By Shona Reid, Guardian for Children and Young People
South Australia’s new Children and Young People (Safety and Support) Bill 2025 has passed Parliament, and while there are parts of the legislation that deserve recognition, there’s one omission that troubles me deeply.
The Bill does not make the best interests of the child the paramount consideration in decisions made about them.
At first glance, this might sound like a legal technicality. It’s not.
It goes to the very heart of how we make decisions for and about children who cannot live safely with their families.
These are some of the most vulnerable children and young people in our state. They rely on systems, not families, to guide their future and every decision made about them carries weight.
When the law is silent on whose interests come first, we should all be concerned.
The Bill introduces four guiding principles: safety, best interests, active efforts, and effective intervention.
Each of these matters, but if the legislation doesn’t say clearly which of them must take priority, it leaves too much open to interpretation.
In urgent decisions, safety is prioritised — but in all other areas, the child’s best interests are treated as one of several equally important factors.
This is a departure from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — a treaty Australia ratified more than 30 years ago.
That convention doesn’t just mention best interests — it requires them to be a primary consideration in every action concerning a child.
Across the country, states and territories have translated this into law by making best interests paramount in child protection legislation.
South Australia has now stepped away from that.
What does this mean in practice?
It means that when there are difficult choices to be made — between safety and stability, between cultural connection and placement continuity, between a child’s wishes and system constraints — there is no clear legal direction pointing to what matters most.
It also means that children’s rights risk becoming one voice among many, rather than the foundation on which decisions are built.
For children and young people in out-of-home care, decisions are made about them every day: where they will live, who they can see, whether they can go home, how often they are moved.
Without a clear legal standard that puts their best interests first, it becomes harder to guarantee consistency, fairness, and accountability.
The decision not to make best interests the paramount principle risks taking us back to a time when systems — not children — set the agenda.
We’ve seen before what happens when children are treated as afterthoughts in their own lives: disconnection, instability, and harm that lasts well into adulthood.
That is exactly why the United Nations put Article 3 in — to stop children being sidelined for systems convenience or the loudness of adult interests.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves to be the lone state/territory in Australia that has failed to embrace international guidance and leadership and failed to uphold our nation’s commitment to paramountcy of best interests.
To be clear, there are positive aspects of this Bill. There is some increased emphasis on children’s participation, better support for care leavers, and commitments to cultural support planning.
But we need to be honest about what is missing.
I hope that in time, we can make a commitment to prioritise children’s best interests explicit in our legislation.
In the meantime, how this law is implemented will matter more than ever.
We need a sector that is supported to keep children’s rights and interests at the core of every decision — and a government willing to keep listening.
Because at the end of the day, this system isn’t about us. It’s about them.
To read more of The Guardian’s latest submissions on the CYPSS Bill, head to the submissions page of our website.
