Legal loopholes are allowing people to effectively buy sham licences to work as security guards anywhere in the country.

The ABC’s 7.30 has revealed that government-approved organisations in Queensland are selling qualifications and providing test answers to people with no training at all.

Those people can then go and work anywhere in the country, making efforts to clean up the security industry in New South Wales and Victoria virtually redundant.

Trainee security guard Brendan McCracken was asked to respond to an advertisement online by a broker for the Academy of Applied Business, a Queensland training organisation based in a suburban shopping strip.

It cost $700 for the course materials and the exam paper.

That was the dodgiest thing I’ve ever done… all he wanted to do was make sure I had $700 and grab that money off me.
Trainee security guard Brendan McCracken
Mr McCracken did not even need to go to Queensland, he was told to collect his study papers at the headquarters of a western Sydney security firm.

Mr McCracken says the academy even gave him the answers.

“That was the dodgiest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

But having guards with limited language skills is a big problem in an emergency.

Mr Smith is in charge of the NSW Police unit that licenses guards.

“We expect them to have the ability to manage an evacuation, to effect an arrest, to communicate with emergency services personnel,” he said.

“If they can’t speak English they can’t do that.”

The lack of basic knowledge and literacy among new security officers is illustrated by job application forms obtained by 7.30, which are filled in by Queensland-trained guards.

Q. What is your definition of assault?
A. someone do rong think
Q. Explain in detail what the term Positional Asphyxia means?
A. Positional Asphyxia means security officer is aware of position and job they are doing
Positional Asphyxia actually refers to restraining a person by holding them face down on the ground for long enough that they stop breathing.

Not understanding this can have fatal consequences.

In April 2010, Sydney man Paul Ahsin died of asphyxia after he was held down by two bouncers at the Campbelltown Club Hotel.

The guards who restrained him had done their training interstate and they used mutual recognition laws to avoid the more stringent training in NSW.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-24/sham-security-courses-putting-lives-at-risk/4278126

wookiemeister said:

Legal loopholes are allowing people to effectively buy sham licences to work as security guards anywhere in the country.

The ABC’s 7.30 has revealed that government-approved organisations in Queensland are selling qualifications and providing test answers to people with no training at all.

Those people can then go and work anywhere in the country, making efforts to clean up the security industry in New South Wales and Victoria virtually redundant.

Trainee security guard Brendan McCracken was asked to respond to an advertisement online by a broker for the Academy of Applied Business, a Queensland training organisation based in a suburban shopping strip.

It cost $700 for the course materials and the exam paper.

That was the dodgiest thing I’ve ever done… all he wanted to do was make sure I had $700 and grab that money off me.
Trainee security guard Brendan McCracken
Mr McCracken did not even need to go to Queensland, he was told to collect his study papers at the headquarters of a western Sydney security firm.

Mr McCracken says the academy even gave him the answers.

“That was the dodgiest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

But having guards with limited language skills is a big problem in an emergency.

Mr Smith is in charge of the NSW Police unit that licenses guards.

“We expect them to have the ability to manage an evacuation, to effect an arrest, to communicate with emergency services personnel,” he said.

“If they can’t speak English they can’t do that.”

The lack of basic knowledge and literacy among new security officers is illustrated by job application forms obtained by 7.30, which are filled in by Queensland-trained guards.

Q. What is your definition of assault?
A. someone do rong think
Q. Explain in detail what the term Positional Asphyxia means?
A. Positional Asphyxia means security officer is aware of position and job they are doing
Positional Asphyxia actually refers to restraining a person by holding them face down on the ground for long enough that they stop breathing.

Not understanding this can have fatal consequences.

In April 2010, Sydney man Paul Ahsin died of asphyxia after he was held down by two bouncers at the Campbelltown Club Hotel.

The guards who restrained him had done their training interstate and they used mutual recognition laws to avoid the more stringent training in NSW.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-24/sham-security-courses-putting-lives-at-risk/4278126

I don’t think that expecting literacy of security guards makes a lot of sense.

An Islamic preacher who threatened a terrorist attack on Sydney’s Mardi Gras and accessed child pornography has been sentenced to jail, but immediately walked free because of time already served

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2012/11/23/18/00/terror-threat-preacher-walks-free

Two men involved in the fight that led to the death of Canberra truck driver Bob Knight have walked free from court.

The 66-year-old from Macgregor in the ACT was hit by a stray bullet from the carpark of a fast food outlet at Milperra in Sydney’s south-west during a shootout between two gangs in 2009.

In the Supreme Court in Sydney today, Mustapha Mariam, who was convicted of affray, was given a minimum sentence of 18 months.

However, because his non-parole period finished yesterday, he walked free.

Tarek Elbadar also walked free after being given a two-year suspended sentence for affray.

Several others involved in the shoot-out were charged over Mr Knight’s death and have already been sentenced.

The man who fired the shot, Mahmoud Mariam, was jailed in August for at least five years and nine months for manslaughter.

The judge who sentenced him, Justice Megan Latham, said he wore his contempt for the law like a badge of honour.

“The offender was a mature adult who consciously and arrogantly engaged in a mindless display of violence in the presence of much younger men,” she said.

The NSW DPP is appealing against the leniency of Mahmoud Mariam’s sentence.

Members of Mr Knight’s family have also expressed their disappointment at the sentences.

At his funeral in July 2009, Mr Knight was remembered for his sense of humour, his love of dogs, and as “Bob the truckie”, a regular on talkback radio.