an ncylc e-bulletin

Issue #4: November 2004

POLICY WORK

School letter templates

We have drafted school letter templates which have been uploaded on to the NCYLC website. These letters will enable parents to:
· contest suspensions and/or expulsions;
· highlight bullying problems at school;
· seek intervention where they believe their child has a learning disability.

Click here to access the templates

Or access this page through the NCYLC website (www.ncylc.org.au), then click on Publications (up the top) and select Templates (from the left).

Thanks to Leanne Kohler for preparing the templates!

Submissions

"Show us what you've got!" - Centennial and Moore Park Regulation 2004

In our last e-bulletin we mentioned our submission to the Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust in relation to the proposed Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust Regulation 2004. As a refresher, these regulations contain a number of concerning provisions which, if enacted, would allow park rangers and other "authorised people" in Centennial, Moore and Queens Parks, ES Marks Athletics field and the former Sydney Showground area to:
· Search your bag (without having to form any reasonable suspicion that you've done something wrong)
· Stop you from participating in a protest or any other "public activity"
· Demand your name and address if you are suspected of having done something wrong

Park visitors who don't allow their bag to be searched can be asked to leave the park and potentially banned from returning! Our submission argued that such provisions were unnecessary, would discourage people from using and enjoying the parks and would have a particularly harsh effect on children and young people.

We forwarded our submission to members of parliament in the Sydney area and received positive feedback from Sydney Mayor, Clover Moore, and Federal Member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek and Federal Member for Wentworth, Peter King. We now have information about the Regulation on our Lawstuff website and have asked children and young people in Sydney to comment on how they think this Regulation will effect them.

"Now you behave!" - Youth Shopping Centre Protocol
We have also been working with Randwick Council in Sydney to develop a "youth friendly" shopping centre protocol for the Pacific Square Shopping Centre ("Centre") complex in Maroubra. Over the last few years there has been an increasing trend to develop guidelines to clearly define what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour by children and young people in local shopping centres. We were concerned that some of the provisions in the protocol unnecessarily infringed on the rights of children and young people who visit the Centre. For more information on youth shopping centre protocol see www.yapa.org.au/pubs/shoppingprotocolreport.pdf

Lawstuff Newsflash

Curfew for P-platers
You may have heard that the NSW Government is thinking about changes to laws involving P-platers in order to reduce the death toll for young drivers. The changes include:
· banning P-platers from driving between 10pm to 6am
· stopping P-platers from having more than one passenger in the car
· limiting the size of cars that young people can drive

Moves similar to these have already been implemented in New Zealand and in a number US states.
We have included information about the proposed changes on our Lawstuff website and asked young people to comment on how they think the proposed changes will effect them.

"If I can work, pay taxes and drive a car, why can't I vote?" Lowering the voting age for young people
In time for the impending Federal Election, we included an article by one of our volunteers, Sophie Clarke, on the Lawstuff website. The article encouraged young people to enrol to vote and to have their say on 9 October. The article also questioned why young people who are able to work (and therefore pay taxes) aren't given the opportunity to speak out about how their taxes are spent.

New Lawstuff Content
We have recently added 49 new pages to the Lawstuff website on Drugs to help young people make informed decisions. The information is state and territory specific and details use, possession, cultivation and trafficking. Thanks to Emma Bayley for preparing the content.

If you have't checked out the Lawstuff website lately, have a look by clicking here, it really is fantastic!