Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:04): It is always great to follow my parliamentary friend and colleague the member of St Albans. It was really great to hear about her commitment and interest in responsible gambling, which is what this legislation addresses, as well as her deep care for the children of St Albans and just her enthusiasm about our kinder grants and school readiness fund. The member for St Albans is such a great local member who cares so much about her community, so it is always lovely to be in the house to hear her contributions.

I am also pleased to follow the member for Geelong. I share the concerns that she has put forward about the safety of children. Ballarat, like Geelong, does have a tragic history of institutional child abuse with our orphanages and with our churches, and to hear her talk so powerfully about the importance of protecting our children is certainly something I share very deeply.

I have just got to mention the member for Ivanhoe. Every time he gets up you learn a little bit more about his preparliamentary life and his times in Geelong. He is a great storyteller and always happy to share his experiences with the house, and I am always happy to listen to those.

Today we are talking about the Consumer and Other Acts Miscellaneous Amendments Bill 2020, and I wish to thank the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation as well as the ministerial office and the department for the work that has gone into this quite complex piece of legislation that we are debating today that changes so many different acts.

We have got the Gambling Regulation Act 2003, the Working with Children Act 2005, the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 and the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2018. We have got the Rooming House Operators Act 2016, the Consumer Legislation Amendment Act 2019, as well as the Australian Consumer Law and Fair Trading Act 2012. So there are certainly a lot of changes that this bill is going to make across the consumer affairs, gaming and liquor regulation portfolio.

This bill will introduce a number of amendments to the acts previously named, but because of the width and breadth of the amount of acts that we are dealing with in this one piece of legislation I am really going to focus on the Working with Children Act 2005 as well as looking at some of the positive changes that the Andrews Labor government is making to the Residential Tenancies Act and the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act.

As a parent you worry about your children. You want to protect your children from harm and keep them safe when they are not with you. As a mother of two daughters I am conscious about their safety and wellbeing when they are at school participating in sport and recreation, when they are on camp and undertaking activities and when they are in the care of adults in a range of different situations, and knowing we have a strong working with children check system provides me and many parents with a level of comfort.

Importantly, this bill includes amendments to the Working with Children Act 2005 that aim to make these checks more rigorous by extending the jurisdictions that can be checked upon when those background checks are being made. The working with children check is a screening process for assessing or reassessing people who work with or care for children. Community members are required to get a working with children check when they are engaged with work which could be volunteering, practical training or paid employment or when a person’s work usually involves direct contact with a child or children, including physical or face-to-face contact and oral or electronic communication, and when this contact is not occasional direct contact and is not incidental to the person’s work.

As a former teacher, it is a requirement of all teachers’ Victoria Institute of Teaching registration to have a working with children check—something that I welcome. It is a check that we require many people to have, including childcare workers, counsellors, foster parents, coaches, tutors, school crossing supervisors and providers of photography services and transport, just to name a few.

Knowing that these people who will be spending time with children have successfully applied for a working with children check means that they have no recorded history of a behaviour that could be a threat to vulnerable children in their care. When an application is made for a working with children check a detailed check of the applicant’s criminal history and relevant professional conduct is made to protect children from sexual or physical harm. As a parent this provides me with peace of mind when my children are at swimming squad and when they are at dance lessons, basketball and a range of other activities.

The amendments that we are making to the Working with Children Act further demonstrate Victoria’s commitment to responding to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Child safety is important to all of us. Sadly, we know too well the tragic impact and the extreme distress that child abuse can cause.

Coming from Ballarat, given our city’s history of institutional child abuse, this is very well known in my community. We know the damage and the hurt reverberates for many decades after the abuse. It impacts individuals, families and the whole of the community. Therefore it is so important that we put the protection of children at the centre of our reform agenda and use whatever levers of government we have to keep our children safe.

Children represent some of the most vulnerable Victorians, and because of this I am pleased this bill makes amendments to the Working with Children Act to enable information sharing with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and participation in the new national reference system. By strengthening the protections, we are addressing the very important issue of improving the protection and safety of children across Victoria.

This legislation will ensure that every person who has been refused a working with children check will have that information recorded in the Working with Children National Reference System. This important information regarding rejected applications needs to be captured and recorded on the national database for future reference. The national reference system has been established and will be maintained at a federal level and will be accessible to all the agencies in different states and territories across the country, including Victoria. The nationally consistent approach to increasing protections for child safety across Australian jurisdictions will close the net on individuals seeking to cross state and territory borders to avoid state-based screening and assessment of their criminal history and relevant professional conduct.

By working with every screening agency in the country and sharing negative assessment decisions with the national reference system, we are not only increasing the protections for Victorian kids but keeping kids across Australia safe by sharing information and flagging individuals who have been assessed as not appropriate to have access to our children. This means that they cannot have access to kids through community organisations, they cannot have access to kids in sporting clubs and they cannot work as a school crossing supervisor if they are an unfit person to be with children. This is very, very important, because, as I said, children are some of the most vulnerable Victorians that it is our job to protect.

The changes being proposed in this bill represent a major step towards achieving greater national consistency and ultimately greater protection for Victoria’s children but, when we think about it, it is also about protecting our nation’s future. What this means in the simplest terms is that if an individual has been refused a working with children check in another jurisdiction, we will identify them and ensure that they do not get access to one here. The outcome will be that the applicant will then be prohibited from engaging in child-related work. The only exception would be if the individual was assessed as not posing an unjustifiable risk to the safety of children.

It is important to note that any person who has been refused a working with children check in another state or territory based on a category A offence—for example, a sexual offence committed by an adult against a child, or murder—will automatically be prohibited from working with children. I would like to stress that in Victoria we have one of the strictest approaches to what makes up a category A offence in obtaining a working with children check, and they are automatically prohibited. So I recommend this bill to the house for the future of our children.

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