Page 4932 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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justice and procedural fairness. The procedure of risk assessment needs to be transparent, documented and consistently applied. We need to ensure that there are adequate provisions for review and appeal against decisions and that there is a requirement to protect the privacy of people who make application for registration, because it does involve quite often sensitive and personal information.
The ACT Greens support these principles that have been included to ensure that this happens and we believe that we need to understand some of the issues that did come up, and those were the issues around lived experience. We need to maintain these workers’ inclusion, where appropriate, in the workforce and regulated activities as defined within the bill. There is a balance to be found about how this is assessed in the risk management framework and the types of safeguards we put in place so that we ensure we strive to maintain safe and healthy environments for children, young people and vulnerable adults.
We know through research that those are people with lived experiences of homelessness, drug use and so forth who can add a lot of value into workplaces when they are working with people who are facing similar situations. So we do need to ensure that we are not going to set up a system that means these people will shy away from taking on these roles, these jobs into the future, or that they are cut out from them. I think that the ongoing consultation between the directorate and, particularly, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Association, ATODA, and also with the Mental Health Community Coalition were incredibly important. It did show that a number of the issues that were raised about particularly those people with lived experience and how they may fit or may not fit into the system were taken on board.
Again, I acknowledge the hard work put in by many community organisations—it was broader than those two—and the hard work put in by the public servants in the directorate who have been there to see this project progress. It has taken some years. I know that it has been on the table for some years and a lot of work has been undertaken. Again, it is important that we do have a system in place. It is important that we have proper checking.
My understanding is that this is the only system in the country that has a definition of vulnerable people that is this broad. We have had working with children checks and other sorts of checking systems in other states for some time. Here in the ACT for several years community organisations, particularly those working with people with disability, older people, younger people and children have had in their contracts that workers all have to have police checks conducted and police checks done before they start their employment. This broadens that out. It puts in place a more comprehensive system.
It is going to be a year before this system kicks in. There is still quite a lot of work to be done. I know that the Office of Regulatory Services also have been putting an enormous effort into setting all of this up. Of course, they will then carry this system on into the future. Again, I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that organisations receive adequate support and training to ensure the smooth transition and implementation of the scheme in the ACT. By providing these supports we are valuing the community organisations and the people who work within the community
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