Labor senator Kristina Keneally has written to the NSW family and community services minister after a bishop told schools they were not to ask priests for working with children checks and to instead call the diocese.
The Guardian revealed on Wednesday that the bishop of Armidale, Michael Kennedy, wrote to the Catholic Education Office in February to say: “It has been brought to my attention that some schools may be requiring that the priests who are ex-officio members of the School Advisory Council provide their working-with-children check details.”
He wrote that the diocese verified and recorded these checks and schools therefore did not need to ask the priests directly for those details.
Keneally, who is a scholar of theology and a Catholic, said the phrasing of Kennedy’s letter made it sound as though priests were getting frustrated by being asked to show their check.
“And rather than telling priests, ‘hey, it’s your obligation to demonstrate you have a verified check,’ he is criticising the schools,” she said.
“This is the problem in the church, the clerical class just making rules and the rest of us have to follow them. They seem to have learned nothing about working in partnership with teachers and parents.”
In her letter to the NSW family and community services minister Pru Goward, Keneally wrote that it was vital that parents of students attending Catholic schools are assured that their school’s principal can take “all the necessary steps available under law to ensure children are safe, including knowing that Catholic school principals have all the same rights under law as their public school counterparts to require any volunteer, visitor or employee at the school produce a valid working with children check”.
She asked the minister to clarify the obligations of school principals around asking for a valid check.
“Are these standards universally applied across all schools in New South Wales, irrespective of religious affiliation; gender cohort; or whether they are privately or publicly funded?” she asked.
“Does Bishop Kennedy possess the legal authority to direct Catholic school principals not to ask priests directly to provide evidence of their check?”
A spokeswoman for Goward told Guardian Australia that working with children checks were a matter for the Office of the Children’s Guardian.
“The NSW government expects all employers to uphold their responsibilities in line with the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act,” she said.
Guardian Australia has contacted the Office of the Children’s Guardian for comment.
