Thousands of WA families flock to the Royal Show every September for a large selection of family-friendly entertainment presented by the Royal Agricultural Society of WA. However in 2024, the ABC exposed an incident where a convicted child sex offender was allowed to work among children at the Royal Show.

As the offender was employed as a commercial exhibitor, according to the RASWA’s policies he was not obligated to provide a Working with Children Card.

How have the RASWA changed their policies to prioritise child safety ahead of the 2026 Show?

RASWA spokesperson Aimee Ko reinforced the RASWA’s commitment to enforcing the Show’s Working With Children screening processes for Royal Show employees this year, saying: “Convicted child sex offenders are banned from attending, working or volunteering at the Perth Royal Show.”

She said: “While the Royal Agricultural Society of WA has previously exceeded minimum compliance requirements for WWC, last year we worked with WA Police and the Working with Children unit, to further strengthen our approach.”

Despite the RASWA’s claims of exceeding minimum WWC compliance standards, a convicted child sex offender was still able to work with children at the 2024 Royal Show. This suggests this problem may lie not with individual organisation’s screening processes, but with a structural flaw in WA’s WWC Check laws themselves.

This discussion coincided with a recent amendment to WA’s WWC Check laws, passed by the WA Parliament and ratified on August 19, 2026. The Working with Children (Screening) Amendment Bill 2025 aimed to “strengthen protections for children and young people.”

Now an Act of Parliament, it allows the shared recognition of failed WWC screening application throughout all Australian states and territories. An individual whose WWC Check has been denied or revoked in one state or territory cannot obtain or keep a WWC Check Card in any other Australian state or territory.

WA Minister for Child Protection Jessica Stojkovski said the reform will “contribute to national consistency in dealing with potentially harmful people and so reduce their ability to gain access to children.”

Curtin University Professor of Mental Health David Lawrence, who was involved in the 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study, supports the WA government’s action to standardise approaches to WWC screenings.

“I think that it is a relatively modest legislative change that will require little resources to implement and does demonstrate the government’s commitment to a consistent national approach to screening for working with children checks,” he said.

This amendment strengthens the sharing of information regarding known child sex offenders across jurisdictions but does not extend WWC requirements to commercial exhibitors or other non-volunteer roles at large events like the Royal Show.

However, Professor Lawrence said the ACMS team was hopeful that the Australian Government would commit to funding frequent surveys to monitor the effect of social, legislative and policy changes in reducing the amount of child maltreatment across Australia.