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

I thank the member for her question. One of the very disturbing features of the COVID-19 pandemic has been something that was noted recently by the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. Their child protection triage unit recently said that the average number of child exploitation reports that it receives has increased from 776 per month to 1,731 per month, during the period of the COVID pandemic. I think this was again stated by the eSafety Commissioner when she said that significant increases have occurred in reports to the eSafety Office about child sexual abuse material. She said, 'Abusers see COVID-19 as honey pot for them, with at-risk boys and girls spending so much more time at home and online.

I might just pause to note some of the remarkable efforts of AUSTRAC in its investigation of these types of matters. It was probably not the case in 2006, when AUSTRAC's role was expanded, that anyone would have realised exactly how important something that ostensibly was set up to investigate money laundering would be in uncovering these types of offences. In fact, it was AUSTRAC that recently revealed details of alleged payments from a New South Wales resident to a known child exploitation facilitator in the Philippines. Its work has been absolutely outstanding in uncovering this type of offending.

Of course, excellent investigative agencies and techniques still require ultimately very strong responses inside the justice system, which is the very point of the government's Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Bill, which will soon be put to a vote in the Senate. This bill contains a very comprehensive set of changes to the full cycle of the justice system that deals with serious child sex offenders. Obviously, the bill deals with the necessity for sentencing to become more aligned with community expectations about the seriousness of the commission of these sorts of offences, which I'll speak to briefly in a moment. But it also creates new offences relating to websites and online platforms, new maximum penalties, it deals with presumption against bail, designed to detain more serious offenders in custody, and it also implements recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, designed to protect vulnerable witnesses. But the central reason for the bill and perhaps its most important part is the fact that 39 per cent of child sex offenders convicted of Commonwealth offences last financial year did not spend a single day in jail. That is why this bill squarely is aimed at sentencing.

I will provide the House with one example. This is of a 24-year-old man from New South Wales, previously convicted of eight child sex offences and listed on a child protection register, who reoffended and was convicted of a further 14 preparatory child sex offences, some involving boys as young as 10, and was given a total head sentence of a little over three years. I think everyone in this House would agree that that is not aligned with community expectations. Under this bill, that person would have been subject to a minimum sentence of three and four years for every single one of those additional convictions.

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