If you are a person under 18 in New South Wales, there is a big chance that if you send flirtatious text images to your partner. You will be at risk of being prosecuted under child pornography charges because of discrepancies in state and federal laws. This is because the age of consent in NSW is 16 – and the legal definition of a child in NSW is the same – under the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18. If you are charged with a crime like this, you could be placed on the child-sex register which could in turn, could affect your employment and travel prospects. Greg Burns of the Australian Lawyers alliance says that ”We need laws that can be readily understood by people and not make criminals out of teenagers who are having a bit of innocent, consensual fun together.”

However, the other side of the debate is concerned that the the increasing trend of ‘sexting’ is damaging to the psychological development of teenagers and although they may simply be innocently flirting with each other, opening up this area of the law would frustrate attempts to protect children from sexual predators, cyber bullies and sexual harassment. At present, the NSW government appears to fall firmly on the side of the debate which says that it is unsafe and has published a paper known as ‘Safe Sexting: there is no such thing, detailing the dangers of sexting’. The report warns that ”Images sent by mobile phone can easily fall into the wrong hands, and once they are in cyberspace it is impossible to remove them or control who sees them,” it warns. Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory have an age threshold for child pornography offences set at 18 years of age. In remaining jurisdictions, including NSW, it is 16 years of age. While there are no statistics on the prevalence of sexting, latest crime statistics show that threats and harassment, under which sexting can be categorised, have increased by 5.5 per cent in NSW in the past two years. If you are worried about an issue related to this, please do not hesitate to contact us in relation to this matter using the contact forms on this site.