Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Obviously, there's no more important task before this parliament than to protect children who can and have been the subject of these types of terrible and horrendous offending. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill 2019 does exactly that. It does four very important things. Firstly, it brings into play new offences against grooming activities and for websites and online platforms designed to host the material. Secondly, it creates new aggravated offences for the most abhorrent types of child abuse, including where the death of a child occurs or a child is subjected to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. Thirdly, it creates presumptions against bail and protection for vulnerable witnesses. And, fourthly, it introduces minimum sentences for the most serious child sex offences.

Why is this bill required? Last year there were 18,000 complaints of child exploitation to the AFP, which represented a doubling of the number of complaints in one year. Prosecutions, which are often very difficult, are up 18 per cent since 2016-17. And last year, a staggering 28 per cent of convicted Commonwealth child sex offenders did not spend a single day in prison. In fact, since 2012, 42 per cent of Commonwealth child sex offenders did not receive a term of imprisonment. For those who did, the average length of time actually served was six months. These are matters that must be corrected, which is precisely what this bill does. It will provide specific and general deterrence by those four matters that we've noted, particularly with respect to minimum sentencing.

Labor has a position, apparently, on minimum sentencing. It was expressed by the shadow Attorney­General in very clear terms. He said, 'Labor has a longstanding opposition to minimum sentencing.' He then restated, 'Labor is firmly opposed to mandatory sentences.' Given the importance of this issue, it is worth interrogating how longstanding and how firm that opposition is. Have there been offence categories which are so bad that exceptions have been created to this principle? Well, first, a Labor Commonwealth Attorney-General in this parliament introduced minimum sentences for aggravated offences of people smuggling. He said at the time that that reflected the seriousness of the activity being prosecuted. Second, all states have minimum penalties for homicide, and as recently as 2006 the Labor minister in Queensland affirmed and increased those. Third, Labor in WA introduced minimum penalties for aggravated home invasion. Fourth, last year the Labor government in Victoria introduced minimum penalties for those who assault public officers, including ambulance drivers. It raises this question: if it's appropriate to create an exemption, as I think it is, for minimum sentences to apply—

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