Bills

Statutes Amendment (Child Marriage) Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (10:33): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Children's Protection Act 1993 and the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (10:34): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I rise to introduce a private member's bill to amend the Children's Protection Act of 1993 to enable a court to make orders to protect a child on reasonable grounds if it suspects that a child or children are to be removed from the state to be coerced into a child's marriage. Provisions would include: preventing a party or parties from taking the child from the state, that the child's passport be held and, if appropriate, examination or interview be undertaken of the child.

The current act—the Children's Protection Act of 1993 (South Australia)—already covers the issue of female genital mutilation at section 26B. Amendments will also be required to the Criminal Law Consolidation Act of 1935, which deals with the penalties for the offence, being imprisonment of 15 years, or 19 years for an aggravated offence—defined as a child under the age of 14, which is consistent with the child pornography aggravated offence. The Youth Court has jurisdiction under the Youth Court Act of 1993 (SA) to hear issues relating to the Children's Protection Act and deals with such applications.

Plan International Australia reported a figure in 2014 that there were 250 cases of children being forced into marriage over a two-year period in Australia. It is prohibited under article 16(2) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The issue comes into prominence periodically, as with the case of Rania Farrah in New South Wales. She was told by her parents that they were going on a trip to Egypt. Upon leaving Australia, she was held captive in the Middle East. Her passport was confiscated and she was told she would be living with the family of her proposed husband, a man more than 15 years her senior. Her new family controlled her whole life.

For some young girls, even being in Australia does not provide adequate protection, so in 2013 the federal government passed legislation making the coercing of someone into marriage a serious crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison. There are a number of examples, as in June 2010 a 17-year-old girl saved herself from a forced marriage in Lebanon by calling the Australian Federal Police. The Federal Magistrates Court issued an order restraining the family from taking her out of the country.

I would also refer to a recent phone call to my electorate office from a neighbour of a 16-year-old girl who came to her for help, claiming that her mother wants to send her overseas for marriage. There is no doubt that this is highly distressing, and there could be serious ramifications for this young girl's safety and wellbeing if it were to be carried out, highlighting the importance of this bill.

Prior to this situation, I had also been notified of a young girl attending a school in my electorate whose parents were wanting to send her to Western Australia to a distant and much older male relative to be home schooled. This also rang alarm bells for me and I believe such a bill will draw the community's attention to the fact that children in our state are being placed in danger of being sexually abused either in or out of marriage right now in our community.

I have consulted with the following organisations: Anti-Slavery Australia, Plan International Australia, the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Youth Affairs Council of South Australia, the Law Society of South Australia, the South Australian Bar Association and Civil Liberties Australia. They are all in support of this bill and we made amendments where they put forward suggestions. I call on members of this house to support this private member's bill and to be involved in informing the community of the danger of forced child marriage in Australia.

Debate adjourned on motion of Ms Digance.