Full transparency needs to be of the NSW Regulatory Authority also

In light of child safety incidents, governments are planning to compel services to share enforcement and/or compliance actions with parents and families on direction of the Regulatory Authority.

Governments believe the threat of such transparency should ensure services to fix all non-compliances and risks to children.

However, ACA NSW believes this approach risks focusing on highlighting the problem(s) after it/they occur and is not a viable long-term strategy.

Hence, ACA NSW believes that full transparency must also be of the NSW Regulatory Authority.

SOURCE: Productivity Commission's annual Report on Government Services (RoGS)

Openness, transparency and integrity of decision-making are all key drivers of trust. Hence, if governments want transparency, then they should also believe in full transparency and not selected transparency.

The ABC's Four Corners: Betrayal of Trust episode exposed the fact that Approved Providers do not have full access to all their compliance issues for all their services.

So, to ensure issues are addressed and fixed in full (and well before they negatively evolve to become greater risks), full transparency must occur, including the evidence used by the NSW Authorised Officers to substantiate their notices of non-compliances and enforcement actions must also be available.

A NSW Parliamentary Committee is currently investigating early childhood education and care in NSW, as well as the proposed 30+ amendments to the National Law. And as per ACA NSW's testimony on 26 September 2025 to that NSW Parliamentary Committee, ACA NSW is calling for full transparency of the NSW Regulatory Authority.

With already a large dataset from 5+ years of record breaches and non-compliances, the NSW Regulatory Authority should already be able to create education campaigns and bespoke support for services so as to achieve prevention.

And as a last resort, punitive compliance actions should be used, including the nine (9) existing powers already available to Regulatory Authorities in the National Law.

For any further information/clarification, members can contact the ACA NSW team via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.

PUBLISHED: 3 OCTOBER 2025