Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sexual crimes against children are abhorrent. Children are among the most vulnerable members of our community, and every measure should be undertaken to ensure their safety and their security. Sexual crime against children is not a debate for political handballing and pointscoring. But, sadly, that's what we've seen today. I'm proud to support the members for Hotham, Moreton and Isaacs who spoke before me on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill. Labor is committed to strong legislation that will keep children safe. Children deserve our absolute protection and our support and we must do everything within our power to ensure that kids are safe from sexual predators both here and abroad. We have an obligation also to the children of other countries. We must protect them from the criminals who stalk them on the net, groom them, deceive them and exploit them in the most heinous way possible. Labor are committed to doing what we can to protect children from harm and abuse and we have zero—zero—tolerance for child sexual abuse. The tragedy is that children who are victims of sexual abuse endure lifelong suffering, carrying the burden of crimes that should never have been committed. The parents of these children are affected. Nobody wants to go through the nightmare of losing a child, but to lose your child at the hands of a sexual predator would be nothing more than a living hell. No-one's child should be subjected to sexually explicit conversations or to being stalked by sexual predators who are using social media platforms or apps that specifically target children.

These crimes are being committed in Australia and overseas. Anti-Slavery Australia reported in its submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee that children in the Philippines are lured to sex tourism hotspots, such as Angeles City, Metro Manila and Cebu City, on the promise of legitimate jobs. Thereafter they are physically and/or emotionally coerced into working in the sex industry, including, increasingly, online exploitation dens, where they are made to perform on webcams for foreign online sex tourists. In 2013 it was estimated that tens of thousands of boys and girls were in the webcam sex tourism trade alone, with that number predicted to increase. What depraved, sick humans they are who consume this. Adding to the terror are the children trapped in child trafficking and slavery. There has been an increase in trafficking to use children in online exploitation. This is driven by the financial support from Australian offenders who encourage the production of sexual exploitation materials.

Labor have no tolerance for these crimes by paedophiles, and we want to see them stopped and perpetrators locked up, facing the most severe penalties. The criminals who groom and procure children online need to be stopped. The international paedophilia rings that traffic and enslave children need to be stopped. We welcome some of the changes in this bill, including: the new offence to criminalise the grooming of third parties for the purpose of procuring a child for sexual activity; new aggravated offences for child sex abuse where a child is subject to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or which causes the death of a child; the addition of residential treatment orders as a sentencing alternative to allow intellectually disabled offenders to receive access to specialised treatment options; and the removal of the requirement to seek leave before a recorded interview of a vulnerable witness can be admitted as evidence in chief. We believe the government is playing sick politics with laws that protect children from sexual abuse. We are not going soft on the perpetrators of these crimes, and those who seek to score political points are nothing more than sick.

We commend the actions of the Australian state and territory police and the Australian Federal Police in combating this scourge and stopping the sexual offenders who are exploiting children. As the member for Hotham pointed out, what a horrible job it is for those AFP men and women who have to trawl through this material. I want to support the member for Hotham in her statement of thanks and gratitude for what these men and women go through in having to classify this material. I can only imagine it would be incredibly horrendous to watch.

The police in each state and territory and the AFP work closely with international counterparts to rescue children and stop the offenders. We commend task force agents of the Queensland Police Service and their international counterparts for the many operations that they run, including the operations which they undertook and ran on the dark web network over many months which led to the rescue of 85 children. That means 85 kids are now removed from that life. There were hundreds of arrests, including the site's operator, Shannon McCoole. He is serving a 35-year sentence for the sexual abuse of multiple children. David Cecchin, a member of the paedophile Shannon McCoole's child exploitation website, had previously pleaded guilty for possessing, accessing and disseminating child exploitation material. He regularly disseminated child exploitation material on the website, and he's been sentenced to seven years and five months jail. He had 1,500 items of child exploitation material on his computer. Ninety per cent of that material was photographs and the rest was videos.

The creation of new child exploitation material needs to be stopped. The paedophiles and criminals who are running these internet sites and creating the content need to be stopped. No child should ever be exploited in this way. We believe the bill should be tougher, stronger and more effective by: increasing maximum sentences, with the worst offenders locked up for life; keeping up with changing technologies such as criminals watching child abuse through webcams and live streaming, and stopping them, charging them and bringing them to justice; and introducing new aggravated offences for people who incite or direct the production of child abuse material.

This bill introduces mandatory minimum sentences. We do not support mandatory minimum sentences, because we know mandatory minimums do not work. As the member for Hotham has already pointed out, all of the agencies, including the Attorney-General's Department, have said they don't support mandatory minimums either. The bill's mandatory sentencing is problematic because of different ages of consent across Australia. And mandatory minimums can lead to fewer prosecutions and convictions, sometimes leading juries to acquit rather than sentence, and can conflict with the role of the judiciary. People will not have an incentive to plead guilty or to inform police on others' actions if they know they face a mandatory sentence. It builds in the incentive to fight and appeal against convictions. Even former Prime Minister John Howard has previously commented, 'As a matter of public principle, I do not agree with mandatory sentencing and, in the end, I do think these matters ought to be determined by judges and by magistrates.' It's a shame that those opposite only seek to champion John Howard when it suits them. He's only getting rolled out for his opposition to other things and not his opposition to mandatory sentencing.

Debate interrupted.

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