Annual child safety statement of compliance 2025

The department is committed to promoting and maintaining a culture that provides for the safety and wellbeing of children, young people and vulnerable people. 

We focus on maintaining a safe, respectful, welcoming and inclusive environment that ensures that children are supported and respected, and their rights, needs and interests met. 

The department is committed to protecting and safeguarding children by:

• creating policies and procedures to protect children
• ensuring our employees are aware of child safety policies and procedures
• ensuring our employees comply with child safety policies and procedures
• creating conditions that reduce the likelihood of harm to children
• undertaking and reviewing child safety related risk assessments
• responding to and managing child safety incidents, allegations and complaints effectively
• complying with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework
• adopting and implementing, where applicable, the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.

As part of our commitment, the department: 

• maintains a Child Safe and Vulnerable People Policy. This details the responsibilities and obligations of all department employees, including contractors and volunteers, to ensure child safe practices are in place when interacting with children, young people and vulnerable people.
• carries out annual child safety risk assessments to evaluate the risk of harm to children and implement strategies to mitigate those risks.
• ensures any employees who interact with children hold a current Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) and/or Working with Children Check (WWCC) and complete mandatory child safety training annually.

The department carries out an annual governance activity to understand the scope of departmental activities that either directly or indirectly involve children. 

In 2025, the department confirmed that the Australian Space Agency (SA) (mainly through the Australian Space Discovery Centre) and Questacon (ACT) either directly or indirectly interact with children. We note that the Australian Space Discovery Centre and Questacon:

• are educational facilities that host children, young people and adults
• participate in external school and school holiday programs
• engage in school and educational institution visits, community events and exhibitions to discuss departmental work. 

The department completes an annual corporate child safety risk assessment review. This incorporates divisional child safety risk assessments from the Australian Space Agency and Questacon. We reviewed and updated all risk assessments in September and October 2025.

The corporate risk assessment determined our overall level of risk with treatment plans in place is Minor. This reflects:

• the department’s lower-risk interactions with children (that is, interactions in controlled environments, for limited periods of time in the presence of adults/guardians)
• the robust risk mitigations in place to ensure the health and safety of children.   

The department continues to develop initiatives to reduce our risk profile and adopt child safety measures in alignment with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework.

The department complies with the 4 requirements under the framework:

1. Undertake risk assessments annually in relation to activities of the entity, to identify the level of responsibility for, and contact with, children, evaluate risks to child safety, and put in place appropriate strategies to manage identified risks.
2. Establish and maintain a system of training and compliance, to make staff aware of, and comply with, the Framework and relevant legislation, including Working with Children Checks (WWCCs)/Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) Checks and mandatory reporting requirements.
3. Adopt and implement the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.
4. Publish an annual statement of compliance with the framework, including an overview of the entity’s child safety risk assessment (conducted under Requirement 1). 

The department is committed to ongoing improvements to enhance and protect child safety through the implementation of the framework. Over the last 12 months, the department has carried out a range of improvements including, but not limited to:

• engaging in the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework Community of Practice
• introducing an annual governance activity to determine the scope of departmental activities that either directly or indirectly involve children
• amending our online work health and safety (WHS) incident reporting system to make it easier to report and manage incidents involving children and developed associated guidance. 

Our key focus area for the next 12 months is to enhance our child safety training capability. This will include incorporating the new Commonwealth Child Safety Framework eLearning modules when released.