Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is one of the greatest days of my life—to stand here and speak on the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill. I want to pay tribute to Anthony Foster and his daughters Emma and Katie and his wife Chrissie. Anthony Foster was a great fighter against child sexual abuse. His family has experienced a great tragedy and personal loss, and he died only a few weeks ago and was quite rightly awarded a state funeral in Melbourne.

The current situation goes back less than one year. In July 2016 I was fortunate enough to be a senator-elect, and my first public appearance as a soon-to-be ex-journalist was at the Melbourne Press Club. Just before I got up to speak, Michael Rowland, who was the MC, said to me, 'Do you know Rachel Griffiths, the actress?' I said. 'Yes—I have known her since she was a teenager.' He said, 'She says she knows you and she gave me this to give you.' As I walked up to the microphone he handed me this note, which said:

Dear Derryn,

Firstly, congrats—so proud of you being alive and making a difference. I want to reach out to you regarding a child trafficking and human rights issue. I have talked to Julie Bishop, who was setting it up with Brandis to discuss—but you would be our key advocate. We want to take passports permanently from convicted sex offenders. Child sex tourism is on the rise as local opportunities, schools et cetera, are shrinking. We are constantly dealing with victims of Australian offenders.

She concluded by saying:

If we can take a passport off a bankrupt, why can't we stop our paedophiles travelling to Myanmar? I'd love to discuss this with you. Congrats … How are we going to get this done?

Rachel

I read that out to start my speech that day and I said I did not believe it could be true—surely people who are on the child sex offenders register cannot be allowed to go overseas? I checked with Foreign Affairs Minister Bishop, the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan, and the Australian Federal Police, and I discovered that that year 800 men on the child sex offenders register had gone overseas and about 350 of them had gone to places like Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia on what I called deliberately—because this is what they are—child rape holidays. Many of you will have been to these places. A couple of years ago I went to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and you see middle-aged Caucasian Australian men there with young local kids and you know they are not there to go to Angkor Wat and look at the temples. That is why I started moves to get this passport ban on sex offenders brought into place. I discovered, as Senator Patterson said, that 20,000 names—mostly men, a few women—were on the register and more than 3,000 of them were on the register for life.

This passport ban is just the start. As has been alluded to, in the spring session we plan more legislation to try to cut down on cybercrime, on men who now, if they cannot leave the country, will start using their credit cards and Skype to hire children, sometimes from their own parents, in the Philippines to have live sex acts sent between Australia and the Philippines. That will come up in the next legislation. I know we are going to question time, so I would like to speak for a short time later in conclusion on one of the most important issues I have ever been involved with in my life.

Debate interrupted.