Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I will briefly respond collectively to the argument. Firstly, there are no new background-checking schemes under consideration for AusCheck involvement at this time. But it is possible, and I adverted to this in my comments before, that AusCheck may be requested to utilise its expertise in background checking to create efficiencies in other areas authorised under Commonwealth law, and I mention the possibility in relation to employees who work with children. They are very sensitive issues, particularly in relation to people who may be involved in paedophilia. It may not be just a matter of criminal checking that you would want to undertake; there may well be information in other areas about matters relating to people dealing with children which you would want to take into account in such a checking regime.

In that sense, without adverting to the fact that there is any idea to do that—and there is not—it is possible that you might need a wider range of matters that you would need to entertain for checking for other purposes. We do not think it is possible to predict in advance. I would rely on the fact that, if you were going to move into these areas, it is not something you could do by decree; it does involve the regulation-making power being utilised. I would have to say that, if you look at the handling of legislation these days, the numbers of matters that have to be addressed by bills are growing exponentially. The more you can do by sensibly utilising the regulation power so that you then come back and only have to debate matters that people think are of sufficient substance to require it—that seems to me to be not unreasonable.

May I just pick up the second point the member was making about 8(2)(j) and the reference to trade and commerce. There are areas in which trade and commerce require some consideration of people’s backgrounds. If you are trading in particularly sensitive materials that might be on some restricted list for sale outside of Australia, you may well want to require people who are engaged in trade and commerce to undergo some further scrutiny. It would not be everybody. I simply advert to the fact that there are some areas of trade and commerce that do have a security related need for assessment, and I think that measure would be clearly an appropriate one. I hope my comments have assisted the member, but if he wants to use the Senate committee process to examine my officers further, he can do so.

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