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

As I started to say in my speech yesterday, Labor does not support mandatory minimums. We know that they 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 inform the 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 principle I don't agree with mandatory sentencing … in the end I do think these matters ought to be determined by judges and magistrates.

It's a shame Mr Howard isn't getting rolled out for his opinion on mandatory sentencing.

The Law Council of Australia has urged the Senate to reject mandatory sentencing in bills, because of the real risk of unintended consequences with potentially life-shattering outcomes. There is no evidence that mandatory sentencing has the effect of reducing crime rates. Dangerously, this particular piece of legislation will have the unintended consequence of the proposed mandatory minimums possibly applying to teenagers. Examples of this provided in the Law Council of Australia's submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee included: an 18-year-old sexting a 15-year-old would lead to a mandatory sentence of five years for the 18-year-old; an 18-year-old sending an intimate image to a 15-year-old would lead to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for the 18-year-old; and where a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old might be sharing sexual images with each other in a consensual relationship, the day the older partner turns 18, the 18-year-old would be looking at an automatic five-year sentence. I agree these things may be criminal and, in accordance with the law, those people should be punished, but I'm not sure that the punishment of a five-year minimum sentence would serve that particular crime. We want responsible use of the internet and mobile messaging by our kids and teenagers—I have three children: a 15-year-old, an 11 year-old and a nine-year-old—and I would not find one person who disagrees with that. I hope that our kids are sensible and don't engage in such behaviour, but, if they do, I don't want them to go to jail for a mandatory minimum term of five years.

The financial impact of this bill is stated as being largely limited to the costs associated with housing federal prisoners, and its overall financial impact on the states and territories will be negligible. This is yet another example of the Turnbull government fudging the figures on this. They have cut $184 million from the Australian Federal Police funding in the 2017-18 budget. This significantly reduces our federal law enforcement's capacity to hunt down perpetrators of this crime. The AFP needs funding to fight the paedophile rings that operate on our doorstep. This is a global challenge for our law enforcement agencies and the AFP; it reaches far beyond our borders. Children are being enslaved by paedophile rings with links to Australia, and sexual acts with adults are being live-streamed over the internet. These crimes are horrendous. Children are being held as sex slaves known as 'pay-per-view'. The children are routinely raped and that is streamed live via encrypted online video. The Australian reported that last year the AFP assessment centre received more than 8,000 reports of child exploitation. As of 21 September, it has already received more than 6,776 reports of child exploitation for this calendar year. These criminals are producing thousands and thousands of sexually explicit materials, depicting children being abused and brutalised. We must stop the online exploitation of children, and we must stop it within our communities.

Labor always has and always will fight to protect children here and overseas from exploitation, abuse and sexual crimes. We are proud of our record under the Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments, and our achievements include—some of them we are all incredibly proud of—in 1994 introducing world-leading offences targeting Australians who engage in the sexual abuse of children overseas; bringing federal, state and territory governments together in 2009 to implement the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children, which includes a funding commitment of $63.6 million over four years from the Commonwealth government; introducing new child abuse offences and protection measures in 2010; and establishing the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse—the first inquiry of this type at a national level. The royal commission, among other things, inquired into how systems have failed to protect children. It made many recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices to prevent and better respond to sexual abuse in institutions. I look forward to the Redress Scheme. Labor's achievements also include appointing Australia's first National Children's Commissioner in 2013 to advocate for the rights of Australia's young people in and introducing the vulnerable witness act in 2013.

We can always do more to protect our kids. I am a parent raising the first generation of social media users. We all have a responsibility to keep our kids safe whilst using the internet. We need to be aware of how much time our kids are on the internet and educate them about the possible dangers of chatting with people on the internet. We can sit with the kids and explore the internet together and monitor the sites they use. We can lock certain sites down and have software that monitors our children's email and social media. We can also check with our kids' schools and other schools in our communities as to what safety measures are in place to make sure our kids can talk with us about what is happening online. They need to be cybersafe. We will be voting for this bill but we will be seeking to amend it in the Senate, as I have pointed out. We need to make this something that we do together, make it tougher and not use it as political pointscoring. We need to make it more effective, because we know this is the best way to stop sexual offenders.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work done by a community group in my community, called the Queen of Hearts Foundation, and the founder and director of that organisation, Michelle Ellery. In 2014 the Queen of Hearts Foundation was established in my community to run a community based resource centre that supports men, women and children. Their mission is to protect kids and support survivors of child sexual abuse and domestic violence on their journey for justice and healing. I would like to take this opportunity to read into Hansard how incredible the work is that they are doing for those vulnerable children who have been victims of sexual abuse. I must admit that, when I first learned of the incredible work that was being done, I had to remind myself we were still in Australia and these things still happen, irrespective of how much we all want them not to. So I thank them for their work and I put on record my thanks and gratitude for all that they do.

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