Tuesday, 2 August 2022

 Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (14:37): My question is for the Attorney-General. My office was recently contacted by an employer in the disability services sector. Recent reforms have established a requirement for employees in the sector to go through a registration process. Intended to strengthen safety and trust, the Victorian process requires significant proof-of-identity documents. For many potential employees this requires the issuing of documents from Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria (BDM). Due to the backlogs being experienced I have been informed that there are still regular delays of up to six weeks to receive these types of documents. This is in addition to delays in processing applications at Service Victoria. Applicants are further disadvantaged, as they are told the offices of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria are still closed to the public and they cannot seek assistance in person. Minister, what are you doing to address the backlogs that are being experienced by those who are seeking time-sensitive access to these important documents?

 Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (14:38): I thank Mr Limbrick for his question. You have identified your constituent in relation to a disability support worker, so I suspect that they are seeking screening under the NDIS, which has moved to a similar system to how we operate our working with children check. You are right, it involves obtaining materials from births, deaths and marriages. As has been the subject of some questions in here before, we have experienced significant demand in births, deaths and marriages—effectively a lot of people coming out after COVID and seeking either documents for passports or indeed, where we are seeing a lot of pressure, the working with children check and the NDIS screening.

I am just looking for the latest delays. The current turnaround times are not six weeks. They have significantly reduced since that time, Mr Limbrick. The current turnaround for a normal certificate is 18 days. This is at 29 July 2022. Birth registration is 42 days, death registration is seven days and marriage registration is 28 days, and that is available on the website, actually. We wanted to be up-front with the public about how long these things are taking. If someone is experiencing an issue of six weeks or the like, there is generally a problem with the material that they have presented in that it is not a simple verification process—sometimes a change of name or the like. If you have got a particular incident involving a constituent, I am more than happy to follow that up. My office have got the ability to check on individual applications and provide an update to individuals that might be impacted by what appears to be an unreasonable delay.

 Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (14:40): I thank the Attorney for her answer, and I will ask my team to pass that on to the constituent. My supplementary question is around the continued closure of the office in person. What is the justification for keeping these offices closed still? My understanding is that they were originally closed due to COVID.

 Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (14:40): We have got the call centre operating every day from 8 to 2. In relation to the hours, what that enables them to do then is after 2 o’clock they are still working, but it is usually going and checking the messages and making sure that they are returning calls and the like, because to have it open full-time means they have not got the time to process the administration side of it. We are continuing to recruit more and more people. The number of staff we have got in BDM operations has increased from 76 full-time to 98 full-time compared to this time last year. So we are trying to get more and more people in. There have been a lot of people who have left through the pandemic. But also what is important to me is that the BDM offices in the city are not necessarily where everyone wants to access the material, so making sure we have got our regional offices staffed so that people do not have to travel into the city has been a priority of mine. Indeed, as I said, the call centre is open on a daily basis.