Tsunami disaster exploited by Australian paedophiles

Up to 20 paedophiles from Australia who tried to travel to tsunami ravaged countries were stopped under the rules of the new child sex offender register.

The convicted offenders, whose names are on the recently set up national register, had to tell police of their plans to travel.

The Australian newspaper today reported that their travel details were sent by police to Indonesian and Thai authorities who refused them entry.

Child Wise director Bernadette McMenamin told AAP authorities had known that paedophiles would be targeting children in countries that had been hit by the tsunami.

She said it was well known that when countries experienced natural disasters or military crises paedophiles exploited the instability.

"Post-tsunami we expected that a lot of Australian child sex offenders would target these countries," she said.

Ms McMenamin said she was happy the new child sex offender register had worked but said more could be done to stop Australian paedophiles from abusing children overseas.

She called for the government to prevent "professional" recidivist paedophiles from travelling overseas at all.

"We do think that some offenders are too high risk and they shouldn't be allowed to travel overseas," she said.

"I have checked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and they said they do have the power to remove passports from people who they believe will harm others overseas."

Child sex offender registers have been set up in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and are being prepared in the other states and territories.

The state registers are linked to the national register, and police believe there will be 15,000 paedophiles listed by the end of the year.

- AAP