Have your service's staff been summoned multiple times a year to serve on a NSW jury? The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW has noticed that this appears to occur more than it should within the NSW early childhood education and care sector.
Now that the NSW Coalition Government has been re-elected since 23 March 2019, ACA NSW will be re-engaging with the re-appointed NSW Attorney-General (the Hon Mark Speakman MP) and the NSW Department of Justice with a view of re-examing and fixing the current government process of summoning too often educators, teachers and other services' staff members. And given the labour shortages across the sector, this poses problems for service providers' abilities to ensure staffing compliance with the National Law and National Regulations.
ACA NSW already provides its members with its Jury Duty kit and customised supporting letter process so as to help staff be excused from jury duty. As best as we can tell, about 90% of such summoned staff have been excused. But there remains no guarantee.
To provide the NSW Attorney-General and the NSW Department of Justice with evidence of how common this problem is, a survey (see below) is being conducted. Services' assistance would be greatly appreciated.