A national centre to counter child exploitation and abuse will be created in the home affairs department with a $68.6m allocation in the 2018 budget.
In a joint statement on Sunday the law enforcement minister, Angus Taylor, and the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, announced the new agency, which they said would create a hub of skills needed to disrupt, prevent and investigate exploitation.
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation will be built from the child protection operations of the Australian federal police, which will get a 30% increase in staff in each of the next two financial years.
A spokesman for the Justice party senator Derryn Hinch, a former broadcaster and prominent campaigner against child sexual exploitation, welcomed the announcement.
Hinch is currently locked in negotiations with the Turnbull government over plans to cut the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25% for companies with a turnover of more than $50m by 2026-27.
The spokesman refused to comment on whether the announcement was linked to tax cut negotiations, which he said were confidential and still ongoing.
“It’s not a red light or a green light yet, it’s a varying shade of amber,” he said.
Assuming the support of One Nation’s three Senate votes, the government can already count Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi, David Leyonhjelm and Steve Martin in the yes column – but the Coalition will also need the votes of Hinch and newly sworn-in South Australian senator Tim Storer to pass company tax cuts.
On Sunday a report in News Ltd papers suggested Hinch had demanded the government abandon plans to abolish the clean energy supplement – worth $375 for singles and $550 for couples – for new welfare recipients.
“Senator Hinch is very concerned about the welfare of pensioners, those struggling to keep roof over their heads and low and middle-income earners,” his spokesman said.
On Sunday Leyonhjelm told ABC24 the government had won Hanson’s votes for the “relatively small cost” of $60m to be spent on apprenticeships and there was “some cost involved in getting Steve Martin’s vote across the line”.
Leyonhjelm said he was unsure how Storer would vote but was “pretty sure” Hinch would “get across the line” and support the company tax cut.
Labor’s employment spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, told the ABC’s Insiders program that Australia could not afford the $65bn company tax cut and warned “the majority of the largesse will go to foreign shareholders”.
O’Connor repeatedly refused to rule out Labor scrapping the big business component of tax cuts, replying “let’s just see” because Senate negotiations had not concluded.
“We don’t ascribe to the trickle-down economics theory, we think it’s discredited,” he said. “We don’t believe there will be some, you know, commensurate wage increase come out of this largesse.”
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation will combine functions currently performed by the AFP, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, AusTrac, Office of the Cyber Coordinator, Australian Border Force and the Australian Institute of Criminology.
The federal-state joint anti-child exploitation teams in each state will continue to operate.
Taylor and Dutton said the problem of child abuse and exploitation was getting bigger, particularly due technology allowing perpetrators to contact children and share images of abuse and torture through global networks.
A 2017 report to the Criminology Research Advisory Council on child sexual exploitation found the incidence of sexual assault against children is unknown but the level of sexual assault that is reported is increasing.
“As technological advances and access to new technologies expands, so does the use of technology for illicit purposes,” it said.
Taylor said the centre would strengthen the ability of Australia’s law enforcement agencies to tackle what are revolting crimes.
“It sends a clear message to the perpetrators of these crimes that we will track them down,” he said.
Dutton and Taylor said the centre would be based in Brisbane because of its proximity to the Asia-Pacific and its status as a cyber-hub.
