Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prior to coming into this place, I spent 12 years as a police officer in the New South Wales Police Force, for five of which I was a detective. I saw many things during that time but none so evil, depraved and abhorrent as child sexual assault and child-abuse material. It is the only thing that still haunts me today. There is nothing more important than working to protect our innocent, vulnerable children.

So today, I commend our dedicated law enforcement specialists who have worked tirelessly on Operation Arkstone. The achievements of Arkstone have been broadly publicised in the media today as a large-scale Australian Federal Police led investigation which identified 46 child victims across Australia and exposed a network of child sex offenders. Arkstone has been one of the most significant child protection investigations by the AFP to date, due to the scale of the offending and its reach across Australia—although I do not intend to go through the facts in this place, save to say that those who did not engage in direct contact with victims but accessed the online material are as evil and depraved as those inflicting the torture on these helpless children. I commend the dedication of our officers who worked tirelessly to bring these criminals to justice and to try and rid our society of these heinous crimes. If found guilty, in the absence of capital punishment in this country, these monsters should be locked up for life and the key thrown away.

I would like to acknowledge the major body of work that the home affairs minister has been doing to improve our legislation and to better keep our Australian children safe. Legislation passed last year included the introduction of Carly's law, which targets online predators who use the internet to prepare or plan to sexually abuse children. Carly's law makes it a crime to plan to harm a child under 16 and targets predators who misrepresent their age.

In June this year, this government passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill into law. This new act will set new mandatory minimum jail terms. The legislation creates a new maximum life penalty for the most serious Commonwealth offences and a presumption against bail to help keep offenders in custody while they face trial. This legislation also creates further offences for grooming third parties, creating additional aggravating sentencing factors to apply to certain child sex offences, including the age and maturity of the victim and the number of people involved in the commission of the offence. It increases maximum penalties across the spectrum of Commonwealth child sex offenders, including up to life imprisonment for the most serious offences and presumptions in favour of cumulative sentences and actual imprisonment, also ensuring that sex offenders, upon release from custody, are adequately supervised. Importantly, it prevents the courts from discounting sentences on the basis of good character where this was used to facilitate the crime. It is a sad fact of our modern society that sexual abuse and exploitation of children has become more global, more prevalent and more extreme due to the dark web. The number of child abuse material files downloaded on the dark web has risen dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a 163 per cent average increase in the number of files downloaded from April to June of this year compared with the same period last year. I don't understand how, in a time when we're spending billions on cures for cancers, viruses and medical advancement, the world allows this evil pandemic to creep into our society. We have an obligation to our children to protect them, so I urge all the mums and dads and the caregivers to talk to your kids, check their devices and educate yourself. If you think something is suspicious or not right, listen to your instincts because they're usually right. As a father, I'd rather make an apology to someone I have offended than make an apology to my child for not acting.

House adjourned at 20:01