Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all honourable members who have contributed to the debate on this Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017, which is a very important bill that will protect vulnerable children, particularly within our region, from being preyed upon by Australian paedophiles.

I would like to thank the members for Mallee and Fisher and the shadow Attorney-General who contributed to the debate. The bill reflects the seriousness with which this parliament needs to take offences against children, particularly the seriousness with which we need to take child sex tourism. They are tough measures. No country anywhere in the world will ever have done more to crack down on child sex tourism, as far as we are aware, once this bill passes the parliament. It will send the strongest possible message that the parliament will not tolerate children being abused. We will not tolerate such abhorrent crimes.

The risk posed to vulnerable children overseas by Australian child sex offenders is unacceptable. Currently, we do not have effective mechanisms to stop registered child sex offenders—offenders who appear on the national register that we have—from travelling overseas to prey on children who are often in countries that do not have the same robust approach to these offences as we do here in Australia. The reality is we are in a region where law enforcement agencies have different capabilities, where cultural practices are different and where, in some cases, the sorts of things that we would consider to be abhorrent crimes are not even criminalised. It is up to us to take the appropriate action to make sure that Australians are not participating as child sex tourists. Unless these tough new laws are passed, I think it is very clear that Australians will continue to travel overseas to commit such offences. This will make Australia a world leader in protecting vulnerable children overseas from child sex tourism. I do urge all members to support this legislation as a matter of urgency.

I just want to address some of the points that the shadow Attorney-General made. I appreciate that he made it clear that the opposition will be supporting this bill, and I thank him for that. I think that is very important. He did make some suggestions about the sorts of things that should be looked at in the Senate as possible avenues for amendment. If any of the suggestions that he has made are taken up, I can assure him that the effect of this bill will not work. If the suggestions that he made for amendments were to become reality in the Senate, we will not achieve what we are trying to achieve here. All of the things that he has suggested have been very extensively explored by the government when we crafted this legislation. With things such as a merits review, there was a specific reason why we did not include a merits review within this legislation. Of the five passport cancellations that the foreign minister made of convicted paedophiles in Australia, three of them were overturned through merits review. So 60 per cent of them were overturned through merits review. It is our expectation that if merits review were to be in this legislation, this legislation will not work.

Secondly, the shadow Attorney-General talked about scalability and dealing with less serious offenders. You only appear on the child offender register if you have committed serious offences. You only appear on that register if you have had a custodial sentence imposed on you of over one year. And you could appreciate in Australia that, if you have had a custodial sentence imposed on you for only one year for your crimes, you have done something pretty horrendous. So there is no such thing as someone who appears on the ANCOR who has only done something that is not serious. Everything that they have done is serious. That is why we have this register. The idea that maybe you only abused one child and that that is not particularly serious is not something that the government would remotely entertain. So I would urge members in the other place to take account of this if they were to look at making amendments to this. If they do make amendments, I fear that the whole intent of the legislation will be destroyed.

Finally, the shadow Attorney-General talked about ministerial discretion. Again, there were very specific reasons why the government chose not to go down this path when we crafted that legislation. There are 20,000 offenders that currently appear on the child offender register, and 2½ thousand are added every year. If we were to require the foreign minister to individually review all of those cases, it would literally be impossible for that minister to make a sensible judgement on all of these cases, and that workload would be completely impossible for DFAT to administer. Of the three suggestions the shadow Attorney-General has made, I urge the Labor Party to completely ignore the idea of amending this legislation based on any of those suggestions. I am not suggesting ill will on his part. But if he and the Labor Party were to go down this road, this legislation will not work. We will not be stopping the two Australian child sex offenders travelling overseas every single day.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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