Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-21 Daily Xml

Contents

Disability Services

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): Supplementary: has the minister sought any advice from her department about how often it occurs that there might be people who haven't gone through a screening working with the vulnerable people in her area?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:30): I think the Leader of the Opposition again betrays the lack of understanding of the Labor Party of how these systems work. The Quality and Safeguards Commission, through its legislative remit, has responsibility to regulate whether organisations are having their workers appropriately screened. The screening applications come to the Department of Human Services screening unit and the screening unit is responsible for doing the police checks and the ongoing monitoring through the Child Abuse Report Line and the other data bases on a continuous basis, if that's for working with children checks or disability services checks.

Matters relating to employment records are not matters that are kept by the Department of Human Services screening unit. That is something that is regulated by the Commonwealth government through the NDIS Act.