The Australian Government has recently affirmed its commitment to the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse by convening a new advisory group to advise on the design, implementation and evaluation of measures under that strategy. Australian businesses – even those who may not directly have interactions with children – should be aware of the implications of the National Action Plan, including how it may affect their operations.
The National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030
The National Strategy was a key recommendation from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and seeks to raise awareness of, and support survivors of, child sexual abuse and enhance national protections to harmful sexual behaviours. The National Strategy is separated into three National Action Plans governing 2021-2024, 2025-2027 and 2028-2030 respectively. The first National Action Plan, which is currently in place, has five key themes:
- Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures.
- Supporting and empowering victims and survivors.
- Enhancing national approaches to children with harmful sexual behaviours.
- Offender prevention and intervention.
- Improving the evidence base.
In turn, future action plans will expand on these themes in the hope to shape a national culture that better prioritises children's wellbeing.
The Albanese Government recently re-committed to continuing the National Strategy and established a 20-person advisory group to advise on the design, implementation and evaluation of measures under the National Strategy, signalling progress in this.
The implications of implementing the National Strategy on businesses
The First Plan notes that the corporate sector can play an important role in delivering support services and promoting child safe cultures in the community.
At present, the Australian Government has invested $307.5 million to support the implementation of the National Strategy. There are some obvious sectors that the National Strategy will directly impact – particularly those that deal with children – including schools, sporting organisations, hospitals, disability support services and community health services. Measures that will particularly impact those sectors include the following:
Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures
Setting up an ongoing national annual reporting framework for non-government organisations to report on their progress to create and maintain child safe cultures
Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures
Developing national standards for responding to, supporting and protecting children with harmful sexual behaviours
Enhancing national approaches to children with harmful sexual behaviours
Developing an evaluation framework on the implementation and effectiveness of the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
Improving the evidence base
In addition to the above sectors, there are other sectors that may not have as direct a connection with children, but still have a role to play in relation to child safety generally, including digital industries. Measures that will particularly impact those sectors include the following:
Delivering an annual digital industry summit to create new solutions for online harms
Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures
Driving public awareness of the important role of the digital industry in combatting online harms
Awareness raising, education and building child safe cultures
And we are seeing greater regulatory intervention in the digital space – for example, Australia's eSafety Commissioner has been granted new powers to help detect and remove child sexual abuse material. eSafety can issue, and has issued, legal notices requiring providers of social media services, messaging services, gaming services, file-sharing services and other apps and certain other sites accessible from Australia to show how they are meeting the new Basic Online Safety Expectations. In turn, these businesses must now take proactive steps to prioritise the safety of their platform as it pertains to child usage and potential for abuse.