Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to commend both the member for Ryan and the member for Macnamara for bringing this motion to the Federation Chamber today and indeed commend both of them for starting the parliamentary friendship group on combating child exploitation. I've signed up to that group, and I again commend them for starting that.

As a former police officer, detective and investigator, I unfortunately not only have seen this type of material but also have dealt with the victims of child sexual assault and sexual abuse. I would like to pay tribute to those investigators who deal with it day after day after day, whether it's the Federal Police or state specialist investigators. In my 12 short years as a police officer, whether as a detective or as a police prosecutor, nothing affected me more personally than having to view this material. It was so incredibly difficult as a detective dealing with children who were so young that they couldn't express what had happened to them; they were that small. We as a society, and the structure that surrounds these investigators, must support these officers every step of the way. Otherwise, they will simply fall by the wayside. These are images and situations that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. We owe it to them to support them as much as we possibly can, as much as we owe it to our children to protect them from these monsters.

I sometimes struggle with the concept of good and evil, but with this it's very simple: this is nothing but evil. These people are not the types of people who can be rehabilitated. Yet in society they are just another person, just another businessperson or the person who lives next door. You can't pick them out. I think that was shown in the recent investigation Operation Arkstone that the assistant commissioner spoke about at the parliamentary friends group that we went to. That was in the electorate just next to mine, and I remember reading about it in the local paper. One thing that struck me was one of the mums said, 'My husband said to me something wasn't right; there was something just not right about that.' I have said before that, if you think something is not right, you should go with your gut. I'd rather apologise to somebody for getting it wrong than apologise to my child or somebody else's child for not actually doing something, for not actually taking that step. I think that, as parents, we have that heightened sense of when something isn't right. So don't sit back. Don't stay quiet. If Mum, Dad or a caregiver think there's something wrong then they have an obligation to look into it. They have an obligation to start asking those questions.

You also have an obligation to educate yourself about the Internet, about apps, about the websites that your children are looking at. Something that I cannot comprehend is that over the last 12 months, during COVID, this type of material and people using it increased 163 per cent. It's just unbelievable that we in a society have people who are prepared to engage in this, but it's fact. If we have people who are prepared to engage in that in Australia then we must increase all of our efforts and we have increased all of our efforts to target these people, to put them in the only place that they should be in the absence of capital punishment: in jail for a very long time.

I commend the members for Ryan and Macnamara for bringing this to this place. I will continue to advocate on behalf of not only children but also the investigators.

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