Page 4925 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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Liberties Australia have said to me that they believe the number is more like 100,000 Canberrans. I suggest that even that number is below the odds. It could be that, by the end of the phasing-in period over the next six years, just about every person in the ACT over the age of 18 will have to apply for some form of registration. This will be so when every person over the age of 18 years considers that what they do in many fields of work with vulnerable people is captured by the legislation.
A person who tells stories to kids in church a couple of times a year will have to apply. A person who runs a voluntary training course for adults might have to apply. Sports coaches, music teachers, art teachers, foster carers, respite carers will all have to apply. People who help a frail aged person do their shopping once a month will have to apply. Members of the Assembly may have to apply.
Just about everything we do in life, whether it is in our paid work or our voluntary work, will require us as members of the Legislative Assembly to be registered, such is the reach of the legislation before us today. I hope the Office of Regulatory Services is anticipating this and is ready for such an influx of work, because I do not want to see us in a situation where people have to wait inordinate times for their checks because of the workload ORS has on it.
While I am talking about ORS, let me make another observation: I am very glad that the Office of Regulatory Services is taking on the administration of this legislation. Certainly, its record is better than anything that Minister Burch and her directorate can muster. We have seen many a debacle coming out of the minister’s directorate. We have seen the debacle in the youth justice system. We have seen the debacle that is the care and protection system. We have seen the ham-fisted way with which the minister has handled this debate today and the general management of this bill since it was introduced in 2010. We have seen the debacle with the kinship care program where this minister keeps saying they have met their election commitments when we know that they have not.
Just by way of interest, I note that when I received a letter from Minister Burch today in response to the scrutiny of bills committee, the minister could not even get that right. She did not write to the chairman of the committee; she wrote to the secretary of the committee in contravention of all the usual conventions of this place. I do not care who she writes to, so long as she addresses the issues concerned, but is there no-one in her department and in her office who can advise this minister on the appropriate protocols?
When the scrutiny of bills committee reports, she responds to the chairman of the scrutiny of bills committee; she does not respond to the secretary. The fact that neither she nor anyone in the chain of command who drafted that letter actually twigged that they got the protocol wrong speaks volumes about the capacity of this minister and this directorate to do even the most basic and fundamental thing properly. I cannot imagine the debacle that would become of this scheme if it were being administered by Minister Burch.
We will watch this legislation closely and I hope for the government’s sake that they have got it right this time. (Time expired.)
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