The new laws to be introduced this week will double the amount of time a first-time child sex offender is subjected to police monitoring and reporting.

Under the new regime, the monitoring period for first-time offenders will be 10 years, compared with five years previously.

The monitoring period for repeat offenders will also double to 20 years, while the most serious child sex offenders will be monitored for life.

Ryan said the changes would reverse the former Newman LNP Government’s legislation changes in 2014 that reduced the monitoring period for many child sex offenders to five years, the shortest in the country.

He said the change to the legislation saw surveillance of more than 1700 child sex offenders cease “overnight”, calling the result an “enduring stain on the former LNP Government’s time in office”.

A reading from parliamentary Hansard from the time shows the Newman Government’s decision to shorten the monitoring period from eight years to five years for first-time offenders was based on research that showed the likelihood of reoffending was at its greatest in the first three to five years of an offender’s release back into the community.

The lifetime reporting period was maintained for offenders who persisted in committing sexual and other offences against children.

The 2014 changes came almost a year after the Newman Government introduced processes to keep “the worst-of-the worst” sex offenders locked up indefinitely, a move which the then Labor Opposition argued against when it was debated in Parliament.

“The Newman Government is committed to protecting the public from sex offenders and we now have some of the toughest anti-sex offender laws in Australia,” the then Attorney-General, now Deputy Opposition Leader, Jarrod Bleijie, said at the time.

Ryan, who has been under pressure for weeks following a slew of reports critical of the police service against the backdrop of a rising youth crime surge, is adamant the government’s legislative changes will right the “shameful wrongs of the LNP’s past”.

“Child sex offenders are among the most heinous of all, and they deserve to be subject to the longest, strongest and strictest monitoring and reporting regime in the nation,” he said.

“The community can be assured that in addition to these tough new laws, our world class police service, including the internationally acclaimed Taskforce Argos and the Queensland Police Service’s Child Abuse and Sexual Crime Group are relentless in targeting those who do harm to the most vulnerable members of society.

“These new laws will continue to support the efforts of Queensland’s hard-working police to keep Queensland children safe.”