Brian Allan Smith faces court over first alleged breach of Daniel’s Law in Queensland

A Queensland man who allegedly published information about a registered pedophile, in breach of the state’s new child protection legislation, has been identified.

Brian Allan Smith, 47, briefly fronted Ipswich Magistrates Court on Wednesday charged with one count of displaying, distributing or publishing identifying information from Queensland’s public child protection register without authorisation.

Mr Smith’s lawyer requested a two-week adjournment to allow further discussions with her client.

The court granted the request and adjourned the matter until February 4.

Outside court, Mr Smith, from Lowood, was met by a throng of waiting media but declined to comment on the case.

Police allege Mr Smith published identifying information about a person listed on the public child protection register without the written approval of the Police Commissioner.

The public register went live at 11am on December 31 and allows members of the community to search for missing reportable offenders, view photographs of serious and high-risk offenders living in their area, and apply to check whether an adult who spends time alone with a child is a reportable offender.

The offence Mr Smith is charged with carries a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment.

Acting Police Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon said police had acted swiftly and had dealt with the alleged breach “very quickly”.

Earlier this month, Police Minister Dan Purdie said public engagement with the register had been significant since its launch, with almost 105,000 people accessing the website under tier one, relating to missing reportable offenders.

“But in relation to tier two, which is the locality search, which gives people the ability to find out what high risk pedophiles are living in their area, there’s been almost 21,000 completed applications,” Mr Purdie said.

Mr Purdie said there had been a further 60 applications under tier three.

“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.

“There’s been four hits that have identified someone on the Public Register as being a pedophile.”

Mr Purdie said none of the four were in breach of their reporting obligations and acknowledged the Morcombe family, with the law named in honour of murdered schoolboy Daniel Morcombe.