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Paedophilia is among the worst possible offences someone could commit. My office has been told about a supposed suppression order on a document listing 28 high profile people accused of the offence.

Unfortunately, my investigations were not able to find any evidence supporting these accusations, with the document being merely an unauthored list of names and there is no suppression order.

Despite this, all allegations should always be thoroughly investigated and we need a Commonwealth Integrity Commission that is able to tackle corruption, criminality and misconduct anywhere in politics and the judiciary.

The list is unauthored and completely inadmissible as evidence in any kind of court. We cannot even contact the author to verify the allegations because we don’t know who they are.

There is no difference in evidentiary terms between the list and a napkin that I write your name on. There is no suppression order.

It is up to former Senator Heffernan to explain why he didn’t explain these facts when he raised it. We have done everything we can to pursue this issue but if a list is unauthored with no supporting evidence there is very little we can do.

After exhausting inquiries, this separate investigation and research was brought to our attention which provides insightful additional detail:

Transcript

G’day, I’m Senator Malcolm Roberts. I want to talk now about a very serious issue that concerns all of us in our community. This issue offends every normal thinking person and it disgusts us all. I am talking about paedophilia, the sexual abuse of children by deviant adults for their own sexual gratification. There are a lot of stories circulating about this issue and I want to set the record straight. One such story relates to a document purportedly naming 28 alleged people under investigation for pedophilia-related activities. It was most famously discussed in a Senate Estimates hearing.

After extensive research by my office, we found that the Wood Royal Commission was provided a document that the Commissioner determined contained information outside the terms of reference of the Commission. It was returned to the provider. That’s it. The document is not in the public domain and is not held by the government. My inquiries revealed that it contained unsupported allegations against 28 people from an unidentified author.

Without an author, it’s wholly unverifiable and unusable in court. Publication of the contents may well constitute defamation in some circumstances. When starting this investigation, I had hoped to unearth evidence which if brought to light would prove and put away perpetrators of disgusting acts. Despite my best efforts, that is not what I found. There are plenty of urban myths about all of this. One of these is that the document is subject to some sort of suppression order, preventing its release. My inquiries revealed there is no suppression order on this document. There never was a suppression order.

The document simply isn’t credible enough without an author for anyone to publish outside of parliamentary privilege. My view, and that of One Nation, is that paedophilia is a blot on our society and that everything should be done to stamp it out. Offenders should receive the severest penalties when convicted as a deterrent to others and to keep our children safe. Those who would knowingly protect these offenders must also be identified and stopped, no matter what their roles in our society may be.

No one should be immune because of their status. Sexual misbehaviour in the legal profession has been highlighted in the media lately. Allegations have even been made towards the behaviour of judges, magistrates and senior lawyers. What is missing is a Federal Integrity Commission with power to review the behaviour of the politicians and the judiciary. An integrity commission with teeth would mean that any allegation of corruption, criminality or misconduct could be thoroughly and independently investigated. There’s no doubt there are still people in power that get up to no good; we need a commission that can properly investigate them and bring them to justice.