2025-08-01
Following further revelations of the failings of the Working With Children Check regime, and adherence to its applications, the Greens are calling on the NSW Government to conduct a Working With Children Check blitz as a matter of urgency. Starting Monday, the Government must work with the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority to ensure that every one of the over 6,000 services in our State have WWCCs in place for every worker on their premises.
Quotes attributable to Abigail Boyd, Greens Spokesperson for Industrial Relations and Chair of the Education Committee:
“I’ve now read through hundreds of thousands of pages of inspector reports and compliance breach notices, and one of the most common breaches in our NSW early childhood and education sector is where a service has been unable to show to the Regulatory Authority the Working With Children Checks for workers in their centre. On literally thousands of occasions over the past few years, the NSW regulator has gone into a Centre and found that the Centre does not have evidence of Working With Children Checks for the educators employed on the premises and the Centre hasn’t got so much as a slap on the wrist for it. It is in this lax and permissive regulatory environment that we are now seeing our worst fears realised.
“The NSW Government has been asleep at the wheel for too long, and allowed the situation we found ourselves in to occur. The government is so out of touch with what’s going on that, astonishingly, the Premier this morning said they would be implementing recommendations from the Wheeler Review that relate to Working With Children Checks – apparently ignorant to the fact that no such recommendations exist.
“We know that the threshold for clearing the Working With Children Check is already very low, and that credible allegations of wrongdoing will not necessarily result in its revocation, but time and again we are seeing early childhood education and care services not even enforcing that minimum level of protection and assurance.
“We welcome the Government’s commitment to close the glaring holes in the Working With Children Check regime, but such efforts are futile all the time while services aren’t checking them to begin with.”
Quotes attributable to Adjunct Professor Tamara Smith MP, Greens Spokesperson for Education and Early Learning
“ Having previously worked in public schools for over 20 years it beggars belief that any employee in any childcare centre can walk on site without proof of a current working with children check.”
“Every teacher and staff member in every public school in NSW is a mandatory reporter regarding the safety of children and mandated by law to report any harm or concern about the care of children in that school community.”
“You cannot work in a school community without a current Working with Children Check and yet our most vulnerable children aged 0-3 years in childcare settings are not being guaranteed this minimum standard of proof that the staffperson is fit to work with children.”
Further comment:
Angus Hoy for Abigail Boyd
0416 130 969