2025-09-18
The Greens have today amended child protection laws to close a glaring loophole that allowed early childhood education offenders to maintain a Working With Children Check clearance.
Greens amendments to the government’s Child Protection (Working with Children) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 closes a loophole that has allowed a person who has received a Prohibition Notice banning them from working in early childhood education and care to maintain their Working With Children Check without further review. The Greens amendments will ensure that any prohibition notice will trigger a risk assessment by the Children’s Guardian before a Working With Children Check can be obtained or maintained.
As part of the documents returned in response to the Greens’ call for papers into the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector passed in the NSW Parliament last year, evidence was found of people with a Prohibition Notice being given a Working With Children Check despite their ban from the ECEC sector. Further evidence from the Office of Children’s Guardian revealed that the issuing of Prohibition Notices was not triggering a mandatory reassessment of Working With Children Checks with almost half maintaining them.
Quotes attributable to Abigail Boyd, Greens NSW MLC and Education Committee Chair:
“This is a hugely significant amendment that closes a glaring loophole, and will have a direct and immediate impact to keep children safe. It’s astonishing to me that the government had failed to identify this gap, with seemingly neither the Regulatory Authority or the Office of Children’s Guardian drawing this clear and easily rectified gap to the government’s attention.
“In the ongoing absence of a central register of early childhood education and care workers, and while the culture of the NSW Early Childhood Regulator remains as the most secretive and opaque in the country and places enormous barriers to accessing prohibition and compliance information to even those services who want to do the right thing, a valid Working With Children Check is one of the few minimal checks available to provide even that most basic level of assurance.
“We’ve heard evidence from the Office of the Children’s Guardian directly that there is no requirement for the Regulatory Authority to communicate prohibition notices, and that even when they do receive notice of a prohibition they don’t consider it inherently serious enough to mandate an assessment of their suitability to work with children.
“I raised this specific issue directly and publicly with the Minister and the Office of Children’s Guardian, but it obviously got missed in the government’s rushed drafting process as they scramble to belatedly respond to this long unfolding crisis.
“I appreciate the Parliament’s support for this amendment. The protection of children should always remain above politics, and it proves the importance of considered and deliberative legislation informed by the evidence."