Bills

Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 20 September 2016.)

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (11:09): I will not hold the house for very long. It is clear to me at least, and I think to others, that the South Australian government has worked very hard and consulted with the public on the issue of child protection and screening checks. We know that child protection is an extremely important issue and that we need to do whatever it is that we can possibly do to ensure that our children, and those most vulnerable, are properly protected.

This bill is a reflection of the work which has been done which aligns with the royal commission into child protection systems and the views of the public and stakeholders. By choosing to adopt the approach recommended by the commonwealth royal commission and adapt this to meet the recommendations of the South Australian royal commission, this bill is creating an agile environment which will support the protection of children from people who are deemed unsuitable for child-related work, including volunteering responsibilities.

Transition to the new screening regime will be closely monitored by the government so as to ensure that people currently working with children who have recently undertaken a check in line with the current requirements are not disadvantaged. That is a very important point, and that has been identified previously when it comes to screening, so I am very pleased that this is part of the bill. It is important for volunteers especially, who are the backbone of our local communities, that we ensure that we do not burden them unnecessarily

However, of course we need to balance the competing interests. The Nyland royal commission and the commonwealth royal commission differed in view when it came to whether a person ought to wait on the outcome of a check before working with children. For local community groups and sporting clubs, it is often difficult to recruit and retain volunteers. We understand that but, as you can imagine, ma'am, we also understand that a delay in receiving a screening check is not ideal. Ultimately, the government is determined to take the firmer approach and require people to wait until a check is received, and that is appropriate, I think. This is something for which we should not apologise. We are putting the safety of children above all else.

South Australia has not monitored the criminal history of a person who has been screened. The bill aims to change this by setting up a regime, as recommended by both royal commissions, whereby the DCSI Screening Unit can implement the continuous monitoring of screened applicants. This has been the result, as I said earlier, of a wideranging review of screening in this state, which has been coordinated by a dedicated and hardworking cabinet working group.

The bill has been the subject of extensive public consultation, including substantial support, engagement and consultation across the government. I think it is a very important bill and one that I certainly commend to all members of this house. The sooner it is in the better.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (11:12): I rise to support the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016, and I indicate that I am lead speaker on this bill. The Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016 was introduced by the Minister for Child Protection Reform on 20 September. The working with children check will either provide a clearance to work with children for five years or bar against working with children—i.e., you would be declared a prohibited person. Cleared applicants will be subject to continuous monitoring, and relevant new records may lead to the clearance being revoked.

The working with children check will be fully portable so it can be used for any paid or unpaid child-related work in South Australia for as long as a worker remains cleared. It should be noted that the government has stated the bill enables progress to be made towards a nationally consistent scheme, which has been recommended also by the Nyland royal commission. This bill is part of a package of legislative reforms that the government states it will release to implement recommendations made by Commissioner Nyland.

The draft bill was released for public consultation, including through publication on the South Australian government YourSAy consultation portal on 23 August, and was closed for submissions on 13 September. Whilst there has been consultation, I would certainly not refer to that as extensive; three weeks is not really a very long time, and certainly there are a lot of people whose feedback on this bill I would like to get before approving it. However, understanding the importance of child protection reform, we will not be holding up the house regarding that issue.

I have not been able to receive a copy of any of the feedback that was sent through. I have requested that both verbally and in writing. I would love to be able to read through and get the thoughts of people who have been consulted before rushing this bill through parliament. Since the draft bill was released for consultation, anything difficult has been removed and will be decided in regulation, including the definition of 'close physical contact'.

The regulations will also include specified offences committed in specific circumstances that can be excluded from being prescribed offences. The regulations will also include a class of position, which can be prescribed, which means a person in that position works with children and, therefore, must undertake a working with children check. Also in the regulations, information or a class of information to be prescribed by regulation needs to be assessable information. The parental exemption provision has also been removed from the bill, to be dealt with by way of regulations, and is subject to further public consultation.

The problem with regulations is that, as an opposition, we have the choice of accepting all of the regulations, or disallowing all of the regulations. It means that there is no ability for scrutiny, for improvement, or for discussion about each individual regulation. It is certainly not a preferred way, and it is an indication of what is really a rushed process and, as I said, we do not want to hold this bill up. However, I am very keen to see what those regulations are, given that we are approving a bill without ever having seen the regulations.

Given that continuous monitoring is not expected to be ready for approximately one year, until July next year, I believe this is showing that the government wants to be seen to be doing something; however, it is actually not able to be effected for quite some time. So, there is no reason to rush through a bill that does not have the regulations written and to remove all of the difficult parts of the bill to put them into regulations.

I just hope this is not another EPAS, where we are waiting years and years and cost blowout after blowout before we can finally enable a bill that we have rushed through parliament, noting that in the royal commission it was discussed how Families SA already has about three to four computer systems and different programs that make it impossible for case management and reconciliation. For example, with drug tests, you cannot actually see results, they do not show up; a father or a mother who has multiple children are not collated together to be able to get a true picture.

So I do question how easily this so-called continuous monitoring will be. I also note that that was first recommended in the Mullighan royal commission in 2008, so it is eight years on and we still do not have continuous monitoring despite, I believe, every other state in Australia already having continuous monitoring. The regulations will be drafted in consultation with relevant agencies such as the DCSI SU and the DECD. However, as I said, it is always preferred to have the information as part of the bill, so that it does stand up to parliamentary scrutiny and debate.

Changes from the current system include that clearances will now be valid for five years, as opposed to three years. The central assessment unit will issue an applicant with a unique identifier with which employers will then be able to identify potential employees. This will still be done through DCSI. Currently, in the Department for Education, I believe there are different ways that teachers are screened, as opposed to other people. This will ensure consistency in one place, which I certainly welcome. It will now also become a criminal offence to employ someone who has not received a clearance and there will no longer be the discretion to employ someone without a clearance.

Every employer needs to go onto the DCSI website in order to register. They will need the employee's full name, their unique identifier and their date of birth, and this will enable them to be notified if an employee registered with them commits an offence. Both the employee and the employer will be notified of when the renewal date is due, I hope—I know I was told that would be the case. There are still plenty of unknowns, including the guidelines on how things are done and the weightings to be considered in approving a clearance.

I believe they will be using the commonwealth definition of working with children, but there is still a lot of confusion over some jobs and how widely this will be applied, and that will also be dealt with in the regulations. There will be the ability to check a person who makes an application but then withdraws that application. Previously, a requesting officer was required to obtain a working with children check and now this can be self-requested. This should limit some of the delays and the jobs that were lost due to waiting times.

I note that even when I went to get my working with children check, being on the Governing Council of Adelaide High School—and, given my job, I thought it would be a good idea—my application was rejected because I did not have a requesting officer. I do not really know who is my actual employee to put on as a requesting officer, so I had to use one of my staff's names in order for the application to go through. It makes far more sense for job applicants to be able to apply for their working with children check and already have their unique identifier on their résumé so that, when they apply for jobs, they are work ready.

One example that was given to me by a large employer of people who work with children was that they had employed 30 people, they all then become the requesting officer, and then they apply for their screening checks, and for some of those 30 people who still did not have a working with children check approved after their three-month probationary period it put them in a very difficult position. For some of them who were not cleared, or when it was optional for the employer, under privacy laws they were not able to discuss why it was they would not employ them, yet they could not employ them, so it made it very difficult.

I guess this takes away that difficulty for the employer because it is a criminal offence, and they must already have got their clearance before they start work, and that will all hopefully sort itself out by people actually applying for their clearance before they go for job interviews. The legislation strengthens against employers employing individuals without a check, as I just mentioned, and spent convictions will be noted on the registry.

Appeals will be made to SACAT, and each individual will just have one number for the five-year period compared to the situation now when potentially an individual could have multiple unique identifier numbers for multiple different checks such as working with the aged and working with children. If an individual is prohibited interstate, they will automatically be prohibited in South Australia.

It is unclear if there is any way of checking a person who is coming from working overseas. I do not believe there is a database or a checking system available, but at least it is an improvement that we can now check them from interstate. Under the bill, a person would be banned from working with children if they are subject to a prohibition notice issued by the central assessment unit. They will also be banned from working with children if they have been prohibited from working with children under a law of the commonwealth or any other state or territory.

They will also be banned if they have been found guilty of a prescribed offence committed as an adult including, but not limited to, serious crimes such as murder of a child, rape or other sexual offences against a child. This bill will bring South Australia into line with the other states and territories that already have similar registration processes. The cost, I am told, will not increase from the current rate of $105 for an employer/employee or $55 for a volunteer.

I am concerned about the cost implications to the budget and the loss to the department, given that the $105 was for three years and now that would be for five years. As an accountant, I would have just divided it by three and multiplied it by five if I was just working out a rough estimate; however, it is up to the government to work out their figures.

Whilst I welcome any improvement to screening people who work with children or vulnerable people, let's not forget the whole reason for the royal commission which made 260 recommendations and brought us to this point—Shannon McCoole. These changes would not in any way have prevented Shannon McCoole from being employed. These changes would not have caused him to be fired, despite multiple complaints about him from other staff that were ignored. This has been introduced due to a massive failure by this Labor government, a failure to protect children in its care and under the guardianship of the minister, yet these reforms do not solve that problem at all.

This policy places another burden on struggling businesses and makes it a criminal offence to employ a person without a screening check. Whilst we always want to err on the side of caution, as a business owner I think, what about the businesses? I worked with children in business as an employee and as the owner of a business for over 20 years, working with thousands of children a year without incident. I employed adults to train the children. I had adults working in my office, and when it became more popular I requested that some of them have police checks. It was really only a couple of years ago that the working with children check became a more rigorous check.

There are many businesses that have been operating for many years without incident, and this really adds another level of bureaucracy and difficulty to making that work and notifying all the businesses. The government needs to make sure that it makes this process as easy as possible for small businesses which already struggle under the regime of BAS statements being due, their tax, WorkCover and superannuation payments, their leasing, photocopying and increased electricity bills—everything. This is just another thing that they are going to worry about and be concerned about. They could be committing a criminal offence if they fail to know that this has been enacted and if they fail to know what is the true definition of working with children.

I note the member for Torrens would understand, having come from a background in film and television, that we need some clear understanding. It is my understanding that adults who work with children on a film set, and who are employed as an actor in the same way as a child, are not working with children and would not need the screening. However, the best boy, the dolly grip, the producer and the lighting guys are working with children, so therefore they might need these screening checks. I think that is where there is going to be a lot of confusion.

There are different industries that work with lots of children. At times, I had almost 1,000 models and actors registered with me, and at times the adults would be with children at fashion parades, or TV commercials, or films. Does that mean they all need a clearance? Is that working with them? That is what is not described fully in this bill because it will be dealt with in regulation, which means we do not have the ability to have any say in that.

I hope the opposition is included in some of the consultation, given that we will not be able to debate it in the house. It could have terrible consequences if every single person registered with an acting agency, dancing agency, or modelling agency had to go through the working with children, because they will come across them, they will be working with them, and just depending on how tight a definition, or how broad a definition is, will determine it.

Worst of all, if you are the employer you are the one who is committing the criminal offence for having them there. You are relying on the definition, and it would be very cumbersome to have to go and find 500 people's unique identifiers and register all of that on a database and then be receiving that every day for a year. If there are 365 days in a year, and you have 500 people, potentially every single day you are going to be notified of somebody needing a new screening check which you then have to follow up and make sure that they have got their new screening checks. So, I am concerned about the process.

I would be interested to know if there is a list that tells us how many people who have committed offences against children, and who were actually working without a clearance, would not have been eligible for a clearance. What ill are we fixing? This aims to stop an employer making the decision to employ someone without a clearance because in their mind they might think, 'Well, I'm always with that person. There are other adults in the room—although there are children on a TV set—therefore I'm not going to make them get a clearance.' That used to be a decision because you were there the whole time watching them, so in your mind there is, perhaps, no danger. Now you actually will be committing a criminal offence—you have no option to make that decision.

I just wonder how many people did commit offences against children, and it was only because they did not have a clearance, and if they had applied for the clearance, they would not have got it. How many employers have made a bad decision and employed someone and put children in danger, or offences have occurred? That is what this is really fixing: by making it a criminal offence for an employer to employ. There must be a reason behind it. Otherwise, we are forgetting the main point, and that is that Shannon McCoole, who was employed by the government, was able to be a sexual offender against seven preschool-aged children. He did not have a criminal record, so it would not have shown up. This screening would not detect him.

Whilst this is improving the system, we must not forget to be vigilant in protecting our children and listening to warning signs. When there are warnings, they must be followed up. When people ring the CARL (Child Abuse Report Line) they must be followed up because 84 per cent of notifications of tier 3 are not followed up in any way. This is part of what needs to be done, but there is a lot more to go. I commend the bill to the house and I look forward to being able to consult further when I see the regulations.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:30): I rise to speak to the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016. I note that this is:

A Bill for an Act to minimise the risk to children posed by persons who work or volunteer with them; to provide for the screening of persons who want to work or volunteer with children; to provide for a system of accountability for persons working or volunteering with children; to prohibit those who pose an unacceptable risk to children from working or volunteering with children; to provide for a central assessment unit to undertake screening of persons who want to work or volunteer with children; and for other purposes.

I note that this bill was only introduced by the Attorney last week, on 20 September 2016. The working with children's check will either provide clearance to work with children for five years or be a bar against working with children, which obviously gets you the prohibited person status.

There will be continuous monitoring of cleared applicants and the relevant new records may lead to the clearance being revoked. The clearance will be fully portable, so it can be used for any paid or unpaid child-related work in South Australia for as long as the worker remains cleared. The government has stated that this bill 'enables progress to be made towards a nationally consistent scheme'. As has been stated by the shadow minister, the bill is part of a package of legislative reforms and this is part of the reaction to the recommendations that the government has made. These recommendations were made by Commissioner Nyland in her recent report.

The draft bill was released for a brief period for public consultation on 23 August and closed for submissions on 13 September. Since the draft was released, consultation around anything difficult has been removed and will be decided in regulation which, as has already been stated, we will not be able to debate here, but hopefully there will be some consultation along the way. Part of that regulatory framework will be around the definition of 'close physical contact'. The regulations will be drafted in consultation with all the relevant agencies, including the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion.

In regard to some of the changes from the current system that are in place, the clearance will be valid for five years versus the current three years. The central assessment unit will issue an applicant with a unique identifier, so employers will then be able to identify potential employees. It will certainly become a criminal offence to employ someone who has not received a clearance. Certainly, there will not be any discretion to employ someone without a clearance.

Employers will need to go on the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion's website to register and this will then enable them to be notified if an employee registered with them commits an offence. Let's hope that level of technology works appropriately so that, if someone does commit an offence, that person can be identified readily and easily.

Both employee and employer will be notified of when renewals are due. There are a lot of unknowns yet, but I am sure we will have a bit of work through committee around some of those unknowns, including the guidelines on how things have progressed and the way things are to be considered in approving a clearance. The bill uses the commonwealth definition of working with children, but there is still a lot of confusion over some jobs and how widely this will be applied. I will talk about some of this a bit later on in my contribution. We are told that this will again be dealt with in the regulations.

Also under this bill we will be able to continue to check a person who makes but then withdraws an application for a check. Previous changes to screening delayed work for individuals; self-requests should limit this occurring. Previously, a requesting officer was required to obtain a working with children check, and now you can self-request. The shadow minister went through her own personal situation with that.

The legislation strengthens against employers employing individuals without a check, and spent convictions will be noted on the registry. Appeals will be made to SACAT, and each individual will have one number for the five-year period, compared with currently, when an individual can have multiple unique identifier numbers and multiple different checks. For example, you can have a working with children or the aged check. At least this is a sensible move in the direction to have a single identifier so that people can be identified far more quickly and, let's hope, take some level of overmanagement of these checks out of the system.

If an individual is prohibited interstate, they will automatically be prohibited in South Australia. I am not sure how this will be applied to internationals, and people on working visas will need to work through that. Under the bill, a person would be banned from working with children if they were the subject of a prohibition notice and they have been prohibited from working with children under a law of the commonwealth or of another state and territory because they have been found guilty of a prescribed offence committed as an adult. This includes, but is not limited to, serious crimes such as the murder of a child, or rape or other sexual offence against a child.

As has been already stated, this bill will bring South Australia into line with all other Australian states and territories which already have similar registration processes, and the cost will not increase from the current rates of $105 for people working under employers and $55 for volunteers. I believe things have sped up a little bit recently, but over the last couple of years there has been a long delay in any level of working with children or vulnerable people, especially in the taxi industry. I have certainly had issues raised with me by the two taxi companies in Murray Bridge about the time it took for people to get clearances. It is a ridiculous situation, really, because these are cost neutral proposals.

The government probably profits, actually, out of every application. It is just a matter of employing more people to make sure that you can process these applications to get them through. I believe that with this legislation there will be many more thousands—tens of thousands—of people who will need to be checked, and it needs to be done in a time-managed and convenient way for all concerned. In regard to some of the other matters in relation to the legislation, and referring to some of the comments made when the bill was introduced into the house, I quote from the speech that was made on the introduction:

The bill adopts a number of recommendations of royal commissioner Nyland of the South Australian Child Protection Systems Royal Commission as well as recommendations made by the commonwealth Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as set out in its final recommendations on working with children checks. The bill represents the adoption of recommendations 238(a) to (c) of the SA royal commission, being that a stand-alone legislative instrument is enacted to regulate the screening of individuals engaged in child-related work, which:

declares that the paramount consideration in screening assessment must be the best interests of children, having regard to their safety and protection;

invests powers in only one authorised government screening unit which is charged with maintaining a public register of all clearances and their expiration dates; and

empowers the screening authority to take into account in its assessments criminal offence and child protection history, professional misconduct or disciplinary proceedings, and deregistration as a foster parent or other type of carer under the Family and Community Services Act 1972.

I note the recent advertisements that the government is running for more foster carers. I think the people who take up foster care do very noble work, but it does not come without its challenges. As I have indicated in my speech, the safety of children is absolutely paramount and must come first, but I struggle with some of the matters regarding foster carers that have come to my office. I know of some people who had to go through the legal system to clear their name of vexatious claims from a foster child, and it cost a lot of money.

I know of some who are in front of the Supreme Court, and I know of others who are waiting up to two years to have their say in court on some allegations and it troubles me. What troubles me the most is that these matters take so long to resolve. I fully understand the separation of powers and I explain this to the people I talk to. It is a troubling time. It is a troubling time when someone mentions the word 'suicide' to you on the phone because of these allegations, and I have taken the appropriate action at those times.

As I said, the safety of children is paramount but these things trouble me greatly. These things have to be settled in court but sometimes, as I have found out, certainly in one case that has been cleared up, vexatious arguments are made. I put on the record that I salute all foster carers for the work they do, but it is certainly a place in which I would not tread. I salute people like Monica Perrett and her husband, Nathan, and the work they did with young Finn. It took 19 months of negotiation to get Finn's Law up in this house and I appreciate the support I received in regard to that legislation, but it took a long time. I acknowledge their ongoing work to hopefully make things better for foster carers.

We have a real problem in this state. We have thousands of children who have to be put up in motels for a range of reasons. There are a lot of troubled children out there and I wonder sometimes whether we do not have the courage to take action earlier. I know that taking children away from their natural parents is not the first choice and I understand that, but the problem we have is that even if these children get to three years old and they are living in a very damaging environment, they are damaged basically for life.

From talking to school services offices (and my wife is one of them and she has been in this situation, but not where she is currently working—I put that on the record), I know that their job at times is just to look after one of these troubled children. It is noble work trying to get these children assimilated into the classroom, but these poor little kids are damaged. I know why governments do not have the courage—I am saying this in a bipartisan way from opposition—that is, because the next thing is that there is the potential to have a generation we would have to say sorry to, and I believe that that is probably why there is an unease about doing this. I certainly think that we need to show more courage in relation to how we manage these situations.

Instead of having a dozen staff turn up at a school to work through the process when an incident happens with a troubled child (and I do not believe it needs a dozen public servants to work through this), we need to be better than that. We need to stop these situations getting to the point where they need that amount of intervention. Yes, it is a difficult place to be. For well over a decade now, we have had multiple inquiries and we need to get the right answers, but we have a long, long way to go.

I note that the member for Port Adelaide previously indicated that there will be school exemptions for people working with children. We need to explore that in the debate. This could have far-reaching effects right across the state and, as indicated earlier, it could mean an influx of tens of thousands of people making applications. I hope the government is ready for that because the safety of children is paramount.

I know that on the weekend the member for Florey was at the Pedal Prix at Murray Bridge. It is a fantastic event, with over 200 teams and human-powered vehicles, and thousands of people attend, and what I like about it is that the kids are out there pedalling bikes instead of mucking around with their phones. They all get into it, they go all night ,and it is a fantastic event supported by so many schools from not just across this state but across the country, including the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Victoria and probably others.

With an event like that, where thousands and thousands of people are camped on Sturt Reserve at Murray Bridge (which is the perfect location for the 24-hour race), does it mean that every one of those adults needs a working with children check? That is something we need to find out in the debate. I am not saying this flippantly. We need to know because we do not want to suddenly find out that thousands of people could be subject to criminal charges.

Other events—and I am not being flippant about this either—include the many Christmas pageants that will be coming up in the next couple of months right across the state. Who can believe that we are already talking about Christmas? The big one here used to be called the Johnnie's Christmas Pageant when it started years ago. Will everyone, whether a spectator or whether a volunteer, need to have a working with children check? We need to have that validated.

I think that the biggest issue in this debate is that we need to be absolutely certain who needs to go through this process and who does not. I have said several times during this contribution that in this whole debate the safety of children is paramount, but there are so many other issues that we have to deal with around this and the impacts on society as a whole. We certainly do not want to have situations develop that could have been constrained if everyone was aware of and educated on what their position had to be, moving ahead, in regard to this legislation.

I think it is certainly a major step in the right direction. It is interesting that we have had to have so many inquiries since the early 2000s in regard to child protection and that we have suddenly seen some fast action in introducing legislation. We certainly will not be standing in the way of that legislation going through the house, but we need to make sure that the legislation is appropriate, that it is workable, that the departments are funded to operate the legislation and that people can apply for these clearances and get them in the appropriate time frame for whatever work they are doing with children or whatever volunteering they are doing with children. I commend the bill.

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (11:50): I rise to speak in support of the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016, a bill that provides a framework for the prohibition of persons who pose an unacceptable risk to children from working or volunteering with children. The objective is stated in the bill—to minimise the risk to children posed by persons who work with them—and it sets out the principles. The bill has at its core the safety and protection of children.

It is very important, however unfortunate, that people are not lulled into a false sense of security. Sadly, there may always be children who are harmed by adults of a questionable moral compass. It is such a sad statement, but it is true. Governments, non-government organisations and right-minded people who want to protect children will never be able to eliminate the risk entirely, but certainly we work tirelessly to those ends. Therefore this bill, and the screening process, does not clear people to work with children; rather, it works to prohibit people from working with children.

A working with children check that does not result in a person being prohibited from working with children is not proof of good character. Similarly, a working with children check that does not result in a person being prohibited from working with children is not proof that the person does not pose a risk to children. The bill adopts a number of recommendations of the South Australian protection systems royal commission as well as recommendations made by the commonwealth Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

As the Attorney has made clear, there is one particular recommendation of the commonwealth royal commission that has not been adopted. The commonwealth royal commission supported a scheme whereby a person would commence working or volunteering with children whilst awaiting the outcome of their working with children check. This was not supported by the Nyland royal commission. The government has chosen to adopt the approach recommended by the Nyland royal commission whereby a person cannot commence working or volunteering with children until their working with children check has been undertaken and they have not been prohibited.

The government has taken this position because it makes no apologies that the safety of children must come first. I welcome this approach, having spent a great proportion of my professional life working with families and children, particularly in the child protection space. It is important that we engage with children themselves as well, I would suggest, as sometimes in society we may look past the fact that children can actually speak for themselves. This myth and misunderstanding is something I believe that we must work through and recognise that children do not lack the competence, that they do not lack the knowledge and judgement and that involving them in decisions will not place too heavy a burden on them.

To put children central to the issue, and this particular bill supports that, means we must give them a voice because it is not possible for them to claim their rights without a voice. Children who are silenced cannot challenge violence and the abuse perpetrated against them. It is important that we have children central to this issue. That is what this bill has at its core—the safety and protection of children. With those few words, I commend the bill to members.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:54): I rise to speak on the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016 and indicate that I will be consenting to the bill. Largely, this is a bill to remedy a working with children model which exists in South Australia but which has failed to be as robust as is necessary. The opposition agrees that it needs to be tightened. The measures to improve checks on people working with children are incorporated in this bill through a new model, that is, essentially to introduce a single working with children check which is portable and valid for five years and which, when the technology is ultimately developed, will hopefully be robust enough to be real-time effective in maintaining its accuracy and relevance.

It also creates a centralised assessment unit that will be the sole agency in South Australia responsible for conducting checks on individuals. As has been stated by others, the whole purpose of this regime is to minimise the risk to children posed by persons who work or volunteer with them, to provide the appropriate screening and now to introduce a regime of prohibition where the party who proposes to work or volunteer with a child poses an unacceptable risk to that child or children.

The matters I want to point out today relate to what this bill does, and other speakers have spoken at length on this. It is to be implemented by mid next year, and multiple regulatory provisions are to be introduced with it. We all know what it proposes to do. I think its implementation time, of course, is moving at a glacial pace. What it does not do is deal with the circumstances that arise such as those in the Shannon McCoole case. We all know how disgraceful that exposé was in mid-2014—to find that a person had been identified by the Danish police, I think (but from Europe), to be an operative in an international paedophile ring and that he was identified as someone who was an employee of Families SA.

More shattering was the exposure that there were a number of children—seven, I think—whom he ultimately admitted to directly assaulting, abusing or confronting in some clearly offensive manner. Reading case study No. 5 of Shannon McCoole in Commissioner Nyland's recent report is chilling. It can be said to be nothing less because of the repeated and layer upon layer of ineptitude of the screening alone of this man that allowed him to graduate from out-of-school-hours care employment to NannySA employment—an organisation supervised and regulated in its operation by government—and then to Families SA.

Thank goodness for the international police. The rate Mr McCoole was going, when one reads this report, he would probably be director of the department by now if they had not intervened. That is how obscene this circumstance and the failings exposed by Commissioner Nyland on this matter were. Can I just recount that, even though we have a situation of screening of checks, Mr McCoole was able—apart from lying in his curriculum vitae; apart from giving falsehoods about his experience, training and learning of educational training and the like; apart from getting through a panel of questions; and apart from the fact that people failed to actually check his history—to start to work unsupervised with children during a period of training.

Yet everyone else was out there, a working with children check process having been introduced some years ago that required that people be checked, that they be cleared, that they be trained and that they be screened. In every single way, Mr McCoole's advance in employment, and his graduating to higher office from one children's operation to Families SA, is scandalous. I am very concerned about what this bill does not do. It is fair to say that although it is proposing to strengthen the gatekeeping in respect of those who may have been found to have committed offences as detailed in the legislation, that is only a tiny sample of those who are clearly out there causing harm to children and capable of causing further harm to children. Let us not forget that.

It is such a narrow area of protection for children against those who are in their space of work or volunteer activity, that against that background it is absolutely puzzling to me and quite stunning why we are here in September 2016 debating the improvement of the model of this check when this has been an issue that has been known to this government for years. They did not need Margaret Nyland's report in August 2016 to tell them that the current model was deficient. They only had to look around Australia and see the advances in other states and jurisdictions dealing in this area to know that the model we have had in South Australia for years now has been grossly inadequate.

It is still expensive, over $100 if you are an employee and something like $58 or $60 for a volunteer to do a check, but ours has been shown to be wanting for a long time. We did not even need the Shannon McCoole case to make it clear to this government that it needed to do something. However, having announced a royal commission and the Attorney-General having a representative sit on that royal commission for two years, they knew exactly what was going on; they had every opportunity to bring this legislation before the parliament and not leave our children exposed in these circumstances, narrow as they might be.

Our children are entitled to have a system that works, that is effective, that is time sensitive and that is up to the standard around the country and not wait two years before they do anything about it. As the Attorney-General pointed out to the parliament just recently on the public data sharing legislation before the house, they of course were trying to claim that this exchange of information between departments for policy advancement was also in response to the Nyland royal commission. When it was pointed out to him that he tabled that bill before the Nyland royal commission had been published he said, 'Yes, but we knew it was coming.'

How did he know it was coming? He said, 'Because we have had people in the commission and they of course have been reporting to us. I have had regular meetings with the commissioner.' So they knew exactly what was going on. There is no excuse that for two years our children out there who are in a circumstance of being at risk have been exposed and required to rely on a model which is defective and inadequate. There is no excuse for that.

Yes, this bill tightens some of the regime, centralises the operation, makes it a prohibition and, indeed, an offence to employ someone where you do not have the check and, furthermore, that they are not identified or excluded from being a prohibited person—that is fine. It is a narrow piece of work but it should have been done two years ago. It still does not do all of those other things which are very important, where the government is dragging the chain in amending or rewriting the Children's Protection Act, and so many of the other recommendations of Ms Nyland which need to be attended to.

They have utterly failed in dealing with the really hard stuff. They have looked at and said they are picking up, I think, 38 recommendations—well, there are over 200 in this report and they are in urgent need of attention. If we have to wait, as we did for two years, for somebody to get off their backside and actually draft a bill to tighten this, God help those children who are out there exposed in so many other ways. It is completely unacceptable that we have had to wait for two years to have this tightened.

For all of the time we have had to wait, we now have a situation where this bill is heavily laced with a failing to describe exactly what it is that is being prohibited and the parties that are to be affected by it. Prescribed offences are a long list: murder, manslaughter, all the usual felonies and the like; criminal code offences in the commonwealth, where the victim is on trial (multiple lists); significant sexual offences are listed; and we now have a new provision in there that says, 'but does not include an offence referred to in a preceding paragraph of a kind declared by the regulations to be excluded from the ambit of the definition'.

Rule number one in criminal law is that you make abundantly clear in the legislation the nature of the offence. The government here has lazily described a whole list of things and then added a clause that says, 'But we are going to exempt some things, which we have not told you about, we're not going to tell you about in this debate at all, other than by regulation at some later date, what we are going to exempt.'

So, the person out there, the employer who may be at risk for not actually complying with this, is left with no clear indication about what the line of liability will be for them. I say that is lazy, and we should at the very least have had the regulations, if they were going to put it in a regulation, which I think is a sloppy approach, but nevertheless we should have at least had those draft regulations on our desk and not have the government's officers scrambling around in haste to try to bring a bill to this parliament that they should have dealt with two years ago.

This should be implemented now, and the people who are having to work on this project would have had the time to do it properly, see what is happening across the country, what works and what does not, and make sure we have an effective system in place. What happens? Now we are faced with an unclear determination about what is to be a prescribed offence.

As for working with children, what is the nature of the employment? We have a long list in clause 6, 'The meaning of child-related work and work with children,' what I call the usual things—education activities, and the like—but where are the children's clothing shops, where is the local store where lollies are sold? Obviously, there is a lot of other activity, in which there is a direct relationship where a service is provided for children, which I do not think is even captured here or, if it is, it is clumsy in its application for those who will not have any clue.

In a country town, what does the local general store owner do if they frequently receive children into his or her shop, the store that sells products for children or other products which might be picked up on an errand for mum or dad? Are they required to ensure that the packing boy up in the freezer room has taken a working with children test? Who knows? I read this bill and I am none the wiser.

I do not disagree that it is important to make sure we do not have inadvertent, unreasonable capture of people—what we call the McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken checks. I can recall a girl of 16 years saying that she had to have a working with children check to take up a shift at Kentucky Fried Children because she was serving other children. How absolutely ridiculous! I do not doubt that we have to have this clear, but let us have it clear while we are debating it and not make it up on the run and in a hurry and expect those officers who have to do this work to do it hastily to avoid embarrassment for the government in its utter failing to deal with this.

We will support this bill because it has been a long time coming. Although it is narrow and still in a shabby, lazy, unclear form, I will support this bill, but I expect these regulations to be on the table quickly, and I expect that whoever is the technical person, the person who is supposed to be setting up the computer program in Families SA or the child protection agency, whatever it is going to be called in the new regime, administers and implements it quickly.

That is so that when Ms Cathy Taylor arrives here at the end of October to take over the new department—it is operational and she has a new sign on the door—we will have a unit that is going to be effective and works and does not leave so many people out there confused about what their obligations will be under the current regime and at risk of prosecution if they are not clear, and it will not leave employers, employees and volunteers in an environment of exclusion from being able to get on to work because we have such a hopeless system at present. Get on with it, government, and stop wasting time.

Ms COOK (Fisher) (12:10): I am going to speak on the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016. While it would be lovely to live in a society where the need to screen volunteers and workers who are in contact with our vulnerable adults and children does not exist, unfortunately this is not so. The opposition would have you believe that this culture that fails our children is unique to South Australia, but in fact this is not a unique culture to South Australia and nor is it to Australia. It is a culture which sickens me and one which we as a parliament must do all we can to combat in a way which is inclusive and restorative.

We must show leadership and instil confidence in our community so that we show that we can truly change the outcomes for our most vulnerable. I have spent all my working life in the healthcare sector, combining this more recently with work in the community sector, including executive and strategic roles, working hands-on with these screening processes. It was during this time that the need for screening was identified as a way of reducing the risk of exposure to predators of our children and then vulnerable adults.

The number of people requiring this screening has increased exponentially, not just year after year but day after day, with the system created to protect our community itself showing some vulnerability and actually buckling under the sheer weight of numbers. This bill brings to life a number of recommendations out of the South Australian Child Protection Systems Royal Commission as well as the commonwealth Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

We will see a central assessment unit and the key terms of the bill, which will provide future flexibility across states and territories as we work towards negotiating a consistent approach to working with children checks across jurisdictions, as recommended by the commonwealth royal commission. The state government is taking significant steps towards making this happen and is leading the way in reforming the safety of children.

One of the aims of the bill is to make it an offence for individuals or organisations to fail to comply with the provisions of the legislation, including engagement in or for child-related work without a clearance and dishonesty in the application process. It will further permit appeals from decisions of the screening authority to the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal or another independent body. It also declares that the outcome of the screening assessment will be limited to either a clearance or a refusal and that all applications, even withdrawn, will be assessed.

Individuals are required to seek and maintain a personal clearance themselves, which will be valid for a period of up to five years, through a unique electronic identifier system which has portability across roles and organisations in the state, and individuals are required to notify the screening authority of relevant changes in their offence, conduct or child protection circumstances. The bill further requires employers to ensure that all relevant personnel in their organisation at all times hold clearances. This works towards having a nationally consistent scheme which puts adequate responsibility on both the employer and employee ensuring a fair and rigorous scheme.

All children are vulnerable, and some are more vulnerable than others depending on their circumstances. It is crucial that children in this state are cared for, taught and influenced by the best people we can find, people who will nurture, encourage and empower young people in South Australia. By implementing this bill, we are taking a step in this direction. I look forward to seeing the necessary bipartisan support as this vital piece of work continues, and I commend the bill to members.

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (12:14): I rise to support the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016. I would like to take a slightly different tack from the one most people have taken and talk about the 99.9 per cent of people who do the right thing and who are fantastic advocates and contribute enormously to the wellbeing and growth of young people in our community.

It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. My concern has always been around barriers or processes which exclude great people from wanting to be involved with young people in our communities. I am talking about, predominantly, grandparents or those who are retired and can talk about personal examples where the feeling of being under intense scrutiny and going through a police check, working with children checks, etc., etc., gets to a point where those people shy away from being involved with young people. I find that an absolute tragedy.

I am pleased to see that this bill is making some progress towards a nationally-consistent scheme. My own personal opinion is that this issue is so big that it is needing commonwealth oversight so that perpetrators of crime, or under suspicion even, cannot go from one jurisdiction to another, or one state to another and escape that scrutiny, which I have had examples of in my time in the education department. I was an attendance officer for a couple of years, and it just astounded me that, when help was put around certain families and, perhaps, some expectations made in return, they simply moved from South Australia to Victoria where there was no process to hand on paperwork and documents, and yet young children were involved.

I am pleased to see that the clearance is valid from five years, as opposed to its current system of three years. I say that because I think that we should do everything we can to make it easier for people to be working with young children. Of course, we have got to have the checks, and I will not argue against that, but I will come back to the point that, by far and away, most people, 99.9 per cent of people, do the right thing, are fantastic supporters and support networks for young people going forward.

I would like to see it go forward, and it is nothing new, let's be honest. Queensland has a system called a blue card system. I have spoken in this place about that system, where it enables live monitoring, where the person who holds the card has a unique identifier so that employers can check that number against any issues that are coming up, or pending, or have been discovered over the period of that time. So, I am pleased to see an extension out to five years. I am also very pleased to see that there will be a central assessment unit, where an applicant will be issued with a unique identifier, with which employers will then be able to identify potential employees.

I am supportive of the fact that it is no longer up to the discretion of the employer to employ someone without clearance, and I will be supporting the fact that it will be a criminal offence to employ someone who has not yet received a clearance. I am very supportive of all those things. There are some other things that I would like to see in the bill, and this comes down to cost. I would like to see, for those of a pension age or retirement age, that there is a cost reduction. So, from the current rate of $105, or $55 for volunteers, I would love to get to a point where it would be free so we encourage more people to be working with young people, whether it is reading at school, on school trips, or volunteering in different areas.

The more people we have with eyes on the ground understanding what is going on, the greater the chance we have of catching the 0.1 per cent, those evil people who seek to get involved with young children to commit horrendous crimes or intent. The more people we have on the ground who can report or have suspicion of activity, the safer our young people will be. We have had a system where we have made it harder for people to get on the ground and work with young people, therefore taking fewer eyes off certain situations.

I am firm in my belief that we should do everything we can to encourage more people to be involved, and if that is a cost reduction, if that is one of the prohibitive factors for those who may be on a limited income, maybe on a pension, then I think we should do everything we can to encourage them to be involved in working with children. I am fully supportive of the intent. I think we need to go to a national system where information is shared. We should do everything we can to encourage more people to be involved. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr GEE (Napier) (12:21): I rise to speak on the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016. Since coming to this place in 2014, my awareness of our child protection system has been highlighted on many occasions by the devastating and tragic events that have occurred during that time. One of the most disappointing circumstances of these events is seeing some of those members opposite seeking to make political advantage of these awful events. I have never heard mention from those opposite any of the positive events that have occurred over these last four years.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr GEE: The only highlights we see are those events driven by those opposite in the media.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr GEE: On 5 August 2016, Margaret Nyland handed to His Excellency the Governor the report of the Royal Commission into Child Protection Systems. This report sets out 260 recommendations for the improvement of the child protection system in South Australia. Importantly, the commissioner made it clear that no child protection system is perfect. In fact, she made it clear that child protection systems around the world all face their own issues. South Australia is no different.

The key to improving the child protection system in this state, in my view, is early intervention and, like most issues, prevention is far better than cure. The Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Bill 2016 seeks to establish a regime by which a central assessment unit provides a consistent approach to working with children checks. Working with children checks do not clear people to work with children. If someone receives a good report on a working with children check, it does not mean that the person is approved for working with children in this state.

Rather, it is when a person receives a negative screening check that they are prohibited from working with children. The government is not able—and no government is able—to approve people to work with children or guarantee that no child will be harmed. As unfortunate as it is, no government can ever make that guarantee. Instead, we will do all that we can to make this process as efficient, flexible and effective as possible. The government is currently working on further responses to the Nyland royal commission, and I look forward to seeing progress in the coming weeks and months. I commend this bill to the house.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (12:24): I thank all the speakers for their contributions on this important measure. It is a measure that we need to get on with implementing, and we need to get on with it immediately. I wanted to answer in general terms a few questions which were asked during the course of the debate.

Essentially, and unpredictably in some respects, the questions were around the regulations which will be made under the act. One makes the regulations once the act has been passed, and not before. If you make the regulations before, you might find that the provisions that you are making the regulations about do not survive the parliament. The regulations will be settled once the bill is settled.

I think it is fairly clear, in general terms, what the regulations are going to be directed towards. Of course, we will be consulting on the regulations and, indeed, the parliament is capable of disallowing regulations with which it does not agree. Whilst to some degree I understand that there may be questions about the regulations, it is also the case that to get on with doing the work of the regulations we need the primary structure of the act settled. Then we move into the phase of consulting on the regulations, which do add some additional colour and flavour to the legislation.

This is an important platform, a plank of the improvements we wish to make in the child protection space, and we wish to get on with it as quickly as possible. Between this place and the other place, if there are particular matters that members wish to discuss that is fine, and I am happy to do that. I am happy to provide further briefings on any matters that might be of lingering concern. However, I am mindful that the other place requires things to be there for a certain period of time before they will entertain them, so the sooner this gets there the better.

As I said, I am happy to have conversations between here and there, and I am happy to discuss or provide further briefing to members of either chamber between here and there about matters that might be of lingering concern. As I said, I thank all members for their contributions.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (12:28): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.