Bruce Morcombe says new government ‘super agency’ sends message to sex predators
A new super security agency has been launched to target child sex offenders, following up on Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's pledge to do all in his power to deport pedophiles with dual citizenship.
Mr Dutton's agency will be run by the Office of Home Affairs and aims to crush pedophile syndicates.
"We are working with national police and intelligence authorities now to try and identify some of those people," he said.
Since 1949, just 33 citizenships have been torn up by the Australian government.
Of those, 17 cancellations have happened in the past three years, overseen by Mr Dutton.
Since 2014 he has torn up the Australian passports of five people with New Zealand citizenship, three from the United Kingdom, two from Sudan, two from Vietnam, and one each from Canada, South Africa, Ghana, China and the US.
The vast majority were child sex offenders.
Victim advocates have backed the move, saying media pressure helped bring it about.
"We are importing these people into our country, we are giving them citizenship and they are abusing that privilege and the government has said enough is enough, this has to stop," advocate Howard Brown said.
"And so this is a step that we all applaud."
Mr Dutton hopes the new approach to speed up investigations will be his lasting legacy.
Bruce Morcombe, whose son Daniel was killed by murderer and sex offender Brett Cowan, praised the agency's focus on digital safety.
"As this program goes to air there are predators talking to our kids right around the country," he said.
"They're trying to gain their trust, they are trying to do horrendous crimes to our children right around the country."
He said the agency put predators on stand-by.
“If you’ve got an illness please get the help you need but at the end of the day get offline, stop talking to our kids and leave our poor children alone,” he said.
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