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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-23 Daily Xml
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Child Sex Offender Register

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:02): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking questions of the Attorney-General regarding child sex offender registers.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Recently, in the media, there were renewed calls from child safety advocates for the urgent establishment of a public child sex offender register. Indeed, prior to the 2022 state election Labor promised it would, and I quote:

...establish a three-level public sex offender register based on the Western Australian model to provide greater confidence and safety. A new missing offenders website will provide photographs and personal details of reportable offenders who have either failed to comply with their reporting obligations, provided false or misleading information to police and whose location or whereabouts is not known to police. A local search program will allow police, subject to an approved application, to provide photographs of dangerous and high-risk offenders in your suburb or surrounding area. A parental disclosure scheme will allow police to provide a parent or guardian of a child with information about a specific person who has regular contact with their child.

My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. Has the state government commenced consultation further to its election commitment to establish the three-level public sex offender register based on the Western Australian model, and if not, why not?

2. When does the state government expect a bill to be introduced to the state parliament?

3. When can South Australians expect a public child sex offender register to be established and accessible to the community?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:04): I thank the honourable member for his important question and his diligent observance of our election commitments, and I acknowledge the honourable member's regular vigilance in terms of issues of keeping South Australians safe. I can answer very simply to his question, yes, consultation and planning is well underway. I know that numerous departments that will be involved in the register across the South Australian government have had substantial interactions with the Western Australian government.

There are, I know, issues around information technology systems and how Western Australia has implemented theirs and, given our IT systems, how we might implement, as we have said, a similar system in South Australia. I don't have an exact time frame, but I know that it is very well underway, well progressed, and in the not too distant future I would expect we will have a system proposed, and up and running in South Australia. It was a key election commitment as part of our election commitments aimed at keeping South Australians safer.

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