A blueprint for reform — Key actions What is needed to ensure children’s rights in Australia are fully protected? • The Australian Government should fully incorporate into Australian law its human rights obligations to children, by bringing its domestic laws and practice into conformity with the principles and provisions of the CRC, including by ensuring that effective remedies are available. • The Australian Government should introduce child rights and wellbeing impact assessments on legislative changes that affect children’s rights. • The Australian Government should review the parliamentary human rights scrutiny of bills process to ensure it is properly resourced and ensures avenues for public input. • The Australian Government should ensure training about human rights, and children’s rights specifically, for all public servants and parliamentarians. • The Australian Government should commit to establishing a formal Ministerial Council that has primary carriage for advancing the National Plan for Child Wellbeing as well as appointing a senior Minister with responsibility for children’s issues. • The Australian Government should ratify the Optional Protocol to the CRC on a Communications Protocol (the third Optional Protocol). • Australian Governments, in conjunction with the Office of the National Data Commissioner, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, should develop a national children’s data framework to ensure appropriate data collection that supports monitoring and policy making on children’s rights issues. This should: o address the key data gaps relating to children’s rights and wellbeing o be consistent with the requirements set out by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its Guidelines on the inclusion of statistical information and data in periodic reports o enable disaggregation by developmental phases and age groupings, and priority population groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children 29