Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 08/1998 by Rachel Simpson
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- As part of its response to recommendations made by the Royal
Commission into the NSW Police Service, the Government introduced two bills
into the Legislative Assembly in November 1997: the Child Protection
(Prohibited Employment) Bill 1997 and the Ombudsman Amendment (Child Protection
and Community Services) Bill 1997. Recommendations made by the Royal Commission
that are relevant to these two bills are listed at pp. 11-13.
- The Children (Care and Protection) Act 1987 is the main
piece of legislation which deals with the detection and prosecution of child
abuse in NSW. This Act defines the statutory powers of the Department of
Community Services as well as those of the police and the Children's Court. It
also regulates child care, substitute care and child employment (pp. 2-3).
Other relevant legislation includes the Crimes Act 1900 which prescribes
offences against children and the Children (Protection and Parental
Responsibility) Act 1997, which empowers police to remove a child from a
public place if the police officer believes the child to be at risk (pp. 3-4).
The Young Offenders Act 1997 introduces a new approach to dealing with
juvenile offenders as an alternative to court proceedings: youth justice
conferencing. Two recent pieces of legislation are also relevant: the Crimes
Amendment (Child Pornography) Act 1997, which creates a new indictable
offence of publishing child pornography, and the Evidence (Children) Act
1997, which requires interviews with children to be recorded and allows
such recording to be used as all or part of the child's evidence in chief in
any criminal proceeding (pp. 4-5).
- The Royal Commission identified a number of key organisations
concerned with child protection: the Department of Community Services; the NSW
Health Department and the Department of School Education. A number of other
agencies with a lesser interest were also identified, as were a number of
overseeing bodies such as the Child Protection Council. A diagram illustrating
the relationship between these agencies is included at p. 11.
- The purpose of the Child Protection (Prohibited Employment)
Bill 1997 is to prevent those people who present an unacceptable risk to the
safety of children from employment whereby they will come into direct contact
with children (pp. 13-19). The purpose of the Ombudsman Amendment (Child
Protection and Community Services) Bill 1997 is to confer upon the Ombudsman a
new power to oversee and monitor systems in place for handling and responding
to allegations of child abuse in Government and designated non-Government
agencies. The Bill also proposes to amend a number of public service
regulations in order to make it compulsory to make and retain records of all
allegations of child abuse made against an employee (pp. 19-21).
- A number of other initiatives have been taken in response to
the Royal Commission, including the formation of the Child Protection
Enforcement Agency within the Police Service, Joint Investigation Teams
comprising members from the Police Service and the Department of Community
Services, and the release of the Green Paper on the establishment of a NSW
Children's Commission. The Department of Health and the Department of School
Education have also implemented a number of policy changes as in response to
the findings of the Royal Commission (pp 22-23).
