QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms ROWLAND (Greenway—Attorney-General) (14:53): I thank the member for his question. Every child and young person has the right to be safe from sexual abuse. It is our collective responsibility to protect them and to create safe environments for children and young people in all settings.

At the first meeting with my state and territory counterparts, I made it clear that my top priority will be driving real national reform to working-with-children checks, to improve safeguards for children and families. In November 2025, the Standing Council of Attorneys-General committed to meet ambitious timeframes to reform and strengthen all state and territory schemes.

I'm pleased to inform the House that, last night, the honourable member's home state passed the legislation needed to make that a reality. Now, if you are banned from holding a working-with-children check in one jurisdiction, you are banned in all of them—banned in one, banned in all. I thank my state and territory counterparts and everyone who worked with the Commonwealth to deliver these vital reforms.

Working together, we have achieved more to fulfil this royal commission recommendation in a year than was achieved in the decade prior. But there's more to do. Last month, the Standing Council of Attorneys-General also agreed to nationally consistent baseline offences that will exclude someone from holding a working with children check, nationally consistent criteria for assessing applications and information-sharing requirements to ensure there are no gaps in our system where perpetrators can hide.

This reform has brought together governments from across political lines committed to putting our children's safety first. The Albanese government has also committed $37 million to developing the new national IT solution, the National Continuous Checking Capability, that will monitor changes to the criminal history of check holders in near-real time. The NCCC became adoption ready for state and territory screening units in December last year, with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission supporting jurisdictions to plug in by the end of this year.

These measures will significantly strengthen child safety, complementing the work led by the Minister for Education in the early childhood education and care sector. And we are continuing our work on the second action plan under the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse. Keeping children safe is a top priority of this government, and we'll keep working to ensure our children can grow up safe, supported and protected from violence and abuse.