Protecting Queenslanders: QAI submission is critical of Queensland bill that would give the Premier power to make decisions on monitoring of people with disability convicted of sexual offences
The QAI submission to the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee Inquiry into the Bill 2018 (‘the Bill’) opposes the Bill in general, and is critical of a number of provisions in the Bill proposed by Mr David Janetzki MP, the Member for Toowoomba South. In particular, QAI opposes the provision that would give the Premier power to make decisions on monitoring of people with disability convicted of sexual offences.
QAI told the Committee that the Bill:
.. [p]otentially departs from fundamental legislative principles because it mandates administrative rather than judicial power to review indeterminate supervision, undermining the separation of powers and the necessary checks and balances critical to the effective operation of our Westminster-based political system.
QAI’s Dr Nick Collyer appeared at the Committee’s public hearing, stating in his evidence to the Committee that:
For the vast majority of victims of sexual abuse, it is not about the stranger hiding in the dark alleyway or the paedophile in the playground. Most sexual assaults and rapes are committed by someone the victim knows. Among victims aged 18 to 19, two-thirds had a prior relationship with the offender. Most child sexual abuse is committed by men—90 per cent—and by persons known to the child—70 to 90 per cent—with family members constituting one-third to one-half of the perpetrators against girls and 10 to 20 per cent of the perpetrators against boys. According to one study, one in six Australian women were physically or sexually abused by the age of 15, one in three Australian women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15 and on average one Australian woman is murdered per week by her current or her former partner.
Full Hansard transcript
QAI’s Dr Collyer on Parliament TV
The Committee’s reporting due date is Tuesday, 19 March 2019.
