Police Reports-Admission Rule 18 to be simplified?

6 October 2016

Consultation draft rule 18 proposed amendment (PDF, 8.3 KB)

Rule 18 of the Uniform Admission Rules 2015 establishes a regime about police reports which, by virtue of rule 12(1)(b), must accompany each application to an Admission Board for a compliance certificate.  In practice, however, the rule has had unfortunate and unexpected consequences.  In particular, the obligation to obtain a police report from every jurisdiction in which an overseas applicant has previously lived, prepared within 6 months before the application is made, has proved to be extremely difficult to satisfy in a timely way and unduly expensive for some applicants.

The Admission Boards have also found that the certificate of good standing from the relevant professional body in the overseas country where an applicant has previously been admitted appears to be a reliable indicator of an applicant's status and a useful mechanism for alerting an Admission Board to the need to make further inquiries about an applicant: see rule 20. It would be more appropriate for a Board to exercise its discretion whether or not to obtain an overseas police report after an application and any certificate of good standing is received.

Accordingly, it has been suggested that rule 18 should be simplified and amended to require –

(a) all applicants to include an Australian police report in their application; and

(b) overseas applicants subsequently to obtain and provide to the Admission Board a police report from the police in any country or jurisdiction determined by the Board, if the Board so directs.

For more detail refer to our Consultation webpage.