Hansard - Working with Children Amendment Bill

WORKING WITH CHILDREN AMENDMENT BILL
Second reading

Mr WAKELING (Ferntree Gully) – It gives me pleasure to rise to speak on the Working with Children Amendment Bill 2007. This bill will amend the Working with Children Act which came into operation on 3 April 2006, and will introduce a number of changes which have been outlined by members before me. In many respects they include a number of bureaucratic and administrative changes.

I would like to talk about a number of concerns I have with the practical application of the working-with-children check. The first issue is in terms of the notification of organisations about a change in somebody’s status while they are in receipt of a working-with-children check. As the member who spoke before me just mentioned, the central database may well be updated on a fortnightly or monthly basis as the case may be, but the most critical fact that has been missed in all of this is that the organisations which utilise the service of that individual are not advised that the person’s criminal status has changed. While the department may have a central register which indicates that a citizen has now been registered as a paedophile, the organisation which is utilising the service of that person is not notified. It is incumbent on the persons concerned to notify those organisations.

I would not think that too many people who had been charged with criminal offences involving children would actually go out of their way to advise organisations that their status had changed. In a modern society where a department has this information it should provide the information to community organisations to prevent such a person perpetrating horrendous acts on other people within our society.

The other point I would like to touch on, which the Leader of The Nationals pointed out, is the crazy situation surrounding citizens having to have police checks. One resident from my electorate, Lyn Algie, who is a former Knox volunteer of the year, raised this issue with my office. She says she only needs one working-with-children check but is required to fill out forms for 12 police checks on an annual basis. She said to me, ‘Why am I bothering to volunteer in this community when I had to go through this process 12 times?’

She has called upon the government to come up with a simple solution, and I believe it is incumbent upon this government to not sit here and defend the situation but to come up with a workable solution that provides an easier process for volunteers, protecting the rights of individuals, protecting children from predators but also reduceing the regulatory burden on volunteers in our community.

Source: http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/downloadhansard/assembly.htm