Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10645] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I will follow on from what my colleague Sue Moroney has been saying about police vetting and about the need for support for principals and boards of trustees within schools to go through that process. It is quite a simple process really when we think about it but unfortunately in schools many school leaders have been trained purely as teachers. They used to get very little training in the art and skills of being a principal let alone training in the sort of legal stuff that principals now have to do. So there is a real gap in the knowledge of many principals between the art of leading the school in terms of the curriculum and administrative work much of which is based around legal needs. 
The process of a police vet is quite simple; it is a matter of filling in a form and posting it off. But that and all the other requirements that principals have when they employ staff build up for principals and often they do not do administrative tasks in the timely manner that they should. I support the fact that the time frame to apply for a police vet has been shortened from 8 weeks to 4 weeks. I think it could be done even faster. However one of the problems of having a limit of 4 weeks in which the police vet is to be applied for is that there is a time period when a person is allowed to work in a school but when we are unsure whether the person has a criminal background. The application has to be filled out within 4 weeks yet there is another 4 or 5-week lag in receiving the police vet back. It could mean that a teacher has been working in the school for close to a term or for a quarter of a school year without the school knowing the status of the teacher’s criminal history—hopefully the teacher would not have a criminal history—so there is that danger. 
Going along the same lines of principals not having the legal background and training to allow them to follow the processes I will flick back to the first part of the bill that talks about what happens when a police vet is returned. I am talking about section 319FA inserted by clause 70 which states that principals “(b) must not take any adverse action in relation to a person who is the subject of a Police vet until—(i) the person has validated the information contained in the vet;”. This is really important but quite often because of our lack of legal knowledge as principals— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This is very interesting but we are on Part 2. I thought that was what the member was talking about but he is still on Part 1. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: There are of course the transition provisions that relate to this and they are in clause 76 which is in Part 2. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I think the Minister has a point. The member should draw into Part 2 and make his speech relevant. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: Clause 76 in Part 2 talks about police vetting and I was referring to the process that principals follow and the need for support for principals in this whole process of police vetting. Quite often they can react hastily to the results of a police vet without a person having an opportunity to validate the vet. It needs to be drawn to the Committee’s attention that principals need a lot of support with the police vet process. As I said earlier it is a legal process and we risk personal grievances being taken because principals inadvertently react too soon or too hastily to the results of a police vet. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 99 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to insert new clause 78A be agreed to.