Children’s Guardian cover-up. Changing the law to justify sacking
· Michael West
The State Government is trying to stop MWM from reporting on the sacking of the NSW Children’s Guardian, despite the obvious public interest in the case. Rex Patrick reports.
There’s a politically explosive child protection case running in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT). The case involves a woman we can only refer to as GNN for legal reasons, and her court case against the Department of Education. Multiple government lawyers have become involved, and two commercial barristers, as GNN has got closer to the truth.
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MWM has been following GNN’s case as it relates closely to MWM’s investigation into the sacking of the NSW Children’s Guardian (‘Guardian’). This little-known scandal began when the NSW Minister for Families and Communities, Kate Washington, fooled the NSW Parliament into changing legislation to allow the minister to sack the Guardian.
This allowed Washington to sack the Guardian after he answered questions honestly at Budget Estimates, revealing uncomfortable truths about his budget.
On Friday, the NSW Government, which knew MWM was investigating the sacking, instructed the NSW Crown Solicitor to muzzle us.
False abuse accusations
GNN, on a false allegation, was declared a ‘person causing harm’ in 2015. This stripped her of the ability to work with children and ultimately resulted in a 2024 NSW Department of Education prohibition order, forcing her to offload a childcare facility she owned.
The allegation was later reinvestigated and found to be unsubstantiated, with the Minister for Communities and Justice issuing an apology to GNN. But the damage was already done – GNN’s life had been left in ruins.
Despite the ministerial apology, the prohibition was never cancelled, preventing her from operating a childcare facility. That’s why GNN is in NCAT, fighting to overturn the prohibition.
As part of the fight, GNN subpoenaed documents from the new Guardian to show that the Government knew she wasn’t a risk to children. The Guardian resisted the subpoena but lost.
GNN collected the documents from the NCAT registry only minutes before the Guardian appealed the Tribunal’s subpoena decision. Because GNN already has the documents in her possession, the Guardian then desperately tried to get the NCAT Appeals Panel to issue confidentiality orders over the documents. The NCAT Appeals Panel refused.
Even without the confidentiality order, GNN can only use the documents for the proceedings. She cannot go public with them to use them to restore her reputation.
Dirty little secrets
The problem for the NSW Government is that MWM was present in open NCAT proceedings when GNN read from the documents. This information is already public
She revealed the documents stated:
“[GNN] is not a risk to children” and “It is in the public interest that [GNN] is issued with a Working with Children Check clearance. [The Guardian] is satisfied that [GNN] does not pose any risk that any reasonable person would allow [GNN] to be around their child unsupervised.”
The documents are also critical of the Department of Education:
There was a lack of investigation by the Department of Education.
They knew GNN was not a risk to children but had refused to lift the prohibition. But that’s not all, the documents also tied into the political scandal.
On Friday, the Government asked GNN to silence MWM, or they would seek confidentiality orders.
Crown Solicitor’s Email
For MWM, the story needs to be told, and
the only way to protect the right to publish is to publish.
A brutally honest Guardian
GNN’s story feeds directly into the sacking of Steve Kinmond, the previous Guardian.
In 2019, the NSW Government, responding to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, set up the Guardian’s Office to “protect and promote the safety, welfare and wellbeing of children and to protect children from child abuse and exploitation”. The Act made it clear that the Guardian was “not subject to the control or direction of the Minister” and could only be removed from office “upon the address of both Houses of Parliament”.
In 2023, Kinmond was appointed NSW Children’s Guardian. He hadn’t applied but was invited to take up the role as he was so well respected. The Guardian’s job is a challenging one.
The Auditor-General recently found the child protection system in NSW was ‘inefficient, ineffective, and unsustainable.’
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In response to questioning by Greens Councillor Sue Higginson at Senate Estimates on 3 September 2024, Kinmond revealed that he had been asked by the Government to consider ways to increase revenue and proposed reasonable increases in fees for Working with Children’s Checks (WWCC) and NDIS Worker Checks. The Government had moved forward with his proposal, but directed the money to go elsewhere, leaving the Office of the Children’s Guardian in a “difficult position”.
Higgenson asked whether Kinmond had made his views known to the government, to which he responded:
“I’m interested in having a productive relationship with government and with Parliament, but a productive relationship includes putting one’s cards on the table and so we’ve made it clear in our discussions with government that we’re keen to work with them so that we don’t end up having a regulatory system that then becomes part of the problem”
Those words may have sealed his fate.
Constructive dismissal
In March 2025, Minister Washington commissioned a special ministerial inquiry into the Workplace Culture of the Office of the Children’s Guardian. She appointed Kate Eastmond SC to conduct the inquiry.
Then, in May 2025, Minister Washington introduced a Bill into the NSW Parliament that sought to deal with the recommendations of a 2024 statutory review of the Children’s Guardian Act. Whilst the review had recommended changes in relation to the removal of the Guardian, it did not suggest that the authority for removal be shifted away from the Governor, “upon the address of both Houses of Parliament”.
But the Bill did exactly that; it removed the need for a resolution of Parliament and stated “The Governor may, at any time, remove the Children’s Guardian from office …”, of course, on the advice of an upset minister. The Minister has removed a critical limb in the Guardians’ independence,
the minister can now sack whoever fills the role if they’re was unhappy with that person.
Washington didn’t explain this change in her second reading speech to the Parliament. and the Bill passed the NSW Parliament on 6 August 2025.
Four days later, Eastman’s special ministerial inquiry report was handed to the Minister. It was a wide-ranging report, but the sting in the report for Kinmond was that he was found to have failed to maintain proper and appropriate boundaries with a person who had requested the Guardian’s office issue her with a Working With Children’s Check (WWCC).
Kinmond had engaged with the person. Eastmond found that he’d met with her, had made 90 calls to her and had exchanged 357 text messages.
However, what was only later revealed when the Parliament forced Kinmond’s response to Eastman’s report to be tabled, most of those communications were not related to her WWCC request, but rather to other reports she was making about children at risk.
In one instance, the person reported an issue of concern in relation to a child, a child who later sadly died.
Because Kinmond was in communication with the person, he stayed clear of the issuing of the person’s WWCC. However, when his WWCC director refused to grant the person with a WWCW, Kinmond intervened on the basis that
he knew the NSW Ombudsman had cleared the person of the bogus allegation of harm to children.
Still not wanting to be involved in any actual decision-making, Kinmond instructed a senior executive to re-examine the matter.
Nonetheless, Eastmond considered the communication with the person constituted an undeclared conflict of interest, and Minister Washington now had everything she needed to sack the Children’s Guardian and the excuse to do it.
In September, Kinmond was removed from office.
We now know that the person that Kinmond was engaging with was GNN, who had been seeking a WWCC, and Kinmond had intervened in a sensible way to ensure a past wrong was righted.
Kinmond forced a review by a senior executive, and the document that the Guardian was seeking to have withheld was that senior executive’s ultimate finding that GNN was not a risk to children”.
Muzzle manoeuvring
On 14 May, I advised the Government that MWM was going to run a story. Last Friday (May 29), the Government sought undertakings we would not, and in the event that we persisted, they intended to ask NCAT to muzzle us with a formal confidentiality order.
MWM has published this story in the public interest, and has done so with haste, in order to avoid the remote possibility of a muzzling order. We gave the Government 24 hours’ notice of publication and invited them to seek an injunction from the NSW Supreme Court.
It seems they did not want the publicity that such a Court case would attract.
MWM also invited comment from the Minister’s office and from the new Children’s Guardian, without response at the time of publication.
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