one in 13 men and one in five women are sexually abused globally. In New Zealand, one in seven children are estimated to experience sexual abuse—one in seven children in New Zealand. That is alarming.

So, in conclusion, I support this bill and I urge my colleagues across the House to do the same. I hope that—I mean, the Greens are still here: I hope you guys reconsider because there are bigger issues. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a one-stop shop and it doesn’t go far enough, but there are other things that we can do and this is just a very small step and I think it’s one of the levers we should use. Thank you.

I rise today to take this call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill, on behalf of New Zealand First. Now, this bill seeks to address an area which is very important for New Zealand First, and that is of public safety, particularly that of our most vulnerable in our society: our children. As already mentioned, there is a register that already exists, which holds a record of a range of up-to-date personal information about registered child sex offenders living within the community. It is a tool to help police and corrections staff with the monitoring of people who have offended in the past, with the aim of preventing reoffending.

This bill, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill, aims to enhance measures for monitoring and regulating the overseas travel of these registered child sex offenders. It proposes amendments to the existing legislation to require registrable offenders to provide additional information to the authorities before they travel overseas for more than 48 hours. This bill seeks to align reporting requirements for domestic and overseas travel, and it enhances the collaboration between the New Zealand Police and our Customs Service to protect our children from potential risks posed by overseas travellers.

New Zealand First’s position is that we will support this bill. New Zealand First upholds the principles of protecting vulnerable individuals, safeguarding public safety, and ensuring the effective enforcement of laws. We prioritise the wellbeing of our children in the communities and we will always advocate for policies that promote their safety and their security.

Now, whilst a significant proportion of convicted child sex offenders do not reoffend once they are released from prison and back in society again, it is important to note that some do. Due to the nature of the type of offence, if, by chance, during a temporary lapse of reason, the offender commits yet another sexual offence, the consequences for the victims are by no means temporary. From the traumatic emotional harm and the possible physical harm caused as a result of this attack, the suffering for the victim and their family will continue. It could be that this one event is the beginning of another systemic family pattern of abuse. The introduction of this bill would be another measure to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

So what are some of the reasons that New Zealand First are supporting this bill? Well, as already mentioned, it will enhance the monitoring and the regulation, with additional information required when the offender is overseas, and for every country that they go to. Also, if an offender does not want to return to New Zealand, they have to also make that known and where they will be.

Now, another reason that we’re supporting this bill is because of the alignment with domestic reporting requirements. It will align the requirements for domestic and overseas travel, which will ensure consistency and coherency in monitoring the movements of these registrable offenders. This alignment streamlines enforcement efforts and facilitates cooperation between the agencies domestically and internationally. Also, it’s a collaborative approach to protecting our children, the most vulnerable. The bill will promote a collaboration between New Zealand Police and Customs, leveraging their networks and resources to better protect the children in the countries where the offenders will travel to. By enabling this information sharing and coordination between the relevant agencies, this will strengthen the bill and these international efforts that are being taken around the world to combat child sex tourism, which, sadly, is a very real thing.

As I’ve already mentioned, New Zealand First is all about protecting our vulnerable, and it’s a big reason why we will be supporting this bill. Now, some may say, “Well, what about the rights of the offender?” That is a valid question. They do also deserve a chance to rehabilitate and to not live under this cloud of shame and judgment for the remainder of their lives. What if, however, these additional requirements were, in fact, a deterrent for the sex offender? As mentioned, due to the nature of this offence, it can be a decision made in a split second that could lead to irreversible consequences for the victim. What if by having these extra measures, it would be a deterrent that they need to take responsibility for their actions, and ownership for their second chance at life, themselves?

So, in summary, New Zealand First believes that public safety concerns and the safety of children, who are our most vulnerable and defenceless, far outweighs the privacy or equal protection claims of the sex offender, and it is why we believe that this bill will be well received. I’m very happy to commend it to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Just a little bit of backdrop from me in terms of why I’m standing here and why I’m going to speak to this particular take [subject]. So coming from Puao-te-Ata-tu 1989 through to the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, having set up one of the first sexual assault counselling services in Taupō in the 1990s, a care and protection social worker in Department of Social Welfare. Most of you won’t remember that; it was a bit old. More recently in the fusion suicide prevention space and family harm and children’s team. So that’s a number of places and people and experiences and integrity, I guess, that I have to utilise in this discussion.

Te Pāti Māori have previously voted against bills that further entrench punitive approaches to crime, punishment, and rehabilitation. This was the driver behind our initial opposition to the amendments of this bill during the first reading. While we Te Pāti Māori maintain that there is an absolute need for the complete overhaul of the criminal justice system, replaced by a Māori Justice Authority, which would oversee a justice system based on tikanga Māori, we know that protecting tamariki, mokopuna is critical, no matter where they are in the world.

The amendments to this bill will not change circumstances for victims and their whānau, but it will aid—so you can just hold this in; just take a breath—in the prevention of further potential harm to others through increased monitoring of registered child sex offenders. Because I get it. I worked in this space. There’s probably very few in this House that could debate this with me and win. Prevention—this is a word I will sit on for a while here as it is something that most Governments have failed to achieve in areas not exclusive to justice. So it feels almost unnatural to use this term prevention when discussing amendments to this bill. I’ll be careful to use the term lightly in this context, as when we shine a light on to our young people here: 18 percent have already experienced sexual abuse by the time they reach the ages between 15 and 18. And it is a higher proportion of Māori who are victim to crime.

These experiences are historically repetitive. I only need to choose any year at random to discover truly frightening statistics that expose the experiences of our tamariki. For example, take 2017 and our Māori children who are already overrepresented in Child, Youth and Family care services were also overrepresented as victims to sexual abuse, making up 37 percent of total harmed.

While the amendments to this bill will potentially prevent further harm internationally, they will not prevent what happens here to our tamariki. This bill should guide us to consider prevention beyond what we discuss today. That is the way we might realistically be able to protect our tamariki and prevent their future suffering as experienced by victims of child sexual abuse who are up to two times more likely to have adverse problems later in life.

It is important for us to be reminded of the reality of tamariki during discussions which will directly impact them, and so, regarding the term prevention, I will both recommend further preventative action and that will protect our tamariki while also commending this bill to the House. Tēnā tātou.

I rise in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill. We’ll just call it the bill, I think, after this. Look, as part of the Justice Committee, ably chaired by my colleague here James Meager, we worked through this judiciously. It was presented, of course, in the amendment bill form to the 53rd Parliament on 3 August 2022—and others have spoken about how its architecture goes back much further than that as well—with submissions closing on 14 September 2022.

I was interested to learn that the Green Party—there’s a surprise every day in Parliament, and for us, today, it was that the Green Party won’t be supporting this, particularly—as my colleague Dan Bidois has spelt out because I wanted the full title of it—as their co-leader the Hon Marama Davidson was, of course, the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence.

Now, as other speakers have said, this will not solve everything; this will not stop everybody. But man, it’s an improvement. And as others have also said, they’re surprised that these policies and procedures and requirements are not in place.

We’ve heard the words “sex tourism” and “exploitation” kind of thrown around tonight, but the reality is—as the sponsor, Greg O’Connor, has told us repeatedly in select committee, and reminded us—that the perpetrators are normally known to the victims: friends and family. It’s not some overly sophisticated sex tourism thing, it’s—to use Mr Greg O’Connor’s language—normally those that might be going to Perth or Mooloolaba, and so visiting friends and family in the likes of Australia. And so it offers up greater protections for those children in those jurisdictions that we are supporting tonight.

At its core, the bill seeks to address significant gaps identified in the existing legal framework by imposing stricter reporting obligations on registered child sex offenders before they travel abroad by mandating—and again, amazing that this hasn’t happened in this form before—comprehensive reporting of travel plans including destination details, duration of stay, and passport information. The main provisions include this: offenders intending to return to New Zealand must report each overseas address where they will stay and the dates of travel to and from each country; offenders not intending to return must report the country where they intend to reside; all offenders must report the passport number, place of issue, and expiry date of every valid passport they hold.

So, tonight, what this does is it enhances New Zealand’s capacity to protect children globally by ensuring that the likes of New Zealand Police and our Customs Service have detailed information on the movements of these registered child sex offenders. And as others have canvassed, it brings in line overseas travel reporting requirements with those already in place for domestic travel. So I would argue it’s long overdue.

Again, I wanted to pay tribute to the bill’s sponsor, Greg O’Connor. He sat very patiently in the Justice Committee, waiting for his item to come up, and he spoke very passionately for it. He’s also spoken earlier tonight about his work as a detective many, many, many years ago and the fact that he saw this in many confronting guises, and saw firsthand the impacts. He used the word—in most cases these people, the offenders, were, sadly, just pathetic—just pathetic.

So the National Party stands with Mr O’Connor, stands with other parties—minus the Green Party—who look set to support this. Again, disappointing that the previous Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence isn’t in support of this, but we believe this is a critical step in enhancing international cooperation, strengthening monitoring capabilities, and safeguarding vulnerable children. And so why wouldn’t we go there? And the chair—

💬 Dan Bidois: They voted for it.

They voted for it in select committee, the Green Party, but they’ve since changed their mind. The select committee—as I’ve said, ably chaired by Otago alumni James Meager, our in-house solicitor—made a number of recommendations, all of them for proposed amendments, all of them unanimous. He’s already taken us through, clause 2—we postponed the bill’s commencement to allow police time to prepare and inform offenders about the new requirements. We eliminated redundant passport information reporting provisions giving existing obligations. As he’s also said, our proposed amendments from select committee proposed the Act clarify and enhance information sharing between specified agencies for public safety and risk management; and explicitly applying the bill retrospectively, as well, was a proposal from this select committee to ensure comprehensive coverage of all registered offenders.

So this is something that now comes to its second reading and, hopefully, on to its third reading, and it’s something that should have, arguably, been in place and something that, even if it saves—“even if it saves”, as we often say in this House—one child, would be well worth our time. We know it’s going to do better than that, and with the increased technological improvements and now with the increased reporting capability and requirements, this is going to mean that we know where our registered sex offenders are overseas, and our police and our Customs do too. Why wouldn’t we want to know that information? Why wouldn’t the Green Party want to know that information? That is the staggering—that is the biggest surprise for us in the National Party here tonight. Why wouldn’t the previous Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence say to her party and caucus, “We have got to support this. Yes, we’ve got concerns. Members, please table them, in the Green Party. But, overall, we have got to support this.”

But, sadly, the Green Party aren’t and so it’s left to the other parties: as we know, the National Party, unanimous in their support of 49 votes; the Labour Party have been strong in their support for Greg O’Connor’s intentions; Todd Stephenson, on the Justice Committee, represented by Laura Trask, they’ve been strongly supportive, as have New Zealand First. And so we come together as kind of like the super coalition, really—

💬 Laura Trask: And the Māori Party.

And Te Pāti Māori—and Te Pāti Māori. Oh look, jeez, thank you for pointing that out, this is a mega-super coalition of support—“Kumbaya” has broken out. But I would argue that it’s broken out for the very, very reasons that most of us are here, whether we’re aunts or uncles, neighbours, grandparents, parents, parents-to-be, nephews, nieces, we’ve all got connections, we’ve all got such precious people in our lives that we want to protect. There is no more vulnerable people in this society, I would argue, no more vulnerable people in this society than our young, young children. And protecting them from registered sex offenders is core business to this Parliament, and so I commend this bill.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand and speak in support of my colleague and friend Greg O’Connor’s member’s bill, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill. Two sets of brackets Greg, that’s impressive.

This is a good bill because it extends upon what has already been working well in New Zealand. Established back in around 2016 was New Zealand’s first ever sex offender register, which required those sex offenders, when travelling within New Zealand, if travelling away from their primary residence, to make sure it was recorded where they were staying and for the length of time they’re staying, within New Zealand. The specific reason behind this is to identify if there would be children residing in the house.

So what this bill really does is bring the overseas requirements for child sex offenders in line with the requirement which already exists when offenders travel domestically. So they will need to provide addresses of travel, particularly when there will be children present. This bill amends the primary legislation in a simple form to make these requirements incumbent upon those registered sex offenders who are travelling internationally. This works to grow the community of countries who are all looking out for the best interests of New Zealand, of children, and particularly New Zealand children.

It’s important to note that there has been quite a body of work being done to identify potential gaps in borders, to identify existing opportunities that sex offenders can utilise in order to reach areas where children are unprotected. Typically, I’m not a big fan of policies that are based on the idea of deterring someone from committing a crime because most of the research demonstrates that deterrence in itself doesn’t really work in terms of preventing crime from happening. But this is one area where the high level of premeditation involved is one where evidence demonstrates that deterrence does have a valuable factor involved.

I looked into this particularly when I had my own member’s bill in the same space, looking at online grooming. All the evidence I could see was that there is a high level of premeditation, planning, and essentially building a web—is the way it’s described by those experts—where it facilitates and enables a sex offender to commit crimes. And there can be years and years of planning going into establishing an environment that enables the offender to access young, vulnerable people. So whatever we can do to join up with the international community to prevent that from happening is a good thing.

It’s important to note that we’ve already done some work internationally, so there’s already a United Nations convention that New Zealand has signed up to, along with a number of other countries. And what that convention has done will work alongside Greg’s bill. So that means that if a New Zealand citizen goes to another country and commits a sex offence against a child, then that offender can also be charged and convicted back in New Zealand. And that’s one of the very rare instances where committing a crime in another country is actually able to be prosecuted here in New Zealand, and we do have examples of where that’s worked already. We know that there’s been instances in the past where someone travelled to Moscow in 2007 where he photographed and exploited young children. That person was then sentenced at the High Court in 2008 and received a seven-year imprisonment on four charges of sexual violation. So that is an example of countries working across borders in order to make it as difficult as possible for child sex offenders who look to prey upon the most vulnerable.

In particular, I think it’s important to note that there are particular countries that have got known sex tourism, that have a market for children and young people. And we know that sex offenders do travel to areas such as Thailand, also Cambodia—and Phnom Penh has a particular street where that is known to occur. And when you have people from, typically, Western countries travelling to those countries, which have significantly reduced incomes and extreme poverty in some areas, it is directly exploiting families who are in need of money for access to their children. There is no other word for it but despicable.

If we can work alongside other countries in respect of those sex offenders, if they are known to the State, we have a moral responsibility to work alongside other countries to make sure that we monitor their movement and make sure that they are not accessing vulnerable young people not only in New Zealand but also in other countries.

Greg’s done a great job at shepherding this bill through. It has taken a while at the Justice Committee, but we have all worked quite hard over a period of time to enable it to reach this point. It’s important to note that as much as this is to protect children and potential victims, it’s also an opportunity to note that many of these offenders are known to their victims. I just want to make that point. I tend to make that point every time that we have a stereotype in our mind that a sex offender is a stranger in a park with a coat on, in horn-rimmed glasses. But that is, in fact, not always the case at all. It is people within our own families, within our own social circles who know children well and create a relationship based on trust before any offending ever begins.

And the more that we can convey that message to our communities, that it is not strangers only that we should fear, but sometimes we need to be cautious as parents and guardians of those people within our own social circles who seek access to young people and prey upon their vulnerabilities.

Offenders, we know, protect themselves by knowing that the authorities know where they will be. And so overseas family members and potential victims will receive the same protection as those same families in New Zealand by the offender knowing that their travel and places of the address are being monitored. So that is people in New Zealand travelling to be with families in other countries, and those families who reside in other countries deserve to be having the same protections as families here in New Zealand.

I just would like to note that as part of the bill there’s been a section 7 report on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and a part of that is the retrospectivity—as previously noted, double jeopardy and retrospectivity that this bill needs to be retrospective in order for it to operate, and that has been a factor in picking that up. The additional reporting requirements will apply to people who have already been registered offenders on the register. So it’s for that reason that the double jeopardy rule had been triggered.

However, it’s also important to note that in the Solicitor-General’s section 7 report, they note that it’s an important balance of rights to make sure that there is a balance of rights of those having the safety and protection, and that needs to be weighed up in this instance as well.

I’d like to conclude by congratulating Greg O’Connor. He’s continued to shepherd this bill through a long process, and it is another step to make sure that we join hands with the international community and provide as much protection as possible in an area where there are known predators who will continue to look for opportunities. And the more that we can close those gaps and shut down those opportunities, then the safer and more protected the next generation of young people will be.

Every time I stand to contribute to a piece of legislation that has to do with focusing on behaviour that harms or behaviour that disrespects or disregards the rights of others, I always think that it’s a sad time. Here we are, having to legislate to stop people from causing harm to other people.

The child sex offender situation is on a constant escalation path. It is prevalent in many countries. It goes in many different forms. I echo the member Greg O’Connor’s view that, for the most part, the scary part is that offenders are often known to their victims. They are known, they exercise some authority or control or nearness—they are able to perpetuate their behaviour with people, sometimes their own family members, sometimes people that have been entrusted to their care. But that range of offending goes all the way across into a more, you know, syndicated, planned, organised manner where people travel to many countries for the purpose of child sexual abuse.

The worst of it is that this kind of heinous activity and crime is targeted at children who have no opportunity to defend themselves and who are absolutely vulnerable to the advances of people who either have authority over them or gain authority over them in terms of, you know, financial reward—sometimes not even to the little children but to the families that they come from—because of poverty. So, here, we are trying to make a dent in that space.

The Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill seeks to amend section 21 of the principal Act, which is the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act of 2016. It has to do with requiring registered or registrable child sex offenders—people who have already been convicted of the offence—to provide additional information should they wish to travel. It is of note that the bill also specifies that if travel from, say, their registered address in New Zealand, then they are asked to inform where they’re going, when they’re going, when they’re leaving, where they will be going.

So the added information, including information about their details, allows New Zealand to track where they are and enables overseas authorities to also do the same. Because of this, we can accomplish the objective of somehow making a dent on this world of hideous filth. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I believe it’s my call, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill. This was a bill that came to the Justice Committee in the previous Parliament—

💬 Dana Kirkpatrick: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I believe that Labour took their call early in the piece.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is part of the split call. There is still—

💬 Dana Kirkpatrick: Which split call?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Garcia had half the split call, and Arena Williams—so there was a change in order earlier in the evening when someone didn’t stand up. So Labour has taken one of their calls out of this. But this is the other half of the split call.

💬 Dana Kirkpatrick: So Paulo Garcia’s call was 10 minutes, and he only did five?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: He had a five-minute call.

💬 Dana Kirkpatrick: There seems to be some confusion, Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK. I’ll let Arena Williams carry on with her speech. If you’d like to just come up and talk while she’s doing that, we’ll sort it through.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This was a bill that originally came to the Justice Committee in 2022 when it was ably chaired by the Hon Ginny Andersen. That committee did a huge amount of work on seeking the New Zealand Police’s advice, and I thank the advisers from New Zealand Police for their extensive advice about a few issues that the committee was particularly concerned about. Those were the enforcement issues around this bill, the proportionality issues that have arisen in the Attorney-General’s report, and the practical steps for change. So I am going to speak to all three of those issues. But also I want to thank the current Justice Committee for working through some of those and other issues, with the Amendment Paper from the Hon Erica Stanford, which deals with those Customs issues, and the previous chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters, who was really helpful in guiding the committee’s thinking around those issues of proportionality and how as parliamentarians we might engage with them.

These crimes that this bill deals with are some of the most heinous. Not only are they against the most vulnerable people in our society, who deserve our utmost protection, who are vulnerable children, often in impoverished countries, in the most dire of circumstances, but this is also about the most privileged offenders, in Western countries, using not only their power to travel but their financial wealth to exploit people in other countries and go home and wash their hands of their offending. It is the most heinous kind of crime, and none of us should turn our eyes away from it. And so we worked through, firstly, these enforcement issues, which arise at several points, in different ways, in the Attorney-General’s reporting on this. There’s a comment from the initial Attorney-General report about how, when considering the way that the penalties would change because of this and how offenders would have a right to the lesser penalty when this applied, there was an issue the Attorney-General identified that the stated evidence is limited as to the effectiveness of sex offender registers in improving public safety. And so this change would still engage that kind of test of proportionality which applied to the original sex offender legislation.

The Justice Committee chaired by Vanushi Walters and chaired by Ginny Andersen considered those issues—when you look at whether child sex offender registers are effective at a population level, as different to whether they’re effective at an individual level. At a population level, it is very hard to track whether there is an effect of child sex offender registers, because they don’t stop anything. You can’t tell when someone is breaching them. You also can’t tell what effect they’re having on people. You might say, “Well, if they were keeping people from offending, they were never going to offend anyway.”—and if people were offending and they were still registered on the register, then that shows that they were going to offend no matter what kind of registration there was against their name. So, at a population level, it is very hard to track, but I agree with colleagues around the House who have made the point that, at an individual level, there is a deterrence effect here.

The points raised by the Hon Ginny Andersen were correct in that, when you think about deterrence for crimes like these, deterrence by itself is usually very ineffective, and it needs to go alongside all of the other reasons why we would criminalise something and how we would apply that to people’s individual experience. But in a crime like this, where someone has planned to travel overseas, where someone has contacts in another jurisdiction to make their offending possible, and where there is a closing web around their victims that they personally have created, this factors into their decision-making about how they will continue to offend. And so it is useful for us to consider that, within the proportionality of this punishment, the Supreme Court did consider these kinds of punishments to be actual punishments that weighed on people’s abilities to enjoy their rights, as being proportionate.

Madam Speaker, it’s only a five-minute call, so there are issues around the enforcement of proportionality, but the practical steps for change do continue here, and we need to constantly be meeting our obligations under the UN convention that New Zealand has signed up to, and look to our neighbours in Australia about the kinds of advancements that they have made, which are in line with the legislative change we are making tonight. So I want to congratulate my colleague Greg O’Connor on the excellent policy work that he has done here. I also want to congratulate him on his cross-partisan work with the Hon Erica Stanford to bring in those changes which affect Customs. I commend this bill.

Thank you. Now, we’re just doing a cross check. We believe things went out of order but are in order. We’ve just been notified that the National Party wishes to make this last call a split call, so I call Rima Nakhle for a five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker; I’m sure the Speaker can bring everything into order. I rise to speak in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill. In essence, this bill seeks to amend the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act from 2016—that’s when it was made into legislation. So that’s our principal Act for the purposes of today.

Essentially, what this amendment bill seeks to do is make it a requirement that registered child sex offenders provide additional information to police before travelling overseas for more than 48 hours. Now, currently, there is section 21 of the principal Act which requires sex offenders to advise the registrar of their travel plans—but this is seeking to make it mandatory for them to provide a lot more detail to the authorities.

So what the amendment bill will mandate is the following: that each address at which the offender intends to stay while overseas must be noted, must be given; the date on which the offender intends to travel to that country; the date on which the offender intends to travel out of the country; and where the offender doesn’t intend to come back to New Zealand, that country must also be given to the police. The passport number, the place of issue, date of expiry of each valid passport held by the offender must also be given to the police.

“What’s the purpose of these amendments?”, we can ask the House. The purpose is to allow police and customs networks to better protect children in the countries that offenders travel to and support identification of cases of sex tourism. These amendments are specific and they’re deliberate, and they aim to fill some of the concerning and alarming gaps present in the principal Act in its current form.

Registered child sex offender—what a horrible, repugnant set of words. I’m saddened—I’m saddened—to hear that the Green Party is not supporting this bill, because children are children no matter where they are around the world. The former speaker from the Green Party Kahurangi Carter said that it only captures convicted, known offenders. That breaks my heart because, as one of my colleagues said, if these changes save one child from the sexual violations of sex predators—because that’s what they are—

💬 Hon Karen Chhour: Worth it.

💬 Hon Members: Worth it.

—then we’ve done our job. Then it’s worth it. Sexual abuse against children is a different level of abhorrent. The child sex abuser is not, in my opinion, merely an offender. He or she is a life-wrecker, a youth destroyer, and a thief of innocence. So it’s our obligation as legislators—and, more importantly, as New Zealanders—to protect children from the desecration of sexual violence against them. Because that is what child sex abuse is: a violation of the worst kind—against an innocent, pure child. This amendment bill, if and, hopefully, when translated to law, will communicate to the world that New Zealand sees it as our duty to protect children from sexual exploitation in whichever way we can.

I acknowledge the Attorney-General’s report on the consistency, or lack thereof, of this amendment bill with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. There’s issues like the right of a person—in this case, a registered child sex offender—to benefit from the lesser penalty, and the issue of freedom from double jeopardy and retrospectivity. But these issues have been discussed in the past and were discussed recently by the current Justice Committee, and, indeed, we need to carefully balance these. I, and we, commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr O’Connor.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I take great pride in rising as the final speaker, in support of Greg O’Connor’s bill this evening, in its second reading, the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill—or, as my colleague Cameron Brewer so aptly called it earlier on, the bill.

The bill is a member’s bill by the MP for Ōhāriu, and it amends the principal Act to require registered child sex offenders to provide additional information to the police before travelling overseas for more than 48 hours. Now, when I read this for the first time, I thought, “Goodness me. How does this not happen already? How is this actually not the country we live in, in 2024, where this is already taking place?” It really disappoints me where I’ve listened across the speeches given this evening, and to think there’s a political party here who doesn’t want to support this legislation. I think, actually, I’m proud to be a part of the party that’s supporting the Opposition party by bringing this bill to the House, and we’re supporting it through the second reading.

Now, having not been a contributor on the first reading or through the select committee stage, I did my homework before getting up to speak. Particularly, I looked through a couple of documents that I thought would really be beneficial to contribute to this debate. Firstly, the departmental report. Currently, section 21 of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016 only requires registered persons to advise the register of their travel plans if they’re travelling overseas for more than 48 hours; they are only required to advise the register of the dates they are leaving and returning to New Zealand, not the country of destination. Section 22 requires the registered offender to advise the register if the date of their return to New Zealand changes while they are overseas.

Then I dived a little bit deeper. I looked at the submissions that were received by the Justice Committee. Of the 10 submissions received, six were in favour, two were opposed, one didn’t specifically state whether or not they supported the bill, and one was considered out of scope. Overall, submissions expressed support for increasing the protection provided to children and vulnerable people, including those overseas. Although only six of the 10 submitters explicitly supported the bill, only two submitters opposed the bill. One opposed the bill on the basis of human rights considerations for the registered offender, and one opposed the bill based on the view that sex offenders should not be permitted to travel at all.

I then dived a little bit deeper because I saw that the Justice Committee had recommended that the bill be passed with unanimous support, and the Green Party actually sits on that select committee and gave it support at select committee, yet coming back to the second reading they’ve changed their mind, which is disappointing. But there were four proposed amendments. The first: postponing the bill’s commencement to allow police time to prepare and inform offenders about the new requirements, a pragmatic change that ensures amending the commencement date to three months after Royal assent. The second proposed amendment to the bill was eliminating redundant passport information reporting provisions, given existing obligations. That just seems sort of a business-as-usual tweak to make sure the bill operates as best as it possibly can. The third amendment: amending the Act to clarify and enhance information sharing between specified agencies for public safety and risk management—the information sharing between Government agencies, which is so vital to the protection of our children and our communities. Finally, explicitly applying the bill retrospectively to ensure comprehensive coverage of all registrable offenders.

Improved international cooperation and protection—this bill will demonstrate New Zealand’s global leadership in protecting children from sexual exploitation by highlighting our protective reach beyond our borders. It establishes international cooperation, preventing offenders from using travel to avoid detection. I support this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.