Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 4:01:43 to 4:04:55
The department explains its ad hoc monitoring of disqualified persons and the challenges of tracking individuals removed from office under the administration scheme.
Topics: Workplace relations, Integrity
Speakers: Senator Maria Kovacic, Sarah Godden, David Cains
Um you don't track it and you don't receive that information from the administrator.
No, Senator. I mean we have in the past we are aware that some have been issued certificates. Um we may have been provided some detail around um individuals in the past, but we don't track it.
So in what circumstance would you be provided that information? I'm just curious as to why it's a ad hoc rather than a process driven um advice. Or reporting.
I guess, Senator, just part of our role in monitoring the scheme, it may have been in relation to a media article about someone being appointed to a union or something like that, or just um you know, someone in the team pick up that a case was before the commission.
I think also, Senator, um particularly in the first um year of the administration, we were really interested to understand whether and how the framework was operating. So we probably paid more attention to those first um handful of fit and proper person um applications for certificates and would have engaged a bit more um proactively with uh the Fair Work Commission and the and the regular and sorry and the administrator to test that it was operating as intended.
Sure. Oh, good because what I'm curious about is how you can actually monitor it if you don't know. Like if you don't know like how many of them are and how many are moving around. So if you saw all of the disqualified persons receive um a new certificate and move into other entities, then it'd be fair to say that the process isn't working, right? Because everybody who's been disqualified has then at some point um been okay to, you know, has been fit ruled fit or deemed fit, and then they go somewhere else. So if we don't know how many, how do we know if it's working?
I think it's more about the individual circumstances, Senator, because the original uh list of removed persons was a very blunt instrument, so it removed um all the officers from every branch other than WA and the ACT. So that was that was a um when I say a blunt instrument, that was just removing everybody without necessarily making a determination as to whether they should or should not be a removed person, they were removed by by virtue of their office, and then the procedure was for the for those people to be able to establish whether they were actually fit and proper.
I I get all of that. I'm just curious to understand whether anybody holds reporting on this that can tell us 350 people were removed, and as of today, 200 of those 350 people have been deemed um fit and are now working um in other organisations, or 10 of those people have been deemed fit and are working in other organizations. I want to understand if anyone holds that information.
We'll certainly take on notice to see what we hold, Senator.