Page 103 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 2008
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commissioner will notify the jurisdiction where the person’s birth name is registered and will note on the person’s birth certificate that the person’s name has been changed. Clearly this is designed to decrease the opportunity for identity fraud, a far more serious and threatening issue in the current global climate, by ensuring that there is a proper paper trail from the birth certificate to the change of name.
The changes to the Business Names Act to allow businesses to register a business name for five years instead of three years is a welcome initiative. According to the explanatory statement for the bill, this is designed to reduce the workload of the Office of Regulatory Services in processing renewals. But I note that this will also reduce the workload, more importantly, for Canberra businesses, which to me is every bit as important as reducing the workload of the government.
The bill amends the Liquor Act to allow crimes in the ACT and commonwealth criminal codes to be taken into account in determining the issuing of licences. This is a sensible measure and there is no reason that crimes under the criminal codes should be excluded from consideration. We have recently seen a great deal of controversy over the question of liquor licensing. We have seen some violent outbreaks in Civic, although I do not think that they are on the scale that some have suggested. It is surprising, in light of this, to see that such a simple problem in legislation has been overlooked until now. It is vital in the areas of liquor sales and gaming to keep the criminal element out of these industries. They skirt around the edges in a number of cases and I would like to see a more rigorous application of these procedures to keep these industries clean. The casino industry in Australia has set itself up as a model in terms of avoiding the entry of criminal elements, and the stricter we can impose the criteria to keep anyone with criminal associations out of these industries the better.
There are other issues in the time I have remaining that I will briefly mention. The bill amends various acts to provide that applicants to the Office of Regulatory Services who require a criminal record check for their applications must apply for and supply this check themselves, rather than having it done through the ORS. I will say at the outset that I am not convinced that the regulation of so many professions is required or indeed achieves any purpose other than generating revenue and work for the territory government, with some notable exceptions such as those I have mentioned. But, according to the explanatory statement for the bill, the ORS currently processes over 6,000 licence applications per year, most of which require a criminal record check.
The explanatory statement for the bill states:
Requiring the ORS to apply to the Australian Federal Police for a criminal record check is time-consuming and inefficient.
Whilst I can appreciate that ensuring applicants provide their own police check will save the ORS time and make their procedures more efficient, it is worth noting the potential inefficiency in other areas that this will create. Without a shadow of a doubt, it is going to create considerably more work for the Federal Police in having multiple points of contact in these matters. I would suggest that the government needs to ensure that the ORS and any other arm of government that might be affected by this
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