Hockey Unveils Safety Standard for Children's Nightwear

The Minister for Financial Services & Regulation, Joe Hockey, today announced the introduction of new safety standards for children’s nightwear.

"Our children have a right to safety and these new standards will ensure that children’s nightwear garments conform to design and fabric specifications to reduce their flammability, and the risk of fire injury to children," the Minister said.

"The standards also require children’s nightwear to have labels to alert consumers to the fire risk".

The new standards result from a review of the current mandatory standards for children’s nightwear.

The review, done by the Department of the Treasury, concluded that an updated mandatory standard under the Trade Practices Act 1974 is needed to reduce the risk of fire injury to children.

The new mandatory standards reference the latest Australian/New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 1249:1999, Children’s nightwear and limited daywear having reduced fire hazard, which was published on 5 April 1999. This standard was developed in consultation with industry, consumer groups and government consumer agencies.

"The new standard will overcome a number of definitional issues associated with the old standards and help compliance by industry and enforcement by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. As a result a limited number of daywear items will now be covered by the standard, for example some all-in-ones in sizes 00 to 2 and boxer shorts of loose style commonly used as nightwear.

"The standard also simplifies labeling options. Nightwear will either be labeled 'LOW FIRE DANGER' or 'WARNING HIGH FIRE DANGER KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE'. The latter label is intended to alert consumers to a garment’s higher flammability.

"Paper patterns for children’s nightwear must also be labeled under the standard."