PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (17:01): I rise in support of this motion. National Child Protection Week was held last week, from 6 to 12 September, under the theme 'Every Conversation Matters, Shifting Conversation to Action'. The week is over, so it's a shame this wasn't spoken to then.
However, a child is not made safe by just one week in September, and a child is not at risk only in that week. Let me put the scale of this problem on the record. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that in 2023-24 around 179,000 Australian children came into contact with the child protection system—that's about one in 31—and 42,100 were the subjects of substantiated maltreatment.
Almost three in four of those children, around 129,000, were repeat clients—that is, they'd been in contact with the system before. Online child abuse is accelerating like wildfire. The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received 82,764 reports of online child sexual exploitation in 2024-25.
That was a 41 per cent increase from the year before. That is 226 reports each and every single day, and each one contains the images of a real child. The ACCCE was announced by a coalition government in March 2018 and funded with $68.6 million over four years in the 2018-19 budget.
It's based in Brisbane and led by the Australian Federal Police, and I want to give a shout-out and recognition to Peter Dutton for establishing it and the great work he's done in that space. At the last election, the coalition committed to doubling its funding—a commitment the Parliamentary Budget Office costed as ongoing from 1 July 2025. Since then, reports have risen nearly sixfold.
The case for that commitment has not weakened; it has hardened. I acknowledge the people who carry out this work: the ACCCE officers who look at that material so no reasonable people have to and the child protection workers, police, teachers and nurses alongside them. We ask them to see the worst of human behaviour and then go home and be ordinary people.
That deserves saying more than just once a year. I recognise Bravehearts, whose Ditto's Keep Safe Adventure Program has reached more than 1½ million Australian children since 2006. I also want to make special mention of three organisations from my part of the world.
The first is Destiny Rescue, founded on the Sunshine Coast in 2001. This year it marked 25 years of service and more than 25,000 children and vulnerable people rescued from sexual exploitation and trafficking, working alongside law enforcement across multiple countries. They don't stop at rescuing children.
They provide counselling, medical care, education and vocational training. The second is the Daniel Morcombe Foundation. On 7 December 2003, a 13-year-old boy in a red shirt stood at a bus stop at Woombye, and he never came home.
Daniel was abducted and murdered. What Daniel's parents, Bruce and Denise Morcombe, did next is one of the most remarkable things any Australian family have ever done. In May 2005, they established the Daniel Morcombe Foundation to teach children how to stay safe in person and online.
That education is free. Their Walk Tall counselling service supports young victims of crime directly. Day for Daniel is now the country's largest child safety education day, and this year it falls on Friday 30 October.
They took the worst years of their lives and turned them into a lesson that has protected other people's children for more than 20 years. 'Recognise, react, report' is their motto. So, to this House: wear red on 30 October. Thirdly, I want to recognise Conrad Townsend from IFYS and the great work he's doing in preventing child trafficking.
We need to have the conversation with the children in our lives. Let's keep backing the people who do this work every other week of the year. But conversations are the easy part; this parliament needs to keep funding organisations like these three special groups.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Aldred ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.