2015-12-04
Ms SPRINGLE -- I am grateful for the minister's commitment to legislation regarding compliance that will be introduced into the Parliament next year. I am wondering if there is any possibility of the minister giving us any more detail about how the mechanisms for compliance will work, particularly for category 2 organisations and entities.
Ms MIKAKOS (Minister for Families and Children) -- I thank Ms Springle for her question. Her question goes beyond the scope of this particular bill; it goes to matters pertaining to further legislation that will be coming to the Parliament. Obviously that legislation will be the subject of discussions with appropriate stakeholders and will come to the Parliament at a later date. I can advise the member that we are intending to introduce legislation to provide for monitoring and oversight functions for the child safe standards. The legislation will also seeks to confer particular powers on an oversight body to oversee compliance with the standards.
We will obviously have a lot more to say about that as time goes on, but we are working on providing appropriate supports, as I indicated, to those organisations that fall within phase 1 of the rollout of the standards as well as phase 2. For those organisations that sit under phase 2, as I indicated before, these are organisations that are currently not subject to the same level of regulation as those covered by phase 1 because they typically are not government-funded or regulated organisations, so we need to ensure that they have that additional time to get ready. That is why we are doing this staged rollout, so that essentially those organisations get the benefit of another year to prepare for 1 January 2017.
Ms SPRINGLE -- My second question goes to the bill's proposal to address and implement recommendation 13.1 of the Betrayal of Trust report, which pertains to the Victorian government identifying effective approaches to support peak bodies to build preventative capacity in sectors that interact with children and to identify ways to encourage smaller organisations to be affiliated with peak bodies for this purpose. I wonder if the minister could outline how the bill implements that recommendation.
Ms MIKAKOS -- I thank Ms Springle for her further query. In response to Ms Crozier, earlier I indicated the range of materials and resources we are providing to organisations that fall within scope of this legislation, and there is a range of material that is being developed. In addition we are working with various peak organisations to provide appropriate supports and to receive feedback on any additional supports that people may require.
We also have the Commission for Children and Young People playing an important role. It has assisted us in the development of the child safe standards. From 2016 the Commission for Children and Young People will play a capacity-building and advisory support role for organisations, and the commission will also be assisting with the development of further resources to assist organisations to improve child safety within their own organisations.
Ms SPRINGLE -- Just on that, is it the government's view that smaller organisations should be joining peak bodies? Is it to encourage that or is it simply a matter of providing resources that they can or may not utilise?
Ms MIKAKOS -- We are not directing any organisation as to whether it should be a member of a peak body. That is just one vehicle by which information is being provided — through peaks to their membership base. There is already a manual that is on the departmental website, and there are other resources that will be made available as well to organisations. They may choose to do that through their peak, but not exclusively. Obviously the peaks will have the ability to provide tailored information to their own membership base that will be relevant to those particular members in that particular sector.
As I explained in the summing up, we have made a very deliberate decision not to be overly prescriptive in the standards because we know that one size will not fit all. The needs of different sectors will be varied, and it is important that organisations have the ability to develop standards that are suitable for their particular sector — for example, the needs of a sporting organisation will differ from the needs of an organisation in the child and family welfare sector.
Ms SPRINGLE -- In relation to the tools and templates, have they been released yet? If so, are they on the website or where can they be obtained by organisations?
Ms MIKAKOS -- I can advise Ms Springle that, while the manual is already on the website, the other tools and templates will be imminently also put on the website — certainly before the end of the year.