WILLIAMSON CALLS FOR URGENT LEGISLATIVE CHANGES TO STRENGTHEN CHILD PROTECTION LAWS

Nationals MP for Clarence, Richie Williamson, has called for urgent changes to Child Protection Legislation following a deeply disturbing allegation involving a Grafton student.

The alleged incident was recently brought to the MP’s attention and exposed an alarming loophole in the current legal framework where alleged predatory behaviour towards a 12-year-old child was not classifed as “grooming” under existing laws.

Mr Williamson has urged the NSW Government to immediately implement amendments to Section 66EB of the Crimes Act 1900 to better protect children.

“The alleged offender in this incident is alleged to have sent a number of messages to a child late at night, which left the child’s family horrifed. Yet, under current legislation, such behaviour does not meet the defnition of grooming,” Mr Williamson said.

“This alleged incident has shocked our community and parents across the state. It is unacceptable that this type of behaviour is not legally considered grooming. We must act swiftly to close this gap in the law to protect our children, the most vulnerable in our community.”

Mr Williamson emphasised his commitment to working on a bipartisan basis to ensure the law is changed. He has already written to the Premier and pledged to collaborate with the Attorney General and other members of Parliament to ensure that predatory behaviour like this is recognised as grooming, and stronger protections for children are implemented.

“This alleged incident highlights the need for immediate legislative action,” Mr Williamson said.

“I have seen this Parliament come together before to make important changes, and I believe we can do it again. This is about safeguarding our children and ensuring they are protected from those who seek to exploit them.”

Dr Hugh McDermott, Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney

General, supported Mr Williamson’s call, stating that the safety of children transcends party politics, and bipartisan efforts would be made to amend the legislation.

Mr Williamson concluded, “If we can strengthen the law to better protect our children from grooming, we will have done something vital for the future of New South Wales. I won’t rest until this change is made.”

FOR weeks now, I’ve been going over in my mind the complete and utter enormity of the gruesome reality, that is war. One tiny word which has caused so much pain and suffering, a suffering that no generation in all of human history has been spared, or even dared to not be drawn and caught in its searing clutches. None other than the ancient Greek and ‘Father of History’, Herodotus once lamented around 450 BC, “In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.” To this day, no day has passed on this planet where that outcome hasn’t played out somewhere. It takes your breath away to know that in the 100 years of the 20th Century alone it is estimated that approximately 231 million people lost their lives due to war. Call it what you like, or as Margaret Atwood once aptly said, “War is what happens when language fails.” No person’s ‘life story’ should ever be abruptly ended because of a dispute, be that a large-scale geopolitically motivated one, or a petty grievance that can’t be resolved in a sane manner. As the 17th Century Frenchman Blaise Pascal failed to reconcile, “Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

There is an unfathomability to co-ordinated lethal conflict that doesn’t ‘strike home’ until you ponder the potential for