Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As you know I rise in this place often to talk about protecting our kids, particularly from predators online and in our community. And, as chair of the Law Enforcement Committee, I know one of the key weapons we have at our disposal against these predators is to share intelligence across jurisdictions. It came out of the royal commission that every state has a system to check—when you want to work with kids in Queensland, it's the blue card—but these systems don't talk to each other. Through the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Morrison government implemented a working with children check national reference system so intelligence can be shared across these state jurisdictions. It went live on 1 July 2019, almost two years ago, yet, despite other states signing up to it and sharing that intelligence to protect our kids, the Queensland Labor government haven't managed to do it. For the two years that they've been stalling they've offered up every excuse. They said COVID was an excuse, despite the system being in place eight months before COVID even existed. They said they didn't have the time to put the legislation through to be part of the system, even though last month they had an entire week of parliamentary sittings when only one bill was discussed. They've said now that they can't do the IT changes, or that they're slow with the IT changes. With all due respect to the member for Herbert, if you can pay $8 million for a State of Origin game—which I love—you can pay $8 million to implement an IT system so, if somebody is refused a working-with-kids check in one state, they're refused it in every other state, and law enforcement can share that intelligence to keep our kids safe. (Time expired)

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