Bills

Statutes Amendment (Screening) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 1 May 2019.)

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (12:00): I rise to speak on the Statutes Amendment (Screening) Bill, and I indicate that I am the lead speaker on the bill for the opposition. I want indicate that the opposition supports the primary intent of the legislation to streamline screening processes and ensure that South Australia adheres to the intergovernmental agreements requiring us to establish appropriate legislative schemes to assist in upholding NDIS standards via the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.

The bill will also ensure that South Australians working with children, supervising people working with children or with access to data relating to children, including those volunteering, will be required to undertake a new DHS working with children check through the new child-related worker screening scheme. This is the next logical evolution of our screening system. It reduces complexity for people applying for screenings and for the department that administers them. These new screenings will also supersede existing screening requirements for allied health professionals and educators and others, moving towards a nationally consistent screening framework.

The bill provides for a transition period so that South Australians affected by these changes, including nurses and teachers, will only be subject to the act the day their existing registration requires renewal. The bill will also include a 12-month grace period for all South Australians currently in possession of what is known as a VOAN (volunteer organisation authority number), commonly known as a police check. These are the checks that you would commonly undertake if you were in a community organisation assisting as a volunteer to serve sausages at Bunnings or some of those other volunteer activities that you undertake.

Under existing legislation, South Australians employed or volunteering with children in possession of only a VOAN check will be in breach of the act and liable for serious criminal penalties. The bill seeks to give a 12-month leeway for employees and volunteers to transfer to an approved DHS working with children check with a promise from the government of an information campaign as a priority should the bill pass. More than 50,000 South Australians are anticipated to be affected by this 12-month migration from a VOAN check to a DHS working with children check.

Significantly, the bill also introduces the NDIS worker screening national system, pending the passage of commonwealth legislation that is really unlikely to pass until late in 2019. Under this system, the central assessment unit under the prohibited persons act will be responsible for conducting NDIS worker checks in South Australia. This includes a national criminal history check and workplace misconduct information for the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. These sections of the bill have and continue to have absolute, complete bipartisan support.

My feeling is that it is not always as it seems, however. I invite members to cast their minds back to the grand old days of the Weatherill Labor government. The then Liberal opposition made the commitment and there was an enormous announcement and a big song and dance made about the promise to provide free volunteer screenings to our volunteers in the community. They announced that no person applying for a volunteer screening would have to pay for screening. Under these conditions, the government is breaking an election promise.

When the bill was introduced in the Legislative Council, it imposed a requirement on those who obtain a free DHS check as a volunteer to pay the cost of a check if they then require one for employment. They cannot continue to work with a free check, under the bill as presented, in the system. The checks are ostensibly doing the same thing: they are checking for criminal activities and history. We support this streamlining through the checking process, but it was very clear that, once the person sought and gained employment in the sector, they would then pay for the check.

Someone could volunteer in the community for many years, receive this free volunteer screening and continue to volunteer in the community. Some people, such as lifesavers, CFS volunteers and a whole range of really committed mentors and support people in the community who do tens of hours or sometimes more than full-time hours per week as a volunteer, can get free volunteer screening and continue to do this volunteer work.

The estimation of the value of volunteer work can be anywhere between $25 and upwards of $60 or $70 an hour, depending on what they are actually undertaking. The volunteer economy is billions of dollars per year in our state and in our country. Those people continue to do that volunteer work and sometimes, as a consequence of their volunteering and their fantastic work, they may secure work within the sector to provide some assistance to somebody attending court or somebody who needs a little bit of assistance to relearn some skills after perhaps exiting a justice situation. They secure those few hours of paid employment in that sector.

As the bill was presented to us, they would then be expected to pay the $100 plus; I think it is about $107.40, I am happy to be corrected but it is between $105 and $110 for a screening—to be a paid worker. It is a change that could even affect Santa Claus. After sustained questions and inquiries from the opposition, the community sector and stakeholders, the government announced that it would move an amendment to give people a seven-day grace period where they would be able to work up to seven days in the calendar year before having to hand that $107-odd over to the minister's department.

The Santa Claus example rings true to me, having known some people who participate in the support of Christmas with those clothes on. I have to be very careful because there might be some children listening, although I doubt it. There are Santa's helpers who only do a few hours of paid Santa Claus in a shopping centre. They may have to pay money for a screening check after having done dozens or hundreds of hours of volunteer work, maybe as a mentor or a volunteer in a school. Santa would have to cough up the $100-odd out of his few hours of work in a shopping centre supporting the gift of Christmas.

In the committee stage of the bill in the upper house it was confirmed that this seven days over the calendar year is not clearly defined. A day is potentially an hour of that day. In the disability sector, there are people who get paid to do one hour's work to perhaps help someone set up for their lunch or whatever. If they are working seven days in a year, doing their seven hours of hugely paid work on minimum wages—they may take home $150 or less in a year—they need to cough up the money for the screening.

Of course, we have had a situation where perhaps people only do eight or nine hours of work and for some reason then cannot continue in paid employment and have had to pay for their screening. With the way this legislation is laid out, they now have to pay for a working check. They will then be forking out nearly two-thirds of what they earn to pay for a work screening. So that is the Santa Claus clause.

Here is another hypothetical. Someone could volunteer as a soccer coach for three years. We know they do many, many hours in brutal conditions with wild young kids on the pitch and have all the challenges of the even wilder parents who want their children to get the best deal in terms of the game. The volunteers have their volunteer screening and may then, as a consequence, to support the school or the soccer association, get some refereeing experience. They may get their ticket and they may then go and do some refereeing.

They could be asked to do a game a week, and that could be for eight weeks, being paid whatever it is they are paid these days—anything from $20 to $50 a game or thereabouts—before going back to being a full-time, hours-upon-hours volunteer. Along comes the Minister for Human Services and shouts across the pitch, 'Give me $107.40,' or whatever the amount is. She needs a red card. It is atrocious.

At no time before the election did anybody from the then opposition, now government, including the minister or the Premier, mention that free volunteer screening programs would be amended and that free volunteer screenings would only be available for people who are unemployed. Nowhere was it said that that commitment was only free if you did not have or did not get a job. That is why we moved amendments to this very tricky set of legislative procedures.

The first preferred option was to enshrine free volunteer screenings in legislation. The amendment said that if you get a free volunteer screening because you are volunteer and not in paid employment you would not have to pay that money to the government once you do get employment, just because now the unexpected consequence for the government is that it will blow a big hole in the budget. The government has voted this amendment down.

We also attempted to put up an amendment whereby volunteers who subsequently secure work would have to have 150 hours of work to trigger the payment being required. That is around four weeks of full-time work, which is reasonably secure. It is eight weeks of part-time or half-time work before having to pay that amount or, as people who came to me said, repay the system. They voted that down as well. They did not want a 150-hour minimum set. They wanted to keep to their seven days. The reason was that it is much too complex to monitor or flag 150 hours versus seven days. That was voted down, and we really could not get a clear answer on that. The Greens supported our amendments and SA-Best asked lots of questions about this.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: But they supported us.

Ms COOK: Yes, I will get there. You do not want to come into the conversation too early. SA-Best asked lots of questions as well, and I congratulate them on their diligence around that. However, they also did not receive any clear answers about the triggers and what the difference is between seven days and 150 hours.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Ms COOK: I hear the Attorney-General going on and on over there, clearly feeling very guilty about this whole thing. Anyway, if we had had this spelt out clearly in briefings very early in the piece, instead of just being given the legislation on face value, it potentially would have made life a lot easier. We found this situation when we went to consultation. We found that people in the sector had not been proactively spoken to about this and had to seek further information about it.

Come out and say that the pre-election costings were not done. Come out and say that, suddenly, this is going to cost you a big whack of cash and that you have to get some money back for the screening. Come out and be absolutely honest. Sure, we are still going to call you out on it, but to be deceptive like that is pretty poor, to be honest. At the end of the day, the government should have just tabled the legislation that did not break their commitment, made amendments across the portfolio and made it so that volunteers continue to use that screening whether they are working or not. Volunteers would then continue to get free screenings. But that is not the bill we have.

Our amendments were not supported, and we are disappointed. We now have this pathetic situation where a person potentially works seven hours in seven days across a calendar year. Is this really simple to flag compared with 150 hours? I have heard of a whole range of electronic time sheet systems where, 'Ding! You have done this many hours,' or, 'Ding! You have done that many hours,' and then, 'You are entitled to overtime.' Why can an alert not be set in the system for 150 hours if it can be set for seven days?

It is just another cut that you will have to justify as a government to your constituents in your marginal seats and in the regional areas, saying, 'No, not everybody is able to have the free screening.' You can explain it to your sporting clubs. You can explain it to your mentoring groups. I have had significant correspondence from peak bodies, organisations and individuals regarding the lack of consultation. They think that it is not on and that you need to lift your game. The feedback is pretty consistent: do not break an election promise then fail to consult the community.

Notwithstanding this, the bill at its heart protects vulnerable adults and children. As somebody who feels that that is the heart of social justice in our community, I support the heart of the bill to do that for us. It brings us in line with the agreements for national frameworks and NDIS worker checks so that people will be better equipped to undertake their tasks working with children, supporting people working with children, volunteering with children and supporting people volunteering with children. It enshrines volunteers in the legislation inadequately, in our view. We will have to agree to disagree and predicate our arguments to vulnerable South Australians who may have to cough up two-thirds of their $150 of pay in order to pay for the Liberals' election promise.

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (12:18): I rise to speak on the Statutes Amendment (Screening) Bill 2019. As the member for Hurtle Vale has so eloquently said, we on this side support the bill; however, we do have one significant concern, which the member for Hurtle Vale has talked about and which I will touch on as well. Obviously, I have a keen interest in this piece of legislation, particularly from the perspective of child protection although, of course, it protects vulnerable adults as well as children.

I think it is commendable that this bill and what it is trying to achieve has come forward. It builds on a lot of the great work done under the previous Labor government to try to create a better system of screening checks to ensure that it is a system with integrity and also that it can be more easily used by people who wish to give their time, both volunteers working to improve the lives of vulnerable adults or young people and people who work in this area and require these checks for their employment. We certainly do not want to see people being disadvantaged in their employment or their career aspirations by a system that is too cumbersome and does not work well for people who seek to be in the sector and, of course, for those we seek to protect.

I would like to put on the record my congratulations to the previous minister, Zoe Bettison, who did a lot of that work and spearheaded a lot of the changes that we are now seeing come through the system, which are making a real difference, particularly in the area of catching out people who do not deserve to have one of these checks and should absolutely be kept as far away as possible from vulnerable children and young people.

The government's bill obviously seeks to standardise and streamline screening requirements through South Australia, which we agree with. The approved screenings will now last five years rather than three years. Previously, that might have been some cause for alarm but, as I mentioned, there were some reforms made by the previous government, one of which was to start the process—and that process is continuing—to implement continuous monitoring, or what some in the media have called 'real-time monitoring'.

This means that when there is a red flag—whether that is something quite formal like a charge or a conviction—that would eliminate someone from being able to have the entitlement of a working with children check or, indeed, if allegations or concerns are raised that is flagged immediately. We then get a much closer to real-time reaction from the system to make sure that those people have their working with children checks withdrawn. They are notified but, most importantly, their employer or the groups that they are registered as volunteering with are notified as well that this person should not be around vulnerable adults or children who require our care and protection.

This is a great reform and I think it is already making a huge difference. Disturbingly, though, in the first 12 months of the operation of this system more than 100 people were identified as no longer meeting the necessary criteria, and some of it was actually pretty shocking. Offences including murder, serious sexual offences, including rape, and even charges of terrorism were detected and people had their working with children checks taken off them. Under the previous system, people only had to apply every three years. That meant that those charges might not have been picked up—unless they were self-reported—for several years.

Of course, that presents a dire risk to those who rely on people with working with children checks and other screening checks. That is what happened previously, which is not a great situation. With the upgrade of technology and new legislation that was passed several years ago and implemented in the last few years, that considerable loophole has been closed, which is very commendable. Of course, it is distressing to think that people who commit such offences would even seek to work with children but, unfortunately, that is a situation we have seen repeatedly.

Through continuous monitoring, we are seeing data sharing between the Department of Human Services, the Department for Child Protection and SAPOL, and that is giving greater certainty that people who pose a risk to children or other vulnerable South Australians will be identified and precluded from employment or volunteering roles. However, as I mentioned, the opposition is concerned that the government is seeking to claw back the cost of a volunteer check, which we believe will be around $100, from hardworking volunteers who apply for a volunteer check, where the cost is waived, but when they gain employment, even incredibly minimal employment, they will then have the burden of repaying that money.

I think there are several problems with that. There are issues in terms of fairness, and people would have had an appreciation that they would be able to get a volunteer screening check for the three or then five-year period for free because that was the promise made by the Liberal government when they went to the last election. There is also an issue of compliance and having to keep track of how many hours they might have worked in a 12-month period in order not to fall foul of this particular clause. Certainly, if it is over a 12-month period, it would be quite difficult for people who are doing only a small amount of work—paid work, that is—to keep track of that and make sure that they did not fall foul.

In terms of enforceability, there is a big question mark over how this will be enforced and whether people will be in a position to accurately report the hours they have worked for pay. There is also the extra burden that that creates for NGOs and other businesses that are trying to manage both volunteer and paid workforces. Who is going to police this and make sure that, once someone hits as few as seven hours, this is somehow red flagged, investigated and everything else that is required in order to catch that person out and make sure they pay $100? This bill forces volunteers to pay back their screening fees if they gain more than seven days of paid employment—and that, of course, does not have to be whole working days and it only has to be within a 12 month period.

That does not affect just people on high incomes; we are more concerned about the impact it has on people who are not working full-time or who do not have secure employment. That is people, community members, who, for example, are paid to coach or referee kids' sport on the weekends and parents who are working a few hours a week in the school canteen. The member for Hurtle Vale touched on Santa Claus and Father Christmas at the local shopping centre. My grandfather has been a Santa Claus a few times, and it is only a few hours of work each year. Workers on short-term or casual contracts who are earning very little will need to fork out this $100 so that they do not fall foul of this.

We put forward an amendment in the other place that would have seen us prefer a 150-hour mark, which is getting towards the point where someone is really in employment and not just doing some spot work here or there. They are actually employed, and we think that is a fair way to go about things. It would also mean that when you hit the 150-hour mark you have probably got a few pay packets under your belt, you have probably benefited from having that working with children check or another screening check and it is fair that you would be in a position to repay the cost.

If you are just doing work that is earning you only a few hundred dollars and that is pretty spaced out in the year, it seems like an unnecessary burden to put on people in addition to the compliance and enforceability issues we have with this particular clause in this bill. It is also a fairly cold-hearted type of thing to do. It just seems like penny-pinching; it is such a small amount of money, and people are working for such minimal amounts of time and possibly small amounts of money as well.

Before the election, and in the year since, the Premier and the Minister for Human Services promised volunteers that they would get free screening checks. As I mentioned, I think a lot of people would have had the impression that if they were a volunteer they could get a free screening check and that would not then be compromised, that they would not have to pay back that money at a later stage. So that promise came a lot of caveats that were not made clear to people when they looked at this policy and maybe decided to vote for the Liberal Party based on it.

I think they would be incredibly disappointed to see that this government is giving with one hand and taking the credit for those free screening checks, but then taking away with the other from people who are probably not in a position to be able to pay this back if they are doing a minimal amount of work. For many volunteers, these checks will not be free. People do not stop being volunteers when they get just a few weeks, or indeed a few days, of paid work. This is a broken promise. It is a pretty cruel move, and we call on the government to reconsider before we go to a vote on it.

Other than those concerns I have raised, and the concerns the member for Hurtle Vale has quite rightly investigated, analysed and then raised here now, we support the bill in terms of what it seeks to do. Indeed, I personally support any moves that we as a parliament can make to ensure that the screening check process works as well as possible in terms of making sure that children are protected, that vulnerable people are protected and that it is also a workable system not only for those in our community who dedicate their careers to looking after people who need our help, but also, and importantly, for those volunteers who do not have to give their time but do. They give up many, many hours of their time to make our community a better place and we should do what we can to support them. I support the bill.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (12:29): I rise today to talk about the Statutes Amendment (Screening) Bill 2019. As others have said, I think that we agree with the essence of this bill as it aligns with national screening arrangements, our NDIS obligation, and provides a transitional arrangement prior to the Child Safety (Prohibited Persons) Act 2016 commencing on 1 July.

Over the last five years or so, there have been many changes in the role of screening, whether it be in regard to working with vulnerable people or children. We have seen many changes in the role of screening as a tool for protecting children in our community. It is a tool; it is not everything. We know that child-safe environments come in many different forms, and it is about people noticing and paying attention. Of course, within this time in South Australia in particular, it became a very important tool.

Many areas of screening were discussed over this time and implemented: who needed to be screened, the type of screening, the length of screening, and the portability and transferability of screening for different jobs and different volunteering roles with different organisations. There was also the monitoring of behaviour during the time that someone had a screening, which at that point was for three years.

We also had more than one assessment in South Australia. While the department for communities and social inclusion had a screening unit, we did have other screening units within the Catholic Church system for their teachers and volunteers, and within South Australia there were different groups that would screen. During my time as the minister for communities and social inclusion, the size of the screening team grew to be a major part of the department. I would be the first to acknowledge that we had many challenges during this time.

When I finished as minister, more than 22 per cent of South Australians had a child-related screening check, so nearly 300,000 South Australians had gone through this process. It might roll off the tongue easily now, but we must understand that this was a massive change. Screening was something we came to accept, not just in this house but in the wider community, as an important part of keeping children and vulnerable people safe.

When we were working out how to screen in the best way, there were some challenges. There were delays in processing and that is why we had to improve the system and the structures around the system. At the end, 96 per cent of applicants were processed within 30 business days, but I acknowledge it was not always at that point.

We had several improvements to the system with online applications, credit card payments, an organisational portal for employers to verify the checks that people had, and of course a considerable part of the work was the continuous monitoring that started in July 2017. Up until that time, it was a single point-in-time check to look at the SAPOL databases of criminal history and court outcomes and a point-in-time check for child protection, looking at their client information systems and their care concerns.

When the continuous monitoring was launched, that made it a just-in-time system—a regular system—and that was incredibly important for the reliability of our screening system. We would work with South Australia Police, the Department for Child Protection and of course the department for communities and social inclusion to have that regular flow of information. It is sad to say that people had their screening revoked for very serious issues, and so it was very important for me to know the robustness of this system that came into effect, that the point-in-time was not good enough and that we needed to continue to have the continuous monitoring that was there.

We have seen this new legislation come forth, and a lot of the work was done over quite some time with the former attorney-general and former ministers for child protection. However, it is this government that has brought it to the parliament today, and it is important that this amendment aligns with national screening agreements because each state and territory had gone off on their own and developed their own system, so if you moved from one state to another you could not transfer your screening. Also, each state and territory had different requirements around their screening, and so to move towards national screening arrangements is incredibly important.

It was an incredibly bold announcement that was very welcomed by our exceptional volunteer community. When coming to government, it was part of an election commitment that the Marshall Liberal government announced that volunteers would have free screening. It was greatly welcomed by the volunteer community and, to give her credit, the current Minister for Human Services was backed in by her cabinet colleagues that this was important and that they were going to roll it out. I will give her that credit.

However, I have to say that I was shocked when the proposal was that as soon as you stop being a volunteer you have to pay for your check. I have to say that, as we move to having a five-year check, which was something people wanted and was well regarded, I just simply think that this system, this proposal, will be incredibly unworkable. I understand there are expiation fees whereby, if you move from being a volunteer to being an employee and you have not then paid for a check, you are going to be fined.

To try to soften this we had an amendment that said that you only have to do it if you work for more than seven days. I just think that was plucked out of the sky, 'Seven days sounds okay; that will be it.' What I think is a more workable option is the amendment the shadow minister put forward in the upper house, which was that when someone's screening ran out within the five years and they were working they needed to pay. That was the amendment that would have been far more workable.

Our volunteers do a fantastic job. Many of them do it out of the goodness of their heart because of their commitment. Whether they are reading to their children or grandchildren in schools or whether they are helping out on the sports field, they do it because it is part of being a good citizen and part of giving back. Other people volunteer as a pathway to employment, and that is something that we have encouraged because we certainly know that there is growth for workers in the NDIS system, and of course in the aged-care area as well.

We know that there are opportunities for employment. We know that one of the greatest ways to get that employment is to show that you have volunteered in the sector. Volunteering can be a fantastic pathway to employment, but employment does not necessarily mean a full-time salaried job. It might mean the odd casual shift, and so I just think that the proposal that we have before us—the seven days—will be entirely unworkable, and that it is actually quite insulting to those volunteers, the majority of whom may be absolutely delighted to pick up a little bit of casual paid work, but that is certainly not their motivation for what they do.

I will give you an example that comes to mind that goes to the heart of why I think it just does not work. My son goes to VACSWIM. He loves getting out there. We did it at Semaphore. It was a bit salty and a bit cold but he loved it. VACSWIM goes for two weeks every year. The rest of the time, most of the people who do the VACSWIM course are volunteering as surf lifesavers. What this legislation proposes is that, because they work for two weeks a year doing VACSWIM, they now have to pay for their volunteer screening. That just does not sit well with me.

What we have seen here is an election commitment, an election promise that was well received, and now it is all about backpedalling because it is going to cost us. It is going to cost the government to pay for those screenings. I know how much it costs; I have done the calculations. Let's be honest, what the government has put in here, that seven days' work, is just going to be unworkable.

What are you going to do? Are you going to send out officers to go to Semaphore Beach and say to those guys in their budgie smugglers, 'Thanks for supporting our young kids to learn to swim. We love that you volunteer all the time on the beach. You get two weeks' paid work per year, but you didn't get your screening,' or, 'You didn't change your screening from 'volunteer' to employment'? What is the government going to do? Are they going to hire a whole team of officers to go out and audit and make sure people comply with this?

I know how big the screening unit became, because this was important. This was a necessary tool for South Australians to feel that when our children were being supported by volunteers that those volunteers were safe to have that interaction with our children. While I recognise that the majority of this bill takes us to a place we needed to be, I do urge the reconsideration and support of our amendment that, when a person comes to a point to review their screening at the five-year mark and they are employed, that is when they pay for themselves.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Pederick.