Sex Offender Management Bill Tabled In Senate
A Bill which seeks to “enhance the effective oversight and management of sex offenders” and “establish a sex offender register” was tabled in the Senate on Friday [Nov 9].
The Bill — officially titled the ‘Criminal Code [Sex Offender Management] Amendment Act 2018′ — “seeks to amend the Criminal Code Act 1907 to enhance the effective oversight and management of sex offenders, to establish a sex offender register, and for connected purposes.”
It states that a “sex offender shall not be entitled to apply for release on licence or be released on his earliest release date, until completion of any mandated programmes” and “failure by a sex offender to complete programmes mandated under new section 70QA is a disciplinary offence.”
The provisions in the Bill would create a sex offenders registry for anyone convicted of a sex offense either here or abroad, with the information available to officials and not subject to PATI requests.
Registered sex offenders would have to report to the risk management team and submit to assessments as required, notify them in advance of any change of address, cannot travel overseas without permission, and must comply with any other conditions as imposed.
If they fail to do so, or provide false information, they would be guilty of an offense, and “liable on summary conviction to a fine of $3,000 or imprisonment for six month, or to both.”
It also increases the fine for “publishing or broadcasting information as to the identity of the complainant or, before conviction, the accused in a trial relating to a sexual offence” from $5,000 to $10,000.
The Criminal Code [Sex Offender Management] Amendment Act 2018 follows below [PDF here]
A sex offender registry that does not permit the public to access who & where the sex offender lives is a pointless waste of time & money.
Agree, completely and utterly pointless. The police will already have that information in their own records. Looks like extra legislation without purpose and function.
A public database is what’s been requested, so we’re all at Square One.
Not impressed. So a bunch of politicians sat around and got paid for warming chairs, to come up with this! Not impressed!
This shunts the issue far down the road. How does this protect our children. Vote the PLP out. Shameful, disgusting protectection of serial offenders.
A SO registry won’t protect the children…that’s the parents job!
The vast majority of sex offences against children are perpetrated by relatives, trusted friends of the family, and sadly, parents.
“Stranger Danger” is a myth.
You’re basically begging your government to create a frightfully expensive and wasteful bureaucracy that will NOT make children safer. In fact it creates a false sense of safety and (again) ignores facts about child molesters.
So how are we “parents” supposed to protect our kids when they wont even name the offenders so that we can “deal with” them? So tell us, tell the police to turn around and let us do our jobs.