Peter Dutton may have finally got something right in a difficult election campaign. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
After a disastrous election campaign, Peter Dutton’s call for a national sex offenders register two weeks before polling day might seem cynical and desperate.
But it’s also a worthwhile idea in a country that has long prioritised the privacy of criminals ahead of the safety of our children.
If a convicted child rapist was going to spend time alone with your son or daughter, do you think you should have the right to know about it?
Every parent would answer an emphatic “yes” to that question. It wouldn’t matter if the offender had done their time or was now supposedly reformed. You’d still want to know.
But in most states and territories, this information is nearly impossible to obtain.
Our so-called child protection registers in the ACT and NSW list the names of offenders who have murdered or raped a child, as well as those convicted of child pornography, kidnapping, grooming or prostitution. These lists are closely guarded by the police and kept off-limits to the public.
Accessing names from the register or sharing it publicly is an offence punishable by up to two years in jail – a harsher sentence than some offenders receive when they abuse a child.
It’s time to give parents the right to know the identity of those who have committed serious offences against children so they can make better decisions about how to protect their own kids.
Bruce and Denise Morcombe, whose son Daniel was murdered by twice-convicted sex offender Brett Cowan in 2003, have been campaigning for a national register for more than a decade. They point out that the secrecy surrounding Cowan’s criminal history was so absolute that even his wife was unaware of his previous offending.
But their push for reform has been stifled by bureaucrats and academics, who argue that providing public information on sex offenders would lead to vigilantism – angry residents staking out the homes of offenders and tormenting them.
These fears are overblown. Introducing a publicly-accessible national register does not mean the government puts the names and addresses of every sex offender online for all and sundry to look up via a Google search.
The model proposed by the Coalition would be based on the restricted access register introduced in Western Australia in 2012.
In that state, information is not freely available; it must be requested, and police only provide it when necessary. A parent or guardian of a child who is about to spend time alone with an adult can ask police if that person is a registered sex offender. They can also request information on missing registered sex offenders and those living in their suburb.
There’s no evidence that WA’s limited public register has led to waves of violence against sex offenders.
The system in that state appears to be functioning well, to the extent that other jurisdictions, such as Queensland and South Australia, are implementing reforms to make their registers more accessible.
But leaving this in the hands of individual states is not sensible. We know sex offenders tend to move between jurisdictions to evade detection (as Daniel Morcombe’s killer did) and that state authorities in Australia are often bad at sharing information with each other.
That’s why a national register is the way to go. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a small step in the right direction.
Child protection advocates Bravehearts have warned that a public sex criminal database would have a limited impact, as it would only reveal details on a small percentage of offenders, given most are never convicted and won’t appear on the list.
This is true, so a lot more needs to be done to fight the scourge of child abuse in our society. Increased funding for rehabilitation, harsher sentences for repeat offenders, and more public awareness campaigns should also be on the agenda.
But let’s pick the low-hanging fruit to get the ball rolling. As the cliche goes, if it saves one child from abuse, it will be more than worth it.
Peter Dutton has been wrong about so much in this campaign that he was bound to eventually get something right. The best time for a national sex offenders register was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.
