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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-03 Daily Xml
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Criminal Law Consolidation (Dishonest Communication with Children) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 21 June 2018.)

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (16:51): Today, I rise to indicate Labor's support for the Criminal Law Consolidation (Dishonest Communication with Children) Amendment Bill 2018. Under this legislation, any adult who lies about their age or pretends to be someone other than who they are and attempts to meet with a child, or intends to commit an offence, will be severely punished. This important legislation, which has widely become known as Carly's law, has come about in the most tragic of circumstances. There is nothing anyone anywhere, including those in this chamber, can say to take away the pain and anguish that Carly Ryan's family and friends will experience for the rest of their lives after the heart-wrenching death of Carly in 2007.

This amendment bill introduces two new offences. The first new offence will apply whenever an adult communicates with a child and lies about their age or identity and seeks to meet with that child. The second new offence is where an adult communicates with a child and lies about their age or identity with the intent of committing an offence against that child.

The previous Labor government supported the introduction of this legislation in the lead-up to the 2018 election, and Labor in opposition continues to support this legislation. It is important that this law be implemented. This legislation will make it an offence, with a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, for a person to communicate with a child and lie about their age, or about being someone else, and if they arrange to meet with that child.

It will also make it an offence with a harsher and higher penalty of 10 years' imprisonment for a person to communicate with a child and lie about their age or who they are with the intention of committing an offence against that child.

The internet is an important and positive resource in our modern lives but it does pose dangers to children, and it is vital that we as adults and parents become more aware of those dangers and that those who enforce the law are armed with laws that will punish those who misuse this valuable resource. It is an unfortunate aspect of the world we live in that not everyone's actions are steeped with good intentions. For predators who intend to harm our children, the opportunity for anonymity provided by electronic means is all too easy now through the internet.

I would like at this time to pay tribute to the hard and tireless work of the Carly Ryan Foundation. The foundation was formed by Carly's mum, Sonya, who has been in parliament for most of today patiently waiting for this law to progress. As the website for the Carly Ryan Foundation says, the 'aim is to create awareness and educate children and parents using the internet' so that the work will be able to expose the multiple identities of those who seek to harm young children. I have had the good fortune to meet with the Carly Ryan Foundation now on a number of occasions since taking up the position of shadow attorney-general, and I can personally attest to the amazing work they do.

I recently attended one of the foundation's forums on online safety held at Mount Barker by current candidate and recent former member for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie. That forum took the mainly parents who were there through a lot of the dangers posed online and I must say that I learnt quite a number of things about the different ways that young people communicate. With three young children myself, I found startling some of the ways that I was not aware of that young people communicate, such as apps hidden as calculators. As they always have, young people deceive their parents, but in an online environment it can lead to very tragic consequences.

The next morning around the breakfast table, my wife and I talked to our three young boys about their online activities. They all play a game called Fortnite, which I had not heard of until I went to the forum in Mount Barker hosted by the Carly Ryan Foundation. I must admit that I knew absolutely nothing about it until the Carly Ryan Foundation forum and talking to my boys about it the next morning. I do not know a lot about it, but I gather you create characters, go online and then have adventures with people all around the world.

In discussing it with my boys, they told me that they regularly interact with a very young person from somewhere overseas. They said, 'It's another young person, Dad.' I asked, 'How do you know that?' They said that their age is in their online name, so they have to be the 13 year old that they say they are. They also talked about talking to someone from Brazil, who was a very nice person. I was absolutely stunned. I thought that we had done everything possible to make sure that they understood the dangers of online communication. It seemed to be a harmless game. I am sure there probably was not anything untoward in the couple of communications they have had, but it is just so easy these days to not understand that.

I think that the work the Carly Ryan Foundation does provides an immense resource for parents who do not understand what the latest technologies are and ways to help protect children. Moreover, I think the bill before us today helps give law enforcement all the tools they need should people have untoward intentions, as I so quickly found out could very easily be the case.

In a media statement about the introduction of this legislation released earlier this month, Sonya Ryan said, 'Knowing our home state will soon have a law named after my beautiful daughter that will help police catch predators before they harm children is an indescribable feeling.' To Sonya and all of those involved at the Carly Ryan Foundation, I think we will never know exactly the enormous difference that this will make to people. I think everyone in this place and in the other chamber should be proud to be associated with the passing of laws that will make an enormous difference. With that, I commend the legislation to the chamber.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:57): I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill. All members are familiar with the tragic case of 15-year-old Carly Ryan, who was murdered in 2007 by Garry Newman, a 50-year-old paedophile who posed as an 18-year-old musician from Melbourne. Newman deceived Carly for 18 months through online contact and phone calls before ultimately meeting and murdering her.

This case touched us as a nation and we were collectively appalled by its deviousness and its brutality. Newman's deceptive actions of lying about his age to Carly and pretending to be someone other than he was, which ultimately led to Carly's death, are not currently crimes under existing state law and this bill fixes that deficiency. Carly's Law makes it illegal for a person to lie about their age to a child and then attempt to meet that child. By targeting the grooming and predatory behaviour, police will be able to intervene sooner to prevent harm to children.

The commonwealth parliament passed a federal version of Carly's Law last year and that means that police in South Australia will now have the choice to use either the commonwealth law or state law, depending on the nature of the offending and the evidence that they have gathered.

I was pleased this morning to meet with Sonya Ryan, mother of Carly and also the founder of the Carly Ryan Foundation, a non-profit charity that exists to promote internet safety. I am pleased that Sonya and her colleague Karina Natt are in the chamber today, as they see the culmination of their campaign to have Carly's Law passed in South Australia. I acknowledge their patience in what appears to be a very slow process as we legislate. On behalf of the Greens, I was pleased to offer Sonya our support for the legislation. I mentioned to her that we were very happy to see the bill passed, and to be passed unamended, but that as a lawyer I would need to raise a couple of technical issues for the attention of the minister.

Like most pieces of criminal legislation, the operational aspects will depend largely on the good judgement being exercised by law enforcement officers. That will be important because it seems to me that in this bill there is one potential anomaly that I think both the Attorney-General and the police need to be aware of, and that flows from the fact that—and it was news to me—apparently there is a variety of situations where people do lie about their age but with absolutely no criminal or wrong intent.

It has been put to me that a lot of people are now using dating apps, for example, as well as more traditional social media. I am told that it is not uncommon for young people to add a few years—in other words, to lie about their age—in order to try to meet someone a bit older and, similarly, I am told it works even more the other way, with people understating their age by a few years in order to increase their chances of meeting someone. When those two things collide there is, however remote, a technical possibility that a breach of the act could occur, despite no criminal intent.

That certainly was not the case in Carly Ryan's situation, where the murderer was 50 and pretending to be 18. As I say, I am not proposing to move any amendments. I do not want to undo the good work that has been done but I would invite the minister to address whether this is a potential anomaly or whether it is, in fact, a figment of a lawyer's robust imagination. However, in any event, I do not know if there is any fix that would work without undermining the intent, and absolutely no-one wants to do that.

I am prepared to trust that law enforcement officers will exercise common sense, that they will use these powers and these laws appropriately and that they will consider the harm that this bill is seeking to overcome when exercising their powers. I fully expect that is exactly how it will work in practice. In conclusion, I congratulate Sonya Ryan, I congratulate the Carly Ryan Foundation on what I think will be, in just a few minutes' time, the successful passage of this bill through both houses of parliament, and I commend the foundation on the work that it is doing to keep all of our children safe, especially in the growing online environment that is such a big part of young people's lives these days.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (17:02): I rise to also offer my support for this bill, which seeks to introduce some very important measures to protect children and adolescents from predators who seek to do harm to them. In fact, I cannot think of any reasons why members would not be supportive of the proposed legislation, given that there is an opportunity for us as legislators to take a proactive approach to ensuring the safety of our children and youth by enabling early police intervention in cases of suspected child grooming.

Indeed, presuming the bill receives passage, the Marshall Liberal government trusts that it will set a precedent with respect to addressing serious shortcomings in current laws throughout the nation, prompting other states and territories to implement similar changes within their own jurisdictions. I am sure members are aware that the bill before us is referred to as Carly's Law in memory of Carly Ryan, who was tragically killed at just 15 years of age by 50-year-old Garry Newman. I acknowledge Sonya Ryan in the gallery and would like to acknowledge the fine work that the Carly Ryan Foundation has done, and that has been mentioned by other contributors in this debate.

Garry Newman initially disguised himself or took on the alias, if you like, of an 18-year-old musician (online) and relentlessly pursued Carly before luring her to meet with him at Port Elliott, where he brutally assaulted her and left her to die. When police located Newman 11 days later, they discovered he had constructed no less than 200 fake online profiles through which he was engaging with other young girls, both in Australia and overseas.

In fact, most shockingly, at the time of his actual arrest Newman was found to be logged on to his computer, communicating with a 14-year-old girl in Western Australia. Thankfully, he was taken into custody and convicted before he was able to inflict any physical harm on her as well, but it is frightening to think about what could have transpired had it not been for the swift response and skill of our law enforcement agencies.

The bill before us creates two new offences, accompanied by harsh yet appropriate penalties, in my view. Firstly, it will be an offence for an adult to knowingly communicate with someone who is under the age of 17 whilst being deceptive about their age or identity and meets with or arranges to meet with that child. This offence will attract a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. It will also make it an offence for an adult to communicate with a child whilst lying about their age or identity, who has the intention of committing a crime against that child. This has a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment.

It is the Marshall Liberal government's sincere hope that these punitive sanctions will act as a strong deterrent for potential predators, fostering a safer online environment for the users of social media who are most vulnerable to being misled. Being a father myself—and no doubt other members of the chamber feel similarly—I find it particularly concerning to think of the ease of access these predators have to most people online, particularly teenagers and children. Indeed, because of an increasing number of social media platforms and other online applications, access is becoming easier not harder.

I was surprised to learn that there are now approximately 270 million fake or artificial Facebook profiles at any one time. One can only hazard a guess as to what percentage of those have been created for sinister purposes. Members present may also have seen reports in the media in just this last week of a relatively new app, which is gaining significant attention, called Monkey. Monkey's purported aim is to 'fill the loneliness void of teenagers' by encouraging complete strangers from all over the world to video chat with each other in short 15 second bursts. Although the intention of the app's creators may have be innocent enough, ironically the creators are just teenagers themselves.

Warnings by experts are now being issued to parents and guardians due to the propensity of older adults to utilise this method of communication, which may prove to be an attractive channel for paedophiles and other deviants to reach unsuspecting young people. Of course, given children are being given smart phones at increasingly young ages, presumably for safety reasons and with the right intentions by their parents and guardians, I was surprised to learn from a recent report that 60 per cent of parents are not monitoring the online activity of their own sons and daughters.

This is quite disturbing, as many young people are spending an exorbitant amount of time online, particularly to connect with friends via social media, and are therefore potentially unknowingly putting themselves in danger. In fact, the same report revealed that many teens are spending over three hours on social media per day, with 15 per cent indicating they are contacted by strangers on a 'daily basis'. Even more disturbing is the fact that 10 per cent admit to communicating with them.

If parents or guardians are not in a position to adequately supervise their children's online exploits then the laws we introduce and amend should serve to dissuade and prevent predators from contacting them in the first place. It is vital that we do so. This is one of the main reasons I successfully introduced legislation in 2010 to grant judges the power to ban convicted paedophiles from accessing the internet.

Prior to the passage of this legislation, paedophiles could be ordered to stop physically loitering around children, but there were no provisions to prevent predators from stalking and grooming adolescents or children online. As most would appreciate, eight years later these laws appear to be even more relevant, given the rapid technological advances giving way to the emergence of an ever expanding array of cyber communication methodologies.

I note that the proposed laws we are debating today have been carefully crafted to encompass the inevitable developments in communication to prevent any future loopholes, and this is important. It is often difficult for laws to keep pace with technological change, but the laws we have before us today I think at least attempt to do that. There should be no excuse for adults deceiving children in any circumstance whatsoever online, and there is certainly no excuse for legislators to neglect taking appropriate action wherever possible to mitigate its occurrence.

As we have discussed, the deceitfulness of deviant predators can be ruthless, callous and, unfortunately, life threatening. I firmly believe the Marshall Liberal government's bill is a vital key in curbing this unacceptable behaviour, and I am proud to hear the Attorney-General will be doing her best to have the same legislative framework implemented nationwide should it receive due passage in this place. I strongly support the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon J.S.L. Dawkins.

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