Page 5327 - Week 12 - Thursday, 28 October 2010
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register. A later amendment will also require that the incident register record the date and time on which the document was given to the commissioner and a copy of the receipt must be held with the incident register.
These amendments provide efficiency of process and, importantly, they are a more effective way of protecting the privacy of people issuing receipts. This came about because the government has an amendment in the consequential amendment bill that provides some protection. It is very important. It is easy to provide protection and anonymity for a security guard, because a security guard is registered and has a registration number. For the government to provide protection and anonymity in that case just requires that the security guard insert his or her number on the receipt.
But at the same time, perhaps the 19-year-old girl behind the bar who has spotted this irregular documentation would be required to provide her name and possibly her address or phone number to someone who might be a little unhappy that they have been sprung with forged documents or irregular documents.
My staff and I thought for a long while about how it would be best to afford the same protection to behind-the-bar staff as you do to security staff. We came up with this approach which I commend to the Assembly. I think that it goes beyond what the minister set out to achieve. I think that the minister and the department saw that there was a problem with exposing groups of people to repercussions from someone who was being caught out doing something that is wrong.
It is easy to afford the protection of anonymity to someone who has a registration number. Short of coming up with a registration system for bar staff, which would be unconscionable from my point of view, I think that this is the better way of doing it. By making it a reportable incident in the incident register, all the necessary information is contained there. The incident register is not available to the public. The aggrieved person still has a receipt for the documents that they have handed over, but it is not the sort of thing where they could use the information there to pursue someone that had crossed them.
We have also put in an extra step of security which requires the incident register to report when that is handed over to the registrar. I do thank the parliamentary counsel for their assistance with this particular one. I think that they have taken what we wanted to do and come up with a much finer solution than we had originally envisaged.
Mr Rattenbury: It is an elegant solution.
MRS DUNNE: It is a very elegant solution which I think actually makes the act a whole lot better.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (4.34): The government will not be supporting this amendment. This amendment actually places further administrative costs onto licensees. The amendment, when taken with Mrs Dunne’s amendment No 8, which this amendment
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