Canberra's working with vulnerable people scheme is at risk of becoming "fragmented" if working with children checks are harmonised across Australia, the ACT's disability and children minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has warned.
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Ms Stephen-Smith told annual report hearings on Thursday the ACT and Tasmania were the only states or territories that wrapped the background checks required to work with children or vulnerable people like the elderly or disabled into one scheme.
The Community Services Directorate's executive director of strategic policy Kate Starick told the committee a nationally consistent working with children check was expected to be one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
A review of the working wth vulnerable people scheme recommended the ACT start aligning its checks with other schemes ahead of the release of the royal commission' findings next month.
Ms Starick said the changes, which would include automatically disqualifying anyone convicted of a serious crime such as murder, were being drafted into legislation by the Parliamentary Counsel Office.
But Ms Stephen-Smith warned national harmonisation could lead to people needing multiple checks in the ACT.
"As we move down the path of national harmonisation of working with vulnerable children checks we need to take into account we have quite a comprehensive and streamlined system within our own jurisdiction where one check covers the field," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"We are now facing a national harmonisation system ... which could lead us to end up with a more fragmented system which might be more consistent with NSW in some aspects but we'll actually end up with potentially needing multiple cards within the ACT so those issues are a topic of ongoing discussion between jurisdictions."
However Community Services Directorate director general Michael De'Ath said the royal commission "had been at pains" to point out it did not want a national system to "diminish" checks in the ACT and "lose things at the expense of harmonisation".
About 95,000 people have a working with vulnerable people card in the ACT.
The background checks centre on a National Police History Check and are valid for up to three years.
That would be stretched to five years under the reforms proposed by the recent review of the scheme.
Ms Starick said it would bring the ACT into line with other states and territories and "manage the number of individuals who are seeking renewal in any given year".
The government was forced to spend an extra $1.5 million on the scheme this year because it drastically underestimated the number of people who would apply for the card.
