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Call for Submissions

Submissions closed on Friday, 6 December 2013.

Objective of the Bill

The objective of the Bill is to confirm and strengthen police powers to conduct random audits to ensure compliance with reporting obligations under the provisions of the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004 and thereby increase reportable offenders’ certainty of apprehension (emphasis added) for any non-compliance.

To achieve this objective the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Amendment Bill 2013 (the Bill) will amend the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004 to insert two new provisions under Part 6 ‘Other matters’:

• 74C Police functions include ensuring compliance with reporting requirement; and
• 74D Power to enter and search premises without consent or warrant to ensure compliance.

Other Information

The Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Amendment Bill 2013 and Explanatory Notes are available from the Office of the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel at www.legislation.qld.gov.au.

The Hansard transcript of the introductory speech for the Bill can be accessed here.

Reasons for the Bill

Queensland’s child protection offender register (the register) commenced in 2005 and is used to record the relevant personal particulars of reportable offenders as obliged to be reported under the provisions of the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004.

From the commencement of the register in 2005 and until June 2010, there had been a total of 1,523 breaches of reporting obligations under the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2004.

This accurately indicates the recent rates of non-compliance and supports the legitimate need for improved, evidence based, measures to increase compliance, especially in consideration of the continually increasing numbers of reportable offenders in the community.

Referral

On 17 October 2013 the Member for Yeerongpilly, Mr Carl Judge MP, introduced the Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Amendment Bill 2013 into the Queensland Parliament.  In accordance with Standing Order 131 of the Standing Rules and Orders of the Legislative Assembly, the Bill was referred to the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee (the Committee) for detailed consideration.

Under Standing Order 136(1), the Committee must report to the Parliament on or before 17 April 2014.

Report

On 17 April 2014, the Committee tabled its Report No. 60, Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Amendment Bill 2013. A copy of the report is available here or can be accessed at Related Publications.

As the Committee made a single recommendation for the Legislative Assembly to not pass the Bill, there is no requirement for the Government to table a response.

The Child Protection (Offender Reporting) Amendment Bill 2013 was withdrawn on 6 August 2014.