Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support the amendments. We have consulted extensively on the legislation. This included the release earlier this year of an exposure draft of the bill from which a number of issues were raised that the government responded to. In terms of the issues that were raised, we looked carefully at criminal penalties and ensured they are limited to situations where the cheating service or advertising is done for a commercial purpose. The maximum civil financial penalty has been halved under the changes. The scope of cheating assistance that is prohibited by the bill has been more tightly defined to where a substantial part of an assessment task is undertaken by a third party.

The government recognises that the bill seeks to prohibit unpaid cheating assistance as well. That's based on the fact that Australian research has shown a large proportion of third party cheating occurs on an unpaid basis by friends, family or others in the community. This type of cheating is equally a threat to the integrity of student assessments and qualifications earned and, indeed, in some fields of study can lead to dangerous outcomes. It's not anticipated that many such cases in relation to unpaid cheating would reach the courts, except in the most serious cases of repeated, deliberate and extensive infractions. The clear intention of the bill is to deter cheating assistance rather than to prosecute family and friends.

I stress very much that in every case prosecution of offences under this law will be at the discretion of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP will make an informed judgement about the strength of the evidence and likelihood of conviction as well as the seriousness and value of the offences in question, and the public value of achieving a successful conviction as a deterrent to other potential offenders. The government hopes to see prosecutions under the law where people are clearly doing the wrong thing. But, in the cases of family, friends and mild levels of cheating, we would anticipate that this should act as a clear deterrent and that the systems in place provide sufficient safeguards such that the types of outcomes that drive Senator Faruqi's understandable concerns would not be realised. We do think, on balance, that it is worth keeping the clear disincentive created by this bill in place, to make sure that all forms of cheating are discouraged under the legislation.