‘Spring in our step’ after decade of lobbying by Morcombes

It’s just over 15 years since Bruce and Denise Morcombe’s 13-year-old son Daniel was murdered on the Sunshine Coast.

Bruce and Denise Morcombe. Picture: Matt Thompson

It’s just over 15 years since Bruce and Denise Morcombe’s 13-year-old son Daniel was abducted and murdered on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

For the past 10 of those years, as part of their relentless efforts to protect others, the Morcombes have been pushing for a public child-sex offender register.

Yesterday, with federal backing for their cause, they felt like a weight had lifted.

“Denise and I certainly have a spring in our step today,” Mr Morcombe told The Australian from Hobart.

If the register is introduced, it could aptly be named after Daniel, the innocent boy who went Christmas shopping on December 7, 2003, and never returned.

Brett Peter Cowan, his abductor and killer, would almost certainly have been on a national public database as a repeat and ­serious offender if it had existed then.

Critics of the register say that would not have stopped Cowan from snatching Daniel from a bus stop that day. The judiciary could have, if it had kept him behind bars after horrific prior sex attacks on a young boy in a Northern Territory caravan park and, before that, on another boy in a public toilet block in Brisbane.

But the Morcombes say a public register could save another child. Mr Morcombe cites as an example a mother with two young children who meets a new partner.

“She should have the ability and the grandparents of those children should have the ability to check on this person to make sure he has not got a horrendous ­record of offending against children,” Mr Morcombe said.

“It just makes common sense. We want something that captures the worst of the worst.”

He wants bipartisan support so the register is brought to life regardless of political divisions or the outcome of this year’s federal election.

But Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston calls the national register a “political stunt”.

She says it can’t and won’t name the majority of offenders — those people who have not been caught or cannot be identified to protect their victims. Megan’s Law in the US, which Australia’s scheme would seek to replicate except without identifying the home addresses of offenders, was a costly “monumental failure”, she says. “It doesn’t work. Commun­ities feel safer but they’re not safer and neither are their kids,” Ms Johnston said.

“Only 10 per cent of offenders are ever known to authorities — 90 per cent are undetected and living in our suburbs around the country right now.

“The solution to this problem is tougher sentencing.”