Peter Dutton moved to tears thanking police who saved children from predators
Find out what cracked the hard man exterior of Australia’s Home Affairs Minister, forcing him to fight back tears.
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HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton fought back tears today as he praised the work of police officers rescuing children from child sex predators.
Mr Dutton’s hard-man exterior cracked mometarily as he stood before a room of senior police, child abuse survivors and families of children killed by violent predators.
“You should be incredibly proud of what you’ve been able to do and the lives that you’ve been able to save, the interventions you’ve been able to make have really changed the history of what otherwise would have been a sad tale for countless children both here domestically and internationally,” he said, opening the AFP’s Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation in Brisbane.
As he started to thank them for their “amazing contribution”, Mr Dutton seemed on the verge of tears as he paused and gathered himself.
“I haven’t even got to the Morcombe’s or Sonya (Ryan) yet,” he said, referring to the parents of Daniel Morcombe and Carly Ryan who attended.
Fighting child sexual abuse has been one of Mr Dutton’s highest priorities as Home Affairs Minister and the opening of the ACCCE marked a significant milestone in that battle.
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The Home Affairs Minister took the opportunity to slam Facebook and other tech giants for impeding the global fight against child sex predators.
He said Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg’s encryption policies “facilitate” child sexual abuse on a “scale most Australians would find incomprehensible”.
Mr Dutton signalled the Government was ramping up efforts to beat end-to-end encryption road blocks put up by tech giants that aid child sex predators to evade detection.
He said it was “unconscionable” for Facebook and other tech giants to make billions of dollars from their platforms while making deliberate decisions that prevented abused children from being saved.
“At the same time they’re making that money they have an absolute direct knowledge and understanding of the fact that it’s done in some circumstances at the expense of children who are being sexually abused,” he said.
“Now we know, particularly in Facebook’s case, that they are taking a deliberate decision with end-to-end encryption to starve referrals of matters that otherwise, in previous years, would have been made to law enforcement agencies and investigators.
“Children have been saved because of those referrals in the past and they won’t be saved in the future because of the actions of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and others.”
He said Facebook shareholders had recently attempted to force change at the company but Mr Zuckerberg “took a decision not to accept what I thought was a moral imperative for him to do so”.
“Encryption is an incredibly important part of our lives through internet banking, safe messaging et cetera but in the Facebook workplace under no circumstances would they allow a child or a woman to be sexually assaulted on the floor of the business,” he said.
“And yet their platform facilitates the sexual assault of children at a scale most Australians would find incomprehensible and the onus is upon them to step up and to be the corporate citizens that they think they should be and this is a fight that is worth fighting and I promise you that rededicate ourselves to do that.”
Originally published as Peter Dutton moved to tears thanking police who saved children from predators