January 4, 2026 — 1:19pm
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Almost 105,000 Queenslanders have accessed the state’s register of child sex offenders since it went live last week, Police Minister Dan Purdie announced on Sunday.
The register, known as Daniel’s Law after slain Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, went live on New Year’s Eve.
On it, photos of dangerous child sex offenders have been made available to the public under strict access guidelines.
Police Minister Dan Purdie says people have overwhelmingly been using the register wisely.Catherine Strohfeldt
Speaking at Queensland Police headquarters on Sunday, Purdie said there were no “tier 1” – missing reportable offenders – anywhere in the state.
He said there had been almost 22,000 completed “tier 2” applications for locality-based searches – enabling Queenslanders to find out about any high-risk offenders in their area – and 60 “tier 3” applications.
“They’re those applications that a parent and a caregiver can make to the police to find out if someone that has unsupervised access to their child is a registered child sex offender,” he said.
Acting Police Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon said, from the 60 tier 3 applications there were four “hits” on a reportable offender with whom someone was thinking about letting their children have contact.
“There are no offences detected by any of those individuals – reportable offenders – but it was great for us to be able to reach in, connect with those families, go through preventative strategies, and give them the confidence,” she said.
But it has not all been smooth sailing.
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To access the register, community members were required to prove their identity, and were warned it was a criminal offence to share the photographs provided, or to intimidate or harass a suspected offender, with possible penalties including imprisonment.
This was ostensibly to prevent or discourage acts of vigilantism.
Scanlon said police had “dealt with” one person who released information obtained through the database.
“It’s a really good result for us that only one person has done the wrong thing,” she said, adding that the individual had been given a notice to appear in court.
Purdie said the Crisafulli government looked at similar systems rolled out in other states, which have also reported instances of information being shared.
“Overwhelmingly, communities in WA and elsewhere have used it wisely, and we’re seeing that here,” he said.
“We said before the election that we trusted people with that information, and we looked at offences that were embedded in other states that we hoped would act as a deterrent.”
Scanlon said the volume of interest had been a “big load” on the system, and had required technical support from other areas of government, such as the Department of Transport and Main Roads.
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