Page 3794 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 24 September 2019
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liability would be entitled to clarity as to its preconditions. If this obligation is not made clear some people may not understand their obligations.
An opposite risk is that some will misunderstand their obligations. This second risk was raised by both law enforcement and the CSD. The analysis report states that ACT Policing and the Community Services Directorate all refer to the problem of over-reporting, which was increasing. Over-reporting occurs when people who do not clearly understand their obligations become, in the words of ACT Policing, hypervigilant and to, quote the CSD, begin to panic and lower the reasonable threshold for when a report is actually called for. Such a situation can result in an exaggerated number of frivolous reports that deteriorate the quality of information and end up diverting limited resources for genuinely needy areas of child protection.
For this reason ACT Policing recommended that the new legislation be accompanied by adequate resources and education packages to reduce confusion. In a similar vein the Community Services Directorate noted that education will be very important in addressing problems in context. The analysis report pointed out that existing education resources within the directorate could mitigate all of the reporting but that they would need to be revised in order to fulfil this purpose.
What this all means is that if Canberrans are to understand their obligations to report suspected child abuse this is a responsibility that rests fully with this government. What remains to be seen is whether the Barr government can be trusted to engage in the education campaign that this new law demands. My strong suspicion at this point is that very few adult Canberrans understand what is now required of them in the way that Justice Dodds-Streeton and O’Connor, ACT Policing and the Community Services Directorate have all warned is necessary.
The language used by Mr Pettersson today already suggests that he, in fact, may not understand the new legislation. He has suggested that Canberrans have a legal obligation to report suspected child abuse, but the threshold of suspicion was rejected in the analysis report specifically because of the risk it posed for engendering endangering hypervigilance and panic. Section 66AA of the Crimes Act has been drafted specifically to avoid this risk.
The Canberra Liberals will certainly be watching for evidence that those opposite have taken seriously the warnings and recommendations in the analysis report and that they are fulfilling their responsibility to educate the public with the necessary clarity.
Another necessary component of Canberrans’ understanding their obligations is their ability to trust this government to respond correctly when reports are made. This matter was raised in the 2016 Glanfield inquiry. Mr Glanfield noted that one issue that arose repeatedly during the inquiry’s consultations was the lack of feedback provided to mandated reporters. In the absence of appropriate feedback, people rightly or wrongly assume they have not been taken seriously. This can result in either a reduction in reporting or an increase where people continue to report the same matter on the assumption that nothing is being done. In the past this has been a problem that
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