Police and Corrections Minister Anne Tolley wants to take a proposal to the Cabinet by next year on setting up a register of sexual offenders.
She has asked officials to investigate the idea and hopes to have one in place by 2014.
Mrs Tolley says a register would allow agencies to keep tabs on those who pose a risk to the community.
And she says it could help prevent cases such as the one earlier this year when a convicted sexual offender was found to have worked in a number of schools.
Labour says most of the information that would feature on such a register is already held by the justice system and questions the need for such a measure.
In 2004, a Parliamentary select committee dismissed a member's bill to set up a sex offenders register, because police and experts in the area had advised that it would not be helpful.
Former ACT MP Deborah Coddington, who wrote a book that detailed the names of hundreds of sex offenders, says a register is what people want.
Ms Coddington released the book, The Sex Offenders Index in the mid nineties, and was a proponent of a sex offenders register in 2002, which was dropped after its first reading.
She says society wants more information on protecting the vulnerable, especially children.
Ms Coddington said on Morning Report that a register could be set up so it is accessible only to those with authorisation from the minister of police.
A Far North Maori leader says a sex offenders' register would be useful.
Te Rarawa rununga chairman Haami Piripi said it will also be up to the community to help identify and act on risk factors.
