Registration to Work with Vulnerable People Amendment Bill No. 52 of 2015 - Second Reading

Mrs Armitage (Launceston) - Mr President, I too support the bill. The legislation is about protecting children from the risk of harm, and hopefully preventing it.

Some of the issues come down to common sense. It is important they were added into the bill. The flags were mentioned yesterday by the member for Apsley. Some 39 000 people apply. Currently, one would have to take the whole 39 000 to the police to find any flags. In the new legislation the flags will come and you could apply them against the 39 000, which is a common sense approach. Much of this is tidying up and making it simpler and easier for it to work.

The member for Mersey mentioned that if they have information which can lead to a conviction, possibly information which may not be available to the police, when convictions are not imposed, at the moment they cannot share the information. That is really important. When we are looking to take care of children and prevent them from harm, if there is information the organisation has which can be passed on to prevent the harm, yet they cannot share it, it seems to be an anomaly. Many things are clarified and cleaned up in this bill to make it tighter and better.

I note one of the areas mentioned - I am not sure the bill can do anything about this and it probably comes down to parents and organisations having to be more aware - is protecting children from opportunists. This is an issue. There is nothing we can do about protecting people from everything. That is one of the hard areas we have. We all know there are opportunists in this world. There are some things you cannot legislate against.

I see the bill as tightening up where it can, streamlining and making it quicker and easier.

If it can assist in preventing any of these terrible incidents which happened in the past, and protecting children as best they can, then I support the bill.