Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

How sad it is that we should be standing in this chamber raising these disgraceful facts, knowing that Australian men are inflicting such extreme abuse on children. The fact that this bill, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Offences Against Children) Bill 2010, needs even more strengthening is an indictment of those who would commit crimes against children. The fact that we are strengthening the offences for Australians who are dealing in child pornography and child abuse material overseas is a very good thing, and I congratulate the government for bringing this forward. I note that the purpose of the amendments in part 1 is to ensure that all behaviour relating to sexual offences against children by Australians within Australia covered by state and territory offences is also criminalised when Australians commit these crimes overseas.

I deal with this area a lot, because it is of particular personal importance to me to ensure that we are looking at protection. I have long been working voluntarily in the field of fighting child sex trafficking and trafficking in children, so I spend quite a bit of my free time—whatever free time is available—working with other people to try to bring about some real change for the many young children across the world, and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, who may become victims of child sex trafficking, sex tourism, offences in pornography, internet pornography and other things.

I was looking at some of the things that have been raised over a period of time and I noted that in LAWASIA’s Children and the Law Conference last year there was a session on trafficking in unborn children. When I was doing my research generally on what was happening in the protection of children in many and various forms, I felt very proud to read the speech that one of Australia’s very own magistrates was invited to give there. The magistrate stood and said this. I will quote from the magistrate’s introduction to the speech. He said: ‘Firstly, I want to share with you an excerpt from a report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children.’ The report that he read from states:

In September 2003 a fishing boat from the Indonesian island … was allegedly intercepted heading towards Malaysia. According to information received, eight babies were found on this boat, packed in Styrofoam in fish boxes punctured in order to allow the babies to breath.

I think the most pertinent and poignant point here is the comment the magistrate made:

When a baby’s life is being supported by little more than holes punctured in a styrofoam box we begin to see the true nature of this crime. Through a process of de-humanisation, these babies essentially become little more than commodities, packaged and sold for the right price.

It was that that led me to believe that there is a powerful load of work that the Australian people and the Australian parliament can be involved with in the protection of children. It is sad that not enough men are prosecuted within developing nations purely because families do not have access to legal representation. They cannot afford to acquire legal representation to prosecute somebody who has taken their children from them and sold them into unspeakable acts.

It is a sad occasion. I hope that eventually, when I can spend more time on this issue, we can change the access arrangements. I hope that, from within our AusAID budget and our aid proposals for developing countries and our Asia-Pacific neighbours, we can offer the provision of legal aid to people—to families who have no means of getting food each day for their children, let alone means to acquire legal representation to prosecute somebody who has committed the greatest atrocities on their children. Some day I hope that I can galvanise enough pro bono offers from international lawyers not only from Australia but from other countries interested in the Asia-Pacific and that we can start to make inroads in giving a voice to children in developing countries, where legal representation is clearly not available to them.

In looking at such countries I am very interested in the way in which Cambodia works. When you are in Cambodia you see great big advertisements on the backs of buses saying, ‘Child sex abuse is not acceptable.’ You see warnings on this issue. The government is trying to do the best they possibly can in the interests of the children of Cambodia, but how can the government prevent so much from happening when poverty is so great? It is a fact that human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in the world, second only to the sale of illegal drugs. That is why they are up against such a major hurdle and obstacle. And this does occur in most countries in the world.

In Cambodia, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys are bought, sold, kidnapped and then forced to have sex with grown men. Many of these men come from Australia. Many of these men come from developed nations and go there purely to commit atrocities on children for their own gratification. The more that we can strengthen our laws to cover international boundaries and the more that we can ensure that Australians will be prosecuted for the crimes that they commit on children in another country, the better it will be.

In looking at the issues that affect those children, we find that many of them are born into poverty and sold for sex. The people who go to places like Cambodia, Indonesia, many of the islands in Indonesia and Thailand, and other developing nations think that they are involved in nothing more than a prostitution ring. They think it is a prostitution process, just an exchange involving prostitution. In fact, they are committing rape of the worst kind: they are committing rape of a child. It is a fact that there is no shortage of children offered for tourists when they go into developing countries.

We often see programs on how, in many countries—for example, in places like Bangkok and Amsterdam—prostitution is widely accepted. It is a multibillion-dollar industry. We assume that prostitution is about consensual adult sex, but the fact is that the business is not about adults. The real business, unfortunately, has come to be the business of sexual predators on children. It is a crime.

I have talked a bit about the parents’ extreme poverty. Parents may sell their children to traffickers in order to pay off debts or to gain some income. They may be deceived. Most times they are deceived, because somebody comes to them and says, ‘We will put your child into servitude in a house. We will teach them to be housemaids or to mind children’ when in fact most of them end up in the serious situation of sexual servitude in the worst possible places.

I was recently shown a program in which a contrived situation was set up in the US where people were entering into inappropriate conversations with young people on the internet. An entourage of men were turning up to houses where they thought there were young girls and boys, who had stated they were as young as 11 years of age. These men knew exactly what they were there for; they were there to have unlawful sex with young boys and young girls. The program, which might have been Dateline, was able to highlight and expose the many perpetrators of crimes on children in the US. When you go into developing countries the situation is far worse and children literally have no choices.

It is wonderful to see the work that the Australian Federal Police and other units do. As the member for Forrest has explained, the House Standing Committee on Communications is currently conducting an inquiry into cybercrime. We are hearing significant evidence associated with how people are inadvertently attracted on the internet, how young people are exploited and how crimes are committed against young children using the means of the internet.

It has also opened our eyes to how you can be unwittingly harbouring somebody’s graphic internet pornography sites within your own computer and not even know it. Your own home computer could be a botnet for a site that is used for the dissemination and distribution of child pornography. It is a very interesting inquiry indeed and I am sure that every member who is involved in this inquiry is becoming vastly aware of just how dangerous the internet can be. It is a very good tool if it is used in an appropriate and proper way, but it can most certainly be an enormous danger to our children.

This bill specifically talks about the distribution of child pornography and child abuse material overseas. On many occasions, evidence has been heard about the worst of child abuse and child pornography and the worst acts committed on young children—we are talking seriously young children here. This material has been distributed throughout the world to other sick people who think that they have a right to view these profoundly indecent acts on our children. There are hundreds of thousands of children who have been subjected to the most disgraceful acts. We have to put in place stronger and stronger legislation. It is sad that this country of Australia is required to continually try to beat the people who would commit abuse on children. It is an indictment of the people who believe, as I said at the start of my speech, that a baby’s life is nothing more than a commodity for the use of sexually depraved people.

The bill also talks about the means of child trafficking and how this feeds into the whole process of sexual abuse. It has become such a business that—and it has become a little more difficult to get children out and into this arena now because there is a bit more of a watchful eye over it—we are now seeing pregnant women being trafficked across borders. This is because it is easier and the child is safer—it is in utero. The ‘goods’ are in better condition than if they were put in a styrofoam box with a few holes punched in the lid. These children are in better condition when they go in utero in their mum. They are trafficked across the border and then the babies are born. In fact, the speech from the LAWASIA Conference that I referred to earlier described going to a house and finding babies—the mums had given birth and the babies had been payment for debts owed by families. There were other pregnant women there waiting to give birth and waiting for their child to be given as a payment for a debt in the family. In other cases, the mother had no choice—she had been trafficked herself and had no rights. When we see this type of behaviour and we see the advertisements for, and the hawking on the streets of, virgin children—young virgin children being the product that is sold—then the world really does need to take a good look at itself.

So it is with regret that I think we need to have this type of legislation, but it is with thanks that we are strengthening it. Men travelling from Australia looking to abuse children in other nations are on notice that there are people who will catch them and who will prosecute them. Those men will pay for the acts they are committing on children—and so they should. I stand today to support this bill in its entirety and I say to those who would commit atrocities on children that some day, hopefully, each and every one of you will be caught and each and every one of you will be judged in accordance with the crimes that you have committed.

See this speech in context