Children’s Guardian Act 2019
Children’s Guardian Amendment Bill 2025 – overview of changes
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The Bill makes several key changes to the Children’s Guardian Act 2019 to implement the approved legislative recommendations of the Report on the Statutory Review of the Children’s Guardian Act 2019
The Children’s Guardian Amendment Bill 2025 makes several key changes to the Children’s Guardian Act 2019 to implement the approved legislative recommendations of the Report on the Statutory Review of the Children’s Guardian Act 2019, including:
- providing that a guiding principle of the Act is the need to consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community on policies and practices that impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, their families and communities
- clarifying the scope of the reportable conduct scheme, extending the scheme to private health entities that provide services to children, simplifying procedural and information disclosure requirements, and ensuring consistency with procedural fairness
- clarifying that Part 6 of the Act applies to the employment of children in the entertainment and exhibition industries and that a child is a person under 16 years of age for the purposes of child employment under the Act
- allowing Official Community Visitors who visit children in residential care to provide information to the Department of Communities and Justice to assist the Department make decisions and improve service quality in the provision of residential care to vulnerable children, and
- updating and modernising provisions relating to the appointment, vacancy and removal of the office of the Children’s Guardian and providing for the appointment of an acting Children’s Guardian.
The Bill also implements certain legislative recommendations of the 2024 report of the Committee on Children and Young People on its review of the annual reports of the Children’s Guardian and Advocate for Children and Young People to:
- give the Committee broader oversight functions over the Children’s Guardian, and consolidate these functions in the Act, and
- amend the Advocate for Children and Young People Act 2014 to require that all members of the Youth Advisory Council be persons under the age of 25 years on appointment.
Date of change:
