Page 5402 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 November 2010
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The new defence of lawful possession will apply specifically to those people whose work contributes to the operation of the criminal justice system, and who, through their work, are required to be in possession of child exploitation material.
One of the reasons for establishing this offence is the establishment of a national child exploitation tracking system and the Australian National Victim Image Library. The National Victim Image Library is a tool to combat online paedophilia, which will aid the identification of child victims and offenders.
These recent reforms are evidence of the ACT government’s commitment to protect our most valuable citizens, our children, from the most horrendous of crimes. The government will continue to update and reform our legislation to ensure that the ACT continues to have effective child protection legislation.
At this point, it is also worth making some observations about the work of ACT Policing in this area. I am very pleased to see that ACT Policing continues to provide dedicated information and education programs in our school environments, teaching both primary and high school students about the risks and hazards of participating in the online environment and what steps they need to take to keep themselves safe.
In particular, I commend ACT Policing for the work they are undertaking through the “ThinkUKnow” initiative, which outlines to young people and children, indeed primary school children as well as high school age young people, the risks involved in participating in online social media, how they need to protect their personal details and information, how they need to be aware of the types of images that they post online and the impact they can have, and how they can act to prevent themselves from becoming a victim of abuse from online social media. This is a very important initiative and supports hand-in-hand the law enforcement activity that is engaged in by our police and other law enforcement agencies, and which is supported by this legislation.
The government maintains a strong interest in continuing to reform and enhance existing legislative measures to address child sex offender behaviour. As we speak, the government is participating in national discussions to determine if further reform is required to the existing child sex offender registers across Australia. Given that these registers rely on mutual recognition, it is imperative that issues of uniformity of laws are discussed and resolved at the national level.
I would observe that there has been some commentary in the media recently about some differences that have emerged in these schemes between and across jurisdictions. About half of the states and territories have enacted some differences to the national scheme, which is leading to observations from the Ombudsman and others that some elements of the ACT scheme are not consistent with elements of schemes in place in other jurisdictions. This is, indeed, the case, but, unfortunately, it is because some jurisdictions have chosen to move beyond the nationally agreed reforms that are coordinated through the ministerial council on police, on which I represent the ACT.
The government remains committed to implementing nationally consistent laws to protect our young people and children from child sex offences and to monitor and
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