Page 299 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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The second category of amendments in this bill is the general amendments. The general amendments are being made to existing provisions in our existing Child Sex Offenders Act.
The first general amendment is to increase the maximum penalties for offences relating to reporting obligations. There are 21 reporting offences in the Child Sex Offenders Act that relate to specific acts or omissions by the registrable offender. The offences include failing to report after sentencing, failing to report annually and failing to report travel details. These maximum penalties will now be increased to imprisonment for five years, 500 penalty units, or both.
The second general amendment relates to the information that all registered offenders are required to provide to police. These amendments will require offenders to now provide their electronic communications identifiers, including all email addresses and usernames, and their passport details, to police.
The third general amendment will limit the number of days of unsupervised contact that a registrable offender can have with a child. The bill will amend section 60 to require all registered offenders to report more than three days of contact that the offender has with children in a 12-month period, and will require that this contact is reported within 24 hours after the day it occurred.
The fourth general amendment will create a new offence. The offence will apply when a registered offender applies under a relevant law to change their name and fails to tell the Chief Police Officer in writing about the application. The new offence will require the registered offender to tell the Chief Police Officer of the application not later than two days after the day the application is made.
The fifth general amendment will ensure that registered offenders who receive a sentence of periodic detention are required to comply with the child sex offender reporting obligations at the commencement of their sentence of periodic detention. This is because an offender who is serving a periodic detention is living in the community five out of every seven days a week and should therefore be subject to child sex offender reporting obligations during this time.
The final general amendment is a technical amendment to the schedules of offences. This amendment will ensure that the schedules are concise and that they capture relevant offenders who commit sexual offences against children in jurisdictions outside of the territory.
The government acknowledges that this bill engages with the Human Rights Act in a number of ways. The bill engages, and places limits on, the rights to recognition and equality before the law, privacy and reputation, freedom of movement, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, freedom of expression, right to liberty and security of person, fair trial and rights in criminal processes. I also note that the bill supports a number of these rights, particularly the rights of children.
The bill’s explanatory statement contains a detailed analysis of the human rights issues and I encourage all members to consider this document along with the bill.
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