George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much indeed, Senator Hinch. I want to acknowledge the interest you have taken in this issue both as a senator and, for many years before that, a broadcaster. I can tell you some of the measures the Australian government is taking to deal with the evil of child abuse. The Commonwealth supports an approach which ensures greater national consistency at state and territory schemes through Working With Children Checks. The 36 recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse report on Working With Children Checks raised a range of significant technical and legal resourcing issues, most of which fall to the states and territories, who, as you know, have primary responsibility for child protection matters. On 17 February this year my department led a working group of all Australian governments in order to further develop the Working With Children Checks scheme and to ensure greater consistency in information sharing between jurisdictions. So that is one measure that we have undertaken.

I might take the opportunity to mention another measure that the government has undertaken. In November last year we announced that we had developed additional measures to stop child sex offenders from travelling overseas by amending the Passports Act. Under current passport legislation the passports of all Commonwealth offenders, including child sex offenders, are already refused or cancelled for the period they are on parole. Law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities are also already able to request the Minister for Foreign Affairs to cancel sex offenders passports or refuse to issue passports. A number have been cancelled or refused— (Time expired)