Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you very much for the first opportunity to make a contribution to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I want to confine my debating points mostly to the title commencement and principal Act part of this legislation because I do find it deeply ironic that here we are under urgency debating and trying to address and fix up a mistake that was made almost certainly because the Act that we are amending was debated under urgency at the time. I do think that it is timely to remind the Government how many times the Opposition has cautioned the Government on moving on these matters in urgency because we do need proper scrutiny of these bills. The fact that we are back here so quickly to amend this underscores I think that point.In referring to the title the Act is the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Act 2017. Yet the commencement clause says: This Act is taken to have come into force on 14 October 2016." That is very unusual wording. Because of the mistake that has been made we now have this very odd occurrence that hardly ever happens in this Parliament where we are doing a retrospective fix up. We are applying that fix up or the closing of this so-called loophole that has allowed or made the provision for up to 107 people I think who should have been captured by the original legislation to be on the register. In fact there was a loophole that saw they were not on the register.I am interested to know from the Minister of Police how it came to the Minister's attention that this loophole existed. What were the circumstances that actually brought this to her attention that this was in fact a loophole that existed? I think that for Parliament to understand all the detail of that would allow us to properly scrutinise whether what has been proposed here actually does address the issue. I am interested to know how it was that we came to learn that 107 people who should have been on the register were not. What gave rise to that set of circumstances? Who reported that? How did we come to learn that this was an issue? Specifically what was the action that came to the Minister's attention that caused the Minister to realise that an Act that had been passed in October last year was going to need to be amended under urgency on this day in 2017?I certainly feel uncomfortable with the idea that we are being asked to fix up a loophole without understanding the context of that. I am trying to imagine in my mind how we get to know that there are people missing from the register. Who reports that? How do we understand how the Minister came to uncover this mistake? I also would like to know whether the Minister acted at the earliest occasion. When did the Minister learn that this was a problem? What was the date that the Minister first had this reported to her? Who was it reported by? How was it described to her? Did she take action at the earliest possible opportunity to actually remedy this issue?As I said we are now in a position in this Parliament of agreeing to—as I think every party does in this debate—a commencement clause that is highly highly unusual in a parliamentary context. I think I have only ever seen that type of commencement clause worded in that way when we have been debating taxation legislation—legislation that for reasons that I think everyone understands it is important that people do not get a heads-up about before the legislation changes. That is normally the only time that we are actually asked to consider that type of commencement clause. But today we are being asked because a mistake was made in October last year to agree to a commencement clause that says the Act is taken to have come into force on 14 October 2016 yet we are not debating it until today."