Statutes Amendment (Child Sex Offences) Bill
Thursday 7 July 2022
Ms CLANCY (Elder) (15:49): I rise today in support of this bill. One of the most crucial roles of government is to ensure the safety of its people, and special attention must be paid to the safety of the most vulnerable people in our community. We must care for and protect older people, we must care for and protect people living with disability, and we must care for and protect children.
This topic of child sex offences is difficult to even think about let alone speak about, but we must because we need to do everything we can to keep children safe and supported. During the election campaign Labor committed to taking the toughest action in the country against those who exploit children. We also committed to putting the victim at the centre of how we respond in this area, doing what we can to begin the process of repairing the damage that has been caused.
Central to this is an investment of an additional $2 million to help victims as they go through court processes, provide better education about their rights and support their recovery from trauma. Our government is also committed to passing laws for the indefinite detention for serious child sex offenders, who will need to convince the Supreme Court and two medical professionals, both appointed by the court, that they should be released. We will also require lifetime electronic monitoring when serious child sex offenders re-enter the community, and we will create our state's first child sex offender register.
Today's bill honours two important election commitments made by our government in this space. The bill will increase penalties on a range of child sex offences in the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935; in particular, it makes changes to the age distinction around penalties. For example, currently an image-based defence is considered aggravated only for children aged 14 and under. It is often difficult to prove the child in an image is 14 or under and involves police or others in the justice system at times having to extensively trawl through content to determine the exact age of a child.
I cannot begin to imagine how horrifying this work must be for those workers. This bill removes that age requirement for image-based offences, thereby removing that role from workers and also making it very clear that the sexual exploitation of children at any age is unacceptable. The bill before us also amends section 139A of Carly's Law to ensure that the offence can apply where the unlawful communication is made to a fictitious child. So, when an undercover police officer is posing as a child victim, offenders can still be charged with unlawful communications.
These amendments will see police have more charging options for unlawful communications with fictitious children, and sentencing courts will be able to consider the age the offender thought the child was when applying sentencing provisions.
I want to thank the Attorney-General, his staff and department for their work on this bill. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the people who work so hard in this area to keep children safe and supported: our police officers, detectives, victim support services, lawyers and anyone else working in this area. Thank you for working in an incredibly difficult field of work, because you choose to put children first.
I extend my support to victims of these heinous acts. I stand with you. This bill is the first of a couple we will be introducing on these matters and is step 1 in our tough on child sex offenders approach. I commend the bill to the house.
