Queensland moves to centralise child safeguarding under new Protection Commission

Queensland has introduced legislation to establish a central safeguarding authority responsible for the Reportable Conduct Scheme, Blue Card system and disability worker screening, with stronger information-sharing powers and increased penalties for organisations that fail to meet key reporting obligations.

The Queensland Government has introduced the Queensland Protection Commission Bill 2026, proposing a major restructure of the state’s systems for protecting children and vulnerable people.

If passed, the Bill will establish the Queensland Protection Commission from 1 February 2027 as the state’s first centralised child and vulnerable person safeguarding authority.

The Commission would bring together oversight of the:

• Reportable Conduct Scheme;
• Working with Children Check Scheme, commonly known as the Blue Card system; and
• Disability Worker Screening Scheme, commonly known as the Yellow Card system.

The reforms are designed to reduce information silos between safeguarding functions and strengthen the way risks relating to workers are identified, assessed and shared across agencies.

The proposed structure has particular significance for early childhood education and care (ECEC) providers, which have been subject to Queensland’s Reportable Conduct Scheme since 1 July 2026.

Under the Child Safe Organisations Act 2024, approved providers are classified as reporting entities and must have systems for preventing, identifying, reporting, investigating and responding to reportable conduct involving workers.

The Bill would allow information obtained through the Reportable Conduct Scheme—including allegations, interim findings and final findings—to be used by the Queensland Protection Commissioner when performing Blue Card functions.

Information obtained through working with children and disability worker screening processes could also be used across the Commission’s safeguarding functions where it is relevant to assessing whether a person poses a risk.

This integration is intended to address situations in which information may be held by one part of the safeguarding system but is not readily visible to another.

The Queensland Government has also announced plans for an Intelligence Hub within the Commission to support the proactive identification of risks to children.

The Bill proposes stronger penalties for several offences involving the Reportable Conduct and Blue Card systems.

For heads of reporting entities, the maximum penalty for failing to notify the regulator of a reportable allegation or reportable conviction relating to a worker would increase from 100 to 150 penalty units.

The same increase would apply where the head of a reporting entity fails to provide the required report about an investigation.

Other proposed changes would increase penalties for:

• knowingly providing false or misleading information or documents;
• failing to comply with requests for information made for audit or compliance purposes; and
• failing to disclose reportable conduct allegations or relevant convictions to the regulator.

Providing official false or misleading information under the Child Safe Organisations Act could attract a maximum penalty of 200 penalty units or two years’ imprisonment.

These changes do not create the Reportable Conduct Scheme obligations for ECEC providers, they are already in effect, but they would increase the consequences of failing to meet them.

For approved providers and organisational leaders, the proposed reforms reinforce the importance of having clear and tested systems for responding to allegations involving educators, employees, contractors, volunteers and other workers.

Providers should be able to demonstrate that they have:

• clearly identified the head of the reporting entity;
• procedures for escalating concerns and allegations immediately;
• systems for notifying the regulator within required timeframes;
• appropriately trained people responsible for conducting investigations;
• processes for managing conflicts of interest and procedural fairness;
• secure and accurate recordkeeping arrangements; and
• clear links between reportable conduct, child protection, Blue Card, regulatory and police reporting obligations.

The creation of a central Commission is also likely to increase the visibility of information across safeguarding systems. An allegation received through the Reportable Conduct Scheme may therefore have implications for a worker’s Blue Card status, even before an investigation reaches its final conclusion, where the information is considered relevant to assessing risk.

The legislation forms part of the Government’s response to the Child Death Review Board’s landmark In Plain Sight report.

The report examined systemic responses to child sexual abuse across the ECEC, police and Blue Card systems, using the offending of Ashley Paul Griffith as a case study.

It identified weaknesses in information sharing, recordkeeping, organisational responses and the escalation of concerns, highlighting how risks could remain visible to individual organisations or agencies without being connected across the broader safeguarding system.

Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Integrity Deb Frecklington said the reforms were intended to place “stronger safeguards around Queensland’s children and vulnerable people” and restore confidence in the systems responsible for protecting them.

The Bill also supports Queensland’s participation in the national continuous checking capability pilot and introduces nationally consistent disqualifying and serious offences under the national Working with Children Check Agreement.

The Queensland Protection Commission Bill has been introduced into Parliament but is not yet law.

If passed, most provisions are expected to commence on 1 February 2027. Existing Reportable Conduct Scheme requirements continue to apply in the meantime, with the Queensland Family and Child Commission remaining responsible for administering the scheme during the transition.

For ECEC providers, the message is clear: safeguarding information will increasingly be connected across regulatory and screening systems, and organisations must be able to demonstrate that concerns are documented, escalated, investigated and reported, not simply managed internally.

Read the full media release here.