Review of child protection mandatory reporting laws for the early childhood education and care sector

This discussion paper seeks submissions on a review of child protection mandatory reporting requirements for the early childhood education and care sector. The Queensland Law Reform Commission has released a discussion paper (WP 73) seeking submissions on its review of child protection mandatory reporting requirements for the early childhood education and care sector (the ECEC sector). The Child Protection Act 1999 (Qld) requires certain people (including doctors, nurses, teachers, certain police officers and statutory office holders) to report suspected cases of child abuse to the Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services. Those mandatory reporting requirements do not apply to the ECEC sector. The review will consider whether the mandatory reporting requirements under the Act should be expanded to apply to the ECEC sector, including long day care and family day care services and kindergartens. If the Commission recommends the expansion of the mandatory reporting requirements to the ECEC sector, the Commission must also make recommendations as to which professionals, office holders or workers within that sector should be subject to those requirements. See Related Content below for questions for discussion, terms of reference, and privacy statement

Abusive and Offensive Online Communications: A Scoping Report

No abstract available

Medicinal cannabis

Provides background information about the benefits and risks of using cannabis for medicinal purposes, the experience of other countries that allow people to use it, and the interconnecting Commonwealth and Victorian laws that could be affected if Victoria introduces its own scheme. Summary There are two central questions in the review: Who should be eligible to use cannabis for medicinal purposes? The terms of reference ask the Commission to identify options for allowing people to be treated with medicinal cannabis in exceptional circumstances. Although medical knowledge about the therapeutic properties of cannabis is evolving rapidly, it is incomplete. It is nevertheless apparent that medicinal cannabis holds considerable potential for many different areas of treatment, and some Victorians are already turning to it for relief.   How extensive should any Victorian medicinal cannabis scheme be? The simplest legal solutions are not the best health solutions. Developing options for legislative change is not merely a technical exercise in removing some of the existing prohibitions on possessing and using cannabis; it is also necessary to build an avenue of health care. Thought needs to be given to how the scheme could focus most effectively on helping the patient.  A comprehensive medicinal cannabis scheme could be introduced, in collaboration with the Commonwealth. A more limited scheme could be introduced by Victoria acting alone

Traditional rights and freedoms: encroachments by Commonwealth laws

The Attorney-General, Senator the Hon George Brandis QC, has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to review Commonwealth legislation to identify provisions that unreasonably encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges. The Australian Law Reform Commission was asked to identify and critically examine Commonwealth laws that encroach upon ‘traditional’ or ‘common law’ rights, freedoms and privileges. What are traditional or common law rights, freedoms and privileges? The ALRC’s Terms of Reference, which set out and limit the scope of this Inquiry, state that laws that encroach upon traditional rights, freedoms and privileges should be understood to refer to laws that do the following: ·  interfere with freedom of religion (Chapter 3); ·  interfere with freedom of association (Chapter 4); ·  interfere with freedom of movement (Chapter 5); ·  interfere with freedom of speech (Chapter 2); ·  interfere with vested property rights (Chapter 6); ·  retrospectively change legal rights and obligations (Chapter 7); ·  create offences with retrospective application (Chapter 7); ·  alter criminal law practices based on the principle of a fair trial (Chapter 8); ·  reverse or shift the burden of proof (Chapter 9); ·  exclude the right to claim the privilege against self-incrimination (Chapter 10); ·  abrogate client legal privilege (Chapter 11); ·  apply strict or absolute liability to all physical elements of a criminal offence (Chapter 12); ·  permit an appeal from an acquittal (Chapter 13); ·  deny procedural fairness to persons affected by the exercise of public power (Chapter 14); ·  inappropriately delegate legislative power to the executive (Chapter 15); ·  authorise the commission of a tort (Chapter 16); ·  disregard common law protection of personal reputation (Chapter 16); ·  give executive immunities a wide application (Chapter 17); ·  restrict access to the courts (Chapter 18); and ·  interfere with any other similar legal right, freedom or privilege (Chapter 19).3    The closing date for submissions to this Issues Paper was 27 February 201

Fit to practise? Processes for dealing with misconduct among pharmacists in Australia, Canada, the UK and US

© 2018 Elsevier Inc.In many countries with legal systems based on English common law, pharmacy regulators have a responsibility to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of patients. Where there is a potential risk to patient safety, or where the public's confidence in pharmacy could be adversely affected by the actions of a pharmacist, these regulators have a statutory duty to investigate concerns. The legal provisions underpinning each jurisdiction's disciplinary processes depict distinctive outlooks from the different authorities, as each works towards the same goal. Legal statues, regulations, rules, and guidance affecting the disciplinary process in Great Britain, Australia, New York and New Brunswick were collated, and the processes they describe were attached to a common process flow diagram for step-by-step evaluation of their respective legal provisions. The initial stages of the respective investigation process are broadly similar in all the jurisdictions examined; however, each process has subtle differences that afford some level of advantage or disadvantage over its comparators. Factors including: how matters of discipline are framed; the existence of a separate process for minor and uncontested violations; the ability to effect an interim suspension of a practitioner's license; threshold criteria for escalation of complaints; the membership of disciplinary panels; and the perceived independence of these panels all philosophically affect the public safety remit of each regulator. This work constitutes the first comparison of international regulatory frameworks for the profession of pharmacy. Of the four jurisdictions examined, Great Britain most clearly acts in the interest of the public and the profession – rather than the respondent pharmacist – at every step of its process.Peer reviewe

Supporting law students’ skills development online – a strategy to improve skills and reduce student stress?

Law students internationally suffer from a high level of psychological distress compared with the general and student populations, and anecdotal evidence suggests that students developing skills without adequate support experience significant stress and anxiety. This article considers an initiative at one Australian law school to develop a degree-wide structured online skills development programme as a means to both improve student skills acquisition and reduce student stress. The project implements, through the use of learning technology, the principles proposed by McKinney for making small changes to law school teaching, informed by self-efficacy theory, which can have powerful results