The tricky bit, Mr Carmody said, was to give the community enough information to protect itself but not so much that the sex offender was at risk, and I'd imagine that this would be tricky. This issue has always been seen as a balance of the pedophile's and children's rights, and Mr Carmody stated what is obvious to everyone except bleeding heart criminal libertarians, otherwise known as civil libertarians, when he said that the rights of a pedophile had to be curtailed to the extent needed to protect children.

This issue is in play vigorously in NSW today as members of a Ryde community are vowing to force the notorious pedophile Dennis Ferguson to move from his new Housing NSW townhouse. You may not need reminding that in 1987 Ferguson kidnapped three young children from the one family in NSW and sexually assaulted them over three days in Brisbane.

I don't know how his Ryde neighbours came to know of his arrival - perhaps he was recognised from media photographs - but it was not by official notification. Ferguson has been moved on by public outrage a number of times, and this time even the NSW Minister for Housing vowed to force him to move on, although he didn't say to where. The minister, David Borger, has since realised that he can't force Ferguson to go anywhere. Hopefully he will now look at his department's responsibility to provide public housing appropriately and whether housing a known pedophile in an area rich with children is appropriate.

The fact is that Ferguson needs to live somewhere, and another fact is that unless this is in jail the somewhere will have children. It is a fact, too, that pedophiles have a high rate of reoffending, although that doesn't mean all pedophiles reoffend.

So what's the answer, not just for Ferguson but for all pedophiles? Be realistic enough, please, to accept that such people are free to live in Australia on completing their sentence. Is it acceptable, then, that they live in your neighbourhood?