Queensland to introduce first public sex offender register in Australia, reform named after Daniel Morcombe

Queensland will become the first state or territory in the country with a public sex offender registry, as new legislation is set to be debated this week.

Announced at the Queensland Liberal National Party convention over the weekend, the proposed laws would allow people to apply for images of child sex offenders living in their area.

“The public register will unlock information for families about high-risk offenders in their local area and about people who regularly have unsupervised contact with their children,” Police Minister Dan Purdie said.

The reforms will be called Daniel’s Law, after years of campaigning from the parents of 13-year-old Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted and murdered in 2003.

Premier David Crisafulli said legislation for a new three-tiered public register would be introduced to parliament this week.

Under the scheme, Queenslanders can search a database and apply for images of child sex offenders who live in their area.

Pictures and details of offenders who have failed to adhere to their reporting obligations or are hiding from authorities will also be available through the public website.

Parents would also be able to apply to the police to check whether someone having unsupervised contact with their kid is an offender.

The register will be administered by the police. The LNP promised a public register during the election campaign. No other Australian state or territory has a public sex offender registry.

“Monsters cannot be allowed to lurk in the darkness. Daniel’s Law will help protect children who can’t protect themselves,” Mr Crisafulli said.

“We acknowledge the many years of advocacy from Bruce and Denise Morcombe, who have turned unimaginable tragedy into a legacy of better protection for Queensland children.

“Daniel’s Law arms parents with information to make decisions for the safety of their children.”

Details about the new offences the laws will create, as well as punishments for misusing register information, are expected in the coming days.

The announcement of the new laws comes as a series of childcare scandals across the country have become public.

In particular, Melbourne man Joshua Dale Brown faces allegations of abusing children across multiple daycare centres. A male out-of-school-hours care worker from Sydney, David James, has also recently been charged with allegedly taking explicit photos of children. Both men had valid working with children check certificates.

The NSW and Victorian governments have set up websites for parents and carers to check where these men worked. In Victoria, parents and carers of about 2000 children were advised to get their kids tested for sexually transmitted infections. As of late-July, the vast majority of these children had been tested, and all had returned negative results.

News of Mr Brown’s alleged offending in particular sparked national meetings of the federal state and territory education ministers and attorneys-general.

National legislation has quickly passed parliament and will defund childcare centres that fail to meet safety standards. This reform is the responsibility of the Education Minister.

A meeting of the attorneys-general in August failed to produce plans for a national working with children’s check system to replace the patchwork state-by-state system.

Federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland did, however, say an overhaul to get the states and territories communicating better would be expedited.

Overhauls to each jurisdiction’s IT, laws and information systems means those reforms could take up to a year, Ms Rowland said earlier this month.