Why do the things that get created to keep children safe inadvertently make them less safe?
By increasing the workload of directors and educators...
Yesterday a big new Bill was presented to the NSW Parliament - the Children (Education and Care Services National Law Application) Amendment Bill 2025).
It’s kind of exciting because it includes some wonderful provisions like it provides that the “protection of the rights and best interests of children must be the paramount consideration in giving effect to the National Law, and that those rights and interests prevail over the interests of approved providers and any other duties owed by persons with management or control of education and care services”.
Good stuff eh? (Well, OK, pretty basic stuff, really, that we all would have hoped would have been happening anyway, but now it will actually be if the Bill gets passed, LAW!) There is other improvements like increasing fines for large providers and allowing the Regulatory Authority to re-rate a service if they have done something truly heinous.
But the Bill also does a few other things:
Gets rid of the notion of a national law and regulatory system. NSW will in future, have their own little bits and doodads in the law and regs that we will all need to be aware of.
Sets up the external regulatory body that’s outside the NSW Education Department. (Advantages? Possible some stable staffing. Disadvantages? Having to deal with two separate bodies - one for funding and one for A&R and compliance?)
Is an omnibus of everything every bureaucrat has wanted to shove in the regs and law for a while… there is stuff in there that the impact will only be fully realised later.
Coz it happening outside of the national process, is there a Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement and a Decision Regulatory Impact Statement or because of the urgency of the process of KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE - does it all just get rushed through Parliament and then we find out about the impact later?
There are a few bits that seemed a bit red flagish to me on a cursory read:
The Minister can issue best practice guidelines. No. Issue stuff services have to do. Not stuff that is optional and then treat services like lepers if they are not following the model code or whatever its called. This leaves directors and educators scratching their heads over what they have to do and what is optional.
The Reg Authority is given the power to order anyone to take actions “for the safety and wellbeing if a child or children”. (Be prepared to be instructed to remove lichen, spiderwebs etc, soon!)
A bundle of new aggravating record keeping. You will have to have the WWCC of each educator next to the time each educator is working in exactly what room…
A waffly worded ‘inappropriate conduct with children’ as a new offence. Although I definitely don’t want anyone engaging in inappropriate conduct with children, this one is a legal minefield… eg a consideration is “whether the conduct is expected practice in the provision of education and care services”.
I should, I know, be thankful that the NSW government is taking decisive action to keep children safe. This is good!
But still I can’t help thinking that this is going to be a minefield of policy updating, record keeping, practice changing etc for directors and educators that will once again keep them away from their main job of, you know, actually keeping children safe.