Page 2450 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 July 2008
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and appropriate consultation. I would like to see a proper, much needed conversation with the community on this issue before we are prepared to change the law. It is reprehensible, however, that the government has not done so.
This legislation, as I have said, runs to 752 pages. There are some concerns about the way the legislation is drafted. It throws together in one law provisions dealing with child protection, tattooing, childcare licensing, employment eligibility and, of all things, work experience legislation. On top of that, it currently contains all the sentencing provisions. However, I am pleased that, through this process, we will see the breaking down of the big, one-stop shop piece of legislation, because once this legislation passes, all the sentencing provisions will go into sentencing legislation and will disappear from the Children and Young People Act.
In 1999, we had the one big piece of legislation, and I think this is an outmoded approach. The idea that everything needs to be in the one place is of concern to me. I understand that this was a fad in drafting, and it is something whose time has passed. I think that it somehow demeans and undermines the important status we should give to child protection when we are putting things relating to work experience and tattooing in the one piece of legislation. There is some scope for laws relating to child employment to be contained in, for instance, the OH&S legislation. Tattooing could be in health legislation and work experience could also be in the OH&S legislation. There is no need to have such an extraordinary and daunting piece of legislation.
We also have some issues about the quality of drafting. Sentencing and the “guidances” by which detention centres are to be administered stand out as a problem. There seem to be about 15 different ways in which we can talk about sentencing and guidances, and it seems there are contrary things that could be construed from that, and there is no clarity.
A further example is the way in which light work—that is, work that is suitable for a child to do—is dealt with. What is “light work” is fairly clearly set out in the current law. The current law says that light work is “work that is not contrary to the best interests of a child or young person”. I think that is reasonably helpful, and it then gives examples that have effect according to the Legislation Act, and which are even more helpful. The provision then says “that to remove any doubt, an example of the definition of light work is not light work to the extent that it is contrary to the best interests of a child or young person”. That seems to be a roundabout way of saying the same thing they said in the first place. Finally, the legislation provides a further example. It says that “acting as a photographic subject if the nature and environment of the workplace makes it contrary to the best interests of a child or young person” is not light work.
By the time you get through this process, it becomes fairly heavy work for anyone trying to work out what is light work for a child. It is interesting that the final exception to light work involves being a photographic subject, which has had some coverage lately in relation to the Henson exhibition in Sydney and what is appropriate for children.
In addition to the foibles of drafting and things like that, there are some serious issues that we are concerned about. There are issues in relation to the length of detention and
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