Truancy and the law in Australia: The Queensland example

Truancy is a serious problem in Australian schools. This article examines how the law has been utilised as a strategy to control truancy in one of the Australian states, Queensland. The truancy problem in Queensland has recently attracted national attention in that a controversial federal intervention designed to reduce truancy is presently under trial in that state: the Improving School Enrolment and Attendance through Welfare Reform Measure (SEAM). SEAM authorises the quarantining of welfare payments to parents who fail to send their children to school. Queensland state laws allow for the prosecution of parents who fail to ensure that their children attend school. These state laws are, however, rarely implemented. The article speculates as to why this is the case and asks whether the law – federal or state – has a legitimate role to play in improving school attendance. While the main focus of the article is Queensland, truancy laws in other Australian states and territories are examined in order to explain the extent to which they correlate with or depart from the Queensland approach.