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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-11 Daily Xml
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National Survivors' Day

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:14): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Attorney-General tell the council about National Survivors' Day?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (15:14): I thank the honourable member for his question. Some will be aware that 12 November is National Survivors' Day, which is a day to especially pay tribute to, and recognise, survivors of sexual assault and institutionalised child sexual abuse. It is a day to commemorate their courage and their experiences, to acknowledge those victims who are no longer with us, as well as the supporters behind the victims, like their family members and whistleblowers on this kind of abuse.

Sexual assault and child sexual abuse are some of the most unimaginable types of offending that are never justified and are never, in any way, the fault of the victim. It is important that on days like this—and, frankly, every day—we are able to talk openly in a way that destigmatises this offending for survivors, and that we will continue to work to ensure that this kind of callous and senseless offending does not happen.

I am proud this government has had an unapologetic focus on cracking down on sexual offending, particularly against children. In this term of government already, we have legislated to increase a range of penalties for child sex offences, such as increasing the maximum penalty for gross indecency with or in the presence of a child from five to 15 years. We have amended section 39A of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, better known as Carly's Law, to ensure that an offence can apply where the unlawful communication is made to a fictitious child; for example, a police officer posing as a child can still constitute an offence.

Further, we have changed the important ways that we describe laws, such as section 50 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act where 'unlawful sexual relationship with a child' has been changed to 'sexual abuse of a child' in 2023, as recommended by many, amongst others the Grace Tame Foundation, to better reflect the serious nature of this offending.

We have passed legislation to close loopholes that allow offenders who possess child pornography or childlike sex dolls to access better sentencing discounts or bail. With the championing of the Hon. Connie Bonaros, who has asked questions in relation to this just today in this place—as she does in most weeks—we have changed the heading of offences related to commercial sexual services to 'commercial sexual acts', to better reflect the exploitative nature of using children in commercial sexual acts.

We passed legislation to create a default rule that accused and convicted child sex offenders may not work in businesses that employ children if their employment would involve contact with child employees. We have made nation-leading changes for the indefinite detention of serious repeat child sex offenders. Under these changes, courts must sentence child sex offenders who have served a prison term and then go on to commit further serious child sexual offences and are given a prison term to indefinite detention.

These dangerous offenders will never be released unless they can prove that they are no longer a threat to the community by demonstrating that they are willing and able to control their sexual instincts. Even if these offenders are ever released on licence they will face the prospect of being electronically monitored for the rest of their living days.

The government has also made changes to allow police officers to search and inspect items in possession of all registerable child sex offenders, both of their residence and also when away from their home premises. For sexual offending more generally, we have made legislative reforms to have sexual assault cases dealt with in court when consent is an issue, expanding the type of jury directions that are allowed, such as there being no normal response to sexual assault.

I want to thank members of this chamber who have contributed, and as I have said particularly the Hon. Connie Bonaros. As a parliament we have, for example, explicitly criminalised stealthing, and the government has strengthened the offence of domestic strangulation. Over close to four years now, this parliament has been very active in making sure we are legislating to better protect, particularly children, but also recognising the impact that this sort of offending has on victim survivors.

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