Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Child Sex Tourism Offences and Related Measures) Bill 2007, as I am sure every member of the Australian parliament will do. It is a particular passion of mine and I have been doing this for some time. It is a shameful fact that children are being brutalised every minute of every day due to child trafficking both into the sex industry and into the slave labour industry. It was interesting to note in my involvement with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, my involvement on the international Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians and my liaison with UNICEF that, in many of the countries that have a national plan of action against commercial sexual exploitation of children, child sex trafficking is at its highest level. So it is not good enough for any country, including Australia, to have in place obligations and legislation if this legislation is not going to be enacted and people are not going to be provided the opportunity to take legal action against those who would perpetrate crimes against children.

In particular through the Inter-Parliamentary Union forum, my colleague Judy Moylan and I decided that we would be instrumental in forming a committee. It was initially going to be called ‘Women Against Abuse of Children’. We then decided, because there was a lot of interest from our male colleagues in that forum, that we would call it ‘World Against Abuse of Children’. We have had some 25 parliamentarians from different countries register their interest in being part of this committee that we are trying to pull together at the moment. The committee is to determine what legislation is available in countries, but my specific interest is in how people can access legal retribution for the abuse of children.

When I was in Cambodia and Indonesia recently, I went around the communities where significant child sex trafficking is taking place for the purpose of getting money into the family. I found—and it has been demonstrated by UNICEF many times in their publications—that in many parts of the region, usually in more traditional areas, children, and girls in particular, may be viewed as a commodity by their family. I quote from a UNICEF brochure, Child Protection:

This makes it seem acceptable to some families that they “sell” their children into the sex industry, and acceptable for men to purchase children for sex. Moreover, sexual activity is often seen as a private matter, making communities reluctant to act and intervene in cases of sexual exploitation.

That is the way many of the communities described things when I spoke to them both in Cambodia and in Indonesia.

In my visit to the Asia-Pacific region with UNICEF, representing the women’s coordinating committee, I went to Lombok, where parliamentarians were exposed to a variety of different issues that were confronting islands such as Lombok. It was an emotionally enlightening visit. I met with the Mataram Children’s Council. There was leadership in young children. Some of these young children had been exploited; some of them had been involved in prostitution through the sale of their bodies by their families and some of them had great promise. Many families are given inaccurate information. They are told that their child will get money for their family by doing house duties and duties that would be acceptable, and yet, when they are taken from their family, they might go into begging. They can be deliberately maimed and disfigured, have acid burn out their eyes and have their figures and faces distorted by acid and burns. They can have limbs physically removed. These things are in order to make them more appealing to the general tourist, who will provide more money for a child with more deformity in their looks. This is being done purposely by traffickers of children.

On this visit with the Mataram Children’s Council, the young people were absolutely inspirational. It was up to me to provide a report to the IPU general assembly in the closing ceremony. In it I talked about the Martaram Children’s Council and how these young children aged 15 to 17 were an inspiration in their articulate delivery of the issues that were confronting the children on the island of Lombok, but they were representative of islands and areas all over the world.

I was drawn to the children’s drawing on a child’s tree of life. It was a mind, body and soul map. Let me tell you: there was not one out of the 14 parliamentarians on this visit that could deny what this child’s body was screaming. It said: ‘When you beat and abuse my body, you are not only leaving scars and broken bones on my physical self; you are destroying my mind and my soul. They were saying to me that my broken bones and my bruises may heal. But my mind and my soul are lost to me forever.’

The plea from this youth group to the visiting parliamentarians in such a passionate and articulate way was memorable and will never leave my mind. They said: ‘We want to be children. We want to play as children. We do not want to be afraid of being sold into slave labour or being sold into the sex industry. Just let us be children, please. Please listen to us speak and then go back to your parliaments. Be the voice of the children in your parliaments.’ It is up to all of us to do that: be the voice of children in the parliaments of Australia, in the parliaments of the world.

This is a fabulous initiative between UNICEF and the Italian parliament. It is a joint cooperation building walls of protection. It is a collaboration between governments—fabulous, and I cannot speak highly enough of it. Here is a typical ad that is on many of the buses. This one in particular shows the situation in Indonesia and talks about the commercial sexual exploitation of children. This little girl is saying, ‘Although I’m still alive, in reality, I’m dead inside.’

That is what takes place in the lives of not 10, not 20, not 100, not 1,000, not even 100,000 children. We are talking about millions of children across the world who are being used and brutalised in an ongoing fashion. That is why it is important to stand up and support the ever-increasing vigilance and powers of cooperation as an Australian citizen and as an Australian member of parliament, to improve the operations of the AFP and other bodies in cross-border agreements and ensure that governments, departments, agencies, police, protection can work together to outmanoeuvre those who would abuse our children.

It is not good enough to put in place MOUs or national plans if we are not prepared to provide access to legal aid and legal services for these children and their families. In those significantly poverty-stricken islands and other areas, you can have 1,000 laws in place. You can have every piece of legislation laid out and put on the table, but if those families and those children cannot access legal aid to legally prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against their children then what will we have achieved? We will have achieved a feel-good and a do-gooder inspirational piece of legislation, but some countries are not prepared to enable people to prosecute through providing legal services. As most of these people are in such poverty that they cannot even put one meal a day on the table for their children—a simple meal of rice—how are they going to access legal aid and legal services to prosecute somebody who told them that their daughter was going to be helping in a household and instead was placed in a brothel?

When we were in Cambodia we met the inspirational Sister Bernadette at a CARITAS program. While there, we also met men and women with HIV. We spoke with a 21-year-old young girl who weighed about 40 kilos. She had been trafficked into the sex industry and into a local brothel at three years of age. She then became infected with HIV and developed AIDS. Of course, she then had no opportunity to earn money for her pimp—her owner—so she was thrown out onto the street. She had been in that place since she was three years old. This is the plight not only of one little girl but also of thousands and thousands of little girls and little boys across many countries. This girl went to the CARITAS centre and they were able to help her, but this is happening every day. This insidious crime is being perpetrated not only by Australian men but also by men of many nationalities. You see it time and time again when you are doing this kind of work in this area. This is taking place on a day-to-day basis.

This young lady needs to be provided with access to legal action against the person who ruined her life. If there is a rigorous legal prosecution process in place to make examples of the people who commit these crimes, then you will start to get to the bottom of the situation. I have been trying for some time now—and it is gaining momentum—to get a group of international lawyers together who will do pro bono work to make examples of the people who commit these crimes. Unless we provide access to legal services and legal aid, then we are simply not going to overcome this problem.

Many national plans of action against the commercial exploitation of women have been put in place and this issue has led to the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Child Sex Tourism Offences and Related Measures) Bill before us today. I give credit to UNICEF because they do a magnificent job in child protection, but governments need to recognise and respond to the problems. UNICEF’s Child Protection report says:

Governments need to show commitment to creating strong legal frameworks—

and that is the point I am making—

that comply with international legal standards, policies and programmes, and to enforcing and implementing them to protect children. Laws that adequately punish people who sexually exploit children need to be in place and enforced. Organized crime, corruption and bribery need to be properly addressed. A legal framework that protects the survivors of sexual exploitation also needs to be in place.

The hideous fact is that when an eight- or nine-year-old child is trafficked from Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia or one of the islands into another country—such as Thailand, the Philippines or wherever—when that child is found it is the child who is put into detention. It is the child who is locked up because they are in the country illegally and so they most often become the victim again. This child has had no choice in life. It has been taken away, brutalised, used in a fashion that is abhorrent to every upstanding Australian and world citizen—and so it should be—and become a victim because it is in the country illegally and will be treated as such.

Honestly, that hideous thing is taking place in the world today. That shameful experience for children is going on every day across the world. We are a country trying to combat every move that a predator might make on a child. This bill starts to move onto the child pornography issue. The statistics on the commercial sexual exploitation of children show that child pornography occurs on a lesser scale than prostitution or general trafficking but is becoming more aggressive, more prominent, more likely to be taking place.

There are countless stories of men travelling to countries, paying young children to come back to their accommodation, committing indecent sex acts on these children, photographing and videoing themselves whilst this is taking place and then selling these off to the world in porn-ography. In the many years I have been looking at the internet I have wondered how healthy the internet is for the people of the world. It seems that perverted, sick and twisted-minded people who commit shameful acts on children can now, with the flick of a switch, get in touch with millions of other perverted, sick individuals who want to do the same. It then becomes almost normal or almost acceptable because there seems to be so many of these people.

The more power, the more influence and the greater the ability to prosecute these perpetrators of crimes on children, let it be, so be it. Whatever the crime, let there be a punishment that fits the crime of taking a child’s mind, soul and body, and leaving that child walking around totally dead inside. Does anybody in this world have a right to do that to a child? No. People are standing up now and being counted. There are fabulous organisations providing child protection but they need support—they need support from the Australian people, from governments and from international law enforcers and they need the support of the international legal framework in order to do their job properly.

We intend to, every time we can, put something forward in the Australian parliament that demonstrates that we are there monitoring and coming to get those who commit these crimes against children. I congratulate the minister and support this vitally important bill, as I am sure everybody in this parliament will. I would like to see more bills come in in order to block any avenue or effort that anyone might go to to exploit or abuse a child.

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