A victim-survivor of child sexual abuse has welcomed plans to create a new criminal offence to punish people in positions of power for failing to protect young people from sexual abuse.
Attorney-General Elise Archer will introduce legislation later this year that will make it a crime for people in leadership positions in organisations that care for children not to take sufficient steps to protect children from abuse.
Ms Archer told state parliament she would also amend Tasmania's criminal code to introduce a presumption that people under the age of 17 could not consent to sexual intercourse when a person was in a position of authority over them.
Under current laws, consent can be used as a defence in some cases where the alleged perpetrator is no more than five years older than the young person they have a position of authority over.
Katrina Munting, who was sexually abused by her teacher in the 1990s, said the changes were a step forward but she was concerned they were reactive, rather than proactive.
"It's a post-abuse response rather than being preventative, but any progress is good progress in this space at the moment," Ms Munting said.
"In terms of offenders, they're not going to necessarily be discouraged by a change in legislation. They're no more likely to get caught doing what they're doing.
Ms Munting said the new offence would make senior staff more accountable, and hopefully better protect children.
"They're being paid the big bucks to lead those organisations, and what comes with that is the responsibility of knowing what is going on at the ground level, knowing that your staff are informed, knowing that they are working to protect children," she said.
"It's no longer acceptable to say, 'But I didn't know.'
"And I think placing this extra level of accountability on their shoulders, I think that removes one level of 'out' that some hierarchies use."
Ms Archer said it was "absolutely clear" there had been too many occasions where appropriate steps were not taken to protect children in organisations after concerns were raised about an adult.
"While reporting to police might be one of the steps that a person can take to protect a child, it might not be sufficient to reduce or remove the risk of abuse," she said.
"Therefore, in some circumstances, it will be a crime not to take other available steps, particularly if the risk is immediate and other steps are available that will allow an intervention to occur more quickly."
Ms Archer said the changes to the criminal code would "bring the criminal law into line with community expectations and make it easier for children and young people to achieve justice through the criminal justice system".
Law Society president Simon Gates said the proposed changes were key recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, particularly around position-of-authority offences, failure-to-report offences, and failure-to-protect offences.
"The initiative of the government in seeking to implement the recommendations is supported, but we're going to have to wait and see what the draft bill looks like and the precise wording," he said.
"Any changes to the criminal law need to be approached with caution and the royal commission acknowledged in its report that there is a risk of what they call broad capture, which is if the amendments are drafted too broadly you can capture conduct or criminalise things that are not intended to be treated as criminal conduct, so these are the sorts of things we'll look at when we see the draft bill."
