Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Child Sex Tourism Offences and Related Measures) Bill 2007 and follow that very passionate speech by the member for Riverina. Child sex tourism, in anyone’s language, is a contemptible practice and it is a particular problem in Third World countries which—perversely—do not have effective laws in place to deal with the problem nor the capacity or inclination to enforce such laws. It should be of no comfort to parents in Australia that paedophiles go overseas to satisfy their perversion—they are only emboldened when they return and, arguably, pose an even greater threat to children on our own shores.

It is no great comfort that a significant number of Australians, I would argue, play a part in the child sex industry overseas, notably in Asia and the Pacific island countries. More than a decade ago, the Crimes Act was strengthened to provide jail terms for Australians who engage in sexual activity with children in foreign countries. Since these changes, a number of prosecutions have been successful; in fact, there have been more than 20 prosecutions, with some 15 convictions. It simply shows that, by strengthening our legislation to deal with these appalling offences, we can more effectively combat the problem. With this in mind, we debate this amendment today.

The bill enhances the Australian government’s ability to deal with child pornography or other child abuse material overseas. Importantly, it creates new child sex offences to augment existing child sex tourism provisions. Furthermore, the legislation ensures that Australians who do commit child sex offences overseas will be prosecuted, even when a foreign country does not have in place specific legislation to deal with this contemptible behaviour or is unwilling to prosecute. Some other components of the bill include amending the child sex tourism offences to add a preparatory offence to capture the behaviour of people preparing to com-mit child sex tourism offences, adding to and introducing new child sex tourism offences to capture the grooming of a young person for the purposes of sex acts overseas, improving the operation of carriage service offences for grooming a child for sex, addressing a current loophole in the legislative framework by forfeiting child abuse or child pornography material used in the commission of child sex offences and repealing part IIIA of the Crimes Act 1914, which deals with child sex tourism, by inserting these provisions into the Criminal Code Act 1995.

Child sex tourism, child sex offences and related matters are not edifying subject matters for debate but, as unpalatable as they are, it is necessary to debate the issues and to confront them in legislation. These abuses are not limited, as we well know, to children overseas; they also affect those children living within our own borders. Quite often we hear that children are our greatest asset and that children are the future. Yes, that is true, but such motherhood statements need to be backed up with actual and real protection. Anything that governments in the Western world can do to strengthen legislation and to provide assistance to rein in some of the preparatory activities and the industry of using and abusing children not only is most welcome but also is a fundamental responsibility of a great Western democracy such as our own.

I am very proud to be part of a government that has a very strong record in protecting children from predators. We have done much as a government to protect and shield children, both in Australia and overseas, from the evil perpetrated by child sexual predators. It is not just about the recognition of the basic evil of such activities but also about the recognition of the damage—the physical, emotional and mental damage—to those victims and also their families. That damage cannot be calculated in any real or monetary terms but it is enormous. All we need to do to understand that is to speak to or read some of the stories of some of the victims of child sex offences.

Only this month, many local members would have participated in the activities of National Child Protection Week. It was great to see local communities embrace this campaign. It was a great opportunity for local communities to break the silence and encourage people to speak about these issues, because speaking about them within particularly small communities is often the first step in helping those who have been victims and in addressing related social problems. White balloons, carrying a powerful message against child sex abuse, were on display in many communities, including Wangaratta and Wodonga. I was privileged to help the volunteers, who had put in so much time, distribute material and the white balloons with their message. I congratulate those who gave their time and continued to pioneer this new campaign. This important week aims to increase individual and community awareness and responsibility for the prevention of abuse and neglect of children, which may still often be a taboo subject in some communities or within some families. That is something we need to work on within our own country to ensure that we break down the walls of silence and encourage people to speak out.

The Australian government takes child abuse and neglect very seriously and makes a significant contribution by focusing on prevention and early intervention strategies in a very real and practical way in local communities. We have the $490 million Stronger Families and Com-munities Strategy, which is a major commitment to early intervention and prevention initiatives.

Returning to some of the other amendments in the bill, the definition of ‘serious and organised crime’ within the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 will be amended to include existing child sex carriage service offences. This will enable the Australian Crime Commission to conduct necessary operations regarding such offences. These important amendments, we are told, have no financial implications for the Commonwealth, but they quite correctly enhance and strengthen our ability to more vigorously deal with child sex tourism offences along with matters pertaining to child pornography. They ensure comprehensive coverage of child sex offences in areas of traditional Commonwealth responsibility. They are most welcome.

I commend the minister and the department for continuing to reform our laws to ensure that we can do whatever is in our power as a nation in this part of the world to try and assist those who are in the most vulnerable position, not only those in Third World or developing countries but also those without an advocate, without any assistance. While assisting those who are incapable of helping themselves—children—we should also turn our minds to those who are the perpetrators—those in privileged positions who have the wealth and the ability to travel and to exploit children sexually—and ask how we deal with this particular problem within our own communities and within our own country. How do we deal with the mind of a person who could seem quite ordinary, quite normal and quite successful and who could be a participant in various communities around the country yet be so systematically abusing children? Unfortunately, those are questions that we will need to deal with for as long as we are on this earth, because this problem is very difficult to eradicate. What we can do is do everything in our power to provide legislation with real teeth to try and bring some of these people to justice. Surely that is the first step, instead of allowing them to have a relatively free rein for their perversions. I commend the minister and I commend the bill to the House.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank my colleagues the members for Brisbane, Riverina and now Indi for their support for this measure. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Child Sex Tourism Offences and Related Measures) Bill 2007 does make important amendments to the law by enhancing the existing child sex tourism regime, including the creation of new child sex tourism offences, particularly extraterritorially. The amendments introduce new overseas child pornography offences and provide a mechanism for forfeiture of child pornography and child abuse material used in the commission of a Commonwealth child sex offence. In relation to the matters raised during the debate, the government welcomes the opposition’s support for the measure. The bill does deserve widespread support. There is no higher priority, of course, than protecting children from predators, particularly serial predators.

Concern was raised that the AFP may not be adequately resourced to investigate child sex tourism offences. Let me put that beyond doubt, if I may. The coalition has massively increased AFP resources, particularly during its recent budget. Over time, it has essentially doubled the AFP resources, which has many challenges, particularly in relation to counterterrorism as well as child sex matters, and it is dealing with new issues in relation to copyright piracy and related questions, for which it has been specifically resourced. Only last month, as part of the Protecting Australian Families Online initiative, we announced a further $43.5 million for the AFP to deal with online child sex exploitation and to establish a special team to deal with those matters—and that funding is for four years. It will allow the employment of an additional 90 new AFP officers in the team by 2009-10. The announcement also included increased funding for prosecutions. It is important to recognise that, if investigations produce evidence that warrants prosecutions and leads to an increase in prosecutions, the DPP be adequately resourced to follow up on these matters. I think this is an illustration, just one of course, of our funding commitment to fighting these very important crimes.

I thank my colleagues the members for Riverina and Indi because in their comments today they highlighted their personal commitment to dealing with this issue, and I thank the member for Riverina for her promotion of the stronger efforts internationally. Her firsthand experience of the nature of the problem, along with the Australian parliamentary delegation that visited South-East Asia, strongly informed the government’s approach in relation to this matter. The central purpose of these laws is to ensure that we have capacity to prosecute in Australia where there are no frameworks to do that in the country where the crime may have been committed. I support my colleague’s efforts to encourage legal practitioners to act pro bono for child victims in poorer countries.

The question of international trafficking and abuse was also raised. The government is dealing with these issues internationally as well as domestically. In 2003, the government provided $20 million to combat people trafficking, including trafficking of children. In 2007, it provided a further $38.3 million to this cause, and this included specific funding to enhance AFP capacity in investigating these matters. I thank my colleagues for their comments and interest in this matter—I think it is important.

By advancing this bill, we are ensuring that Australia has strong and comprehensive laws on sexual offences against children overseas. Enhancements to Australia’s existing child sex tourism offence regime will ensure that our laws comprehensively and effectively target those who travel abroad to engage in child sex tourism. It is something that is totally abhorrent, I think, to any sensible and well-meaning person. Those who organise such activity for others are equally reprehensible in their conduct. New offences relating to child pornography material overseas will prevent Australians who travel to countries lacking effective laws to deal with child pornography from escaping prosecution.

Further, forfeiture orders will provide an important mechanism to prevent child pornography being returned or retained by those who have had it in their possession. The government is committed to the protection of children from the threat of sexual abuse. The bill will complement other current initiatives by the government in relation to the protection of children, including the measures in the Northern Territory, which have been commented on in the debate on other legislation that has been supported, as well as our efforts to protect children online. This is part of a comprehensive approach in dealing with these issues and, I think, confirms our commitment, particularly to children both here and abroad. I commend the bill and thank members for their support for it.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.