Page 927 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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Further concerns relate to spent convictions of an applicant having to be considered in the assessment process. There is a view that in general a spent conviction should be just that. The committee also suggested that a card holder should be allowed to surrender the card. Further, the committee considered that some administrative powers should be conditional and that the decision should be made on reasonable grounds or on some other qualifier. The committee also noted that the ability of the applicant to seek a review of the assessor’s decision is restricted.
Also of note was whether the non-conviction element of the commissioner’s risk assessment process undermines applicants’ presumption of innocence. The committee further expressed serious concern about whether imprisonment for some of the strict liability offences is human rights compatible. These are matters that I will be addressing in the detail stage if the government does not do so, because it has long been the view of the Canberra Liberals that strict liability offences should not carry a term of imprisonment.
Finally, questions of whether the bill appropriately delegates legislative power and whether the bill subjects the exercise of legislative power to insufficient scrutiny were also raised. The government has responded to many of these comments in scrutiny report No 30. There are guidelines and, in all honesty, Mr Speaker, I have not had an opportunity to fully peruse the draft guidelines, which I again note were not provided to me by the government but by the Greens.
In addition, there will be considerable financial implications for the government and for the ACT in relation to this bill. Because we do not actually have a real handle on how many people will be required to have such a card—for the volunteers this card will be issued free of charge—it is hard to quantify the implications of the financial impacts, but they will be considerable.
That said, Mr Speaker, the Canberra Liberals will be today supporting this bill in principle. I note, for instance, that only yesterday Ms Dundas from the ACT Council of Social Service has encouraged the Assembly to support this bill, but I do so on the clear understanding that there is substantial work to be done and that the minister has to work cooperatively and openly with the community services sector, who will be hugely impacted by this. There is much work to be done before the Assembly can give final sign-off on this work.
I am not in a position to commend the minister and the department yet for having achieved the right outcome, because there is still so much work to do. Noting that this is a work in progress, the Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill in principle.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (12.13): As Mrs Dunne has indicated, the Greens will also be supporting this bill in principle but, again, we do not support going to the detail because we believe there is still quite a deal of work to be done. The Greens also very much support having a system in place that provides background checks for workers and volunteers to engage with children, young people and vulnerable adults. While systems have already been established in other jurisdictions to provide checks for those people working with children and young people, as Mrs Dunne has also
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