Kidsafe issues safety warning over flood of ‘dangerous’ toys coming into WA from sites such as Temu

An influx of potentially dangerous toys and furniture coming into Australia via e-commerce giants such as Temu has emerged as a growing source of unintended injuries in WA children. Leading child safety and injury prevention group Kidsafe WA is warning parents not to assume that products purchased from overseas meet Australian safety standards. It comes as new data reveals almost half of the unintended injuries seen at the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department involve an “injury factor”, meaning a product or structure contributed to the accident. The most common cause, over the five years to June 2024, involved building components, such as doors, walls and windows, followed by wheeled equipment (such as scooters and bikes), furniture, sports equipment and playground equipment. The data found an average of 23 WA children die from unintended injury per year, while another 8000 are hospitalised at PCH. Kidsafe WA chief executive Scott Phillips said recent trends in injury presentations included button batteries, small magnets, toppling furniture, laundry and dishwashing pods, expanding polymer balls, automatic baby feeders, vapes and e-rideables. This had been exacerbated by potentially harmful products entering the Australian market from overseas via e-commerce giants. “The global marketplace is making a lot of products readily available to parents,” Mr Phillips said. “The biggest change I’ve seen, is how easy it is for people to get products to them that could be dangerous. “Our border control does the best job they can but they can’t check everything that comes in, and parents quite often when they buy something think that somebody has checked it along the line, and that may not be correct. “We might have child-care restraints that say they’re to Australian standards, but they’re not — or nursery furniture — and recently we’ve had small powerful magnets in games or educational tools that have come in. “We see this fun game that might pop up on social media feeds, and people can get it quickly . . . if you swallow a magnet and follow it up a bit later (with another magnet) they come together and can shut down the intestinal system, so we have to be really careful with those.” Mr Phillips said a number of the larger platforms were working closely with Kidsafe and government regulators to educate suppliers about adhering to Australian standards. But Chinese giant Temu and fellow third-party marketplace Shein have not signed on to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s voluntary product safety pledge, which seeks to protect Australian consumers by committing signatories to a range of safety measures and responsibilities. “Things come on the market so quickly, it’s really hard to quickly push back,” Mr Phillips said. “The problem that happens is a lot of these platform also have marketplaces, so they’re providing a platform for people to sell things through, and even if one of those platforms decides to stop that product being sold, it reemerges under a different name the next day,” he said. “It’s a little bit of whack-a-mole sometimes, for even the platforms.” Marketing and packaging of products was also problematic, Mr Phillips said, with many toys designed to look like food. He gave the example of polymer balls, which expand in water, and which were being mistaken for lollies. “When you buy them, the packet looks like a packet of Nerds (lollies) — they look exactly the same,” he said. “For a child, we have a lot of problems with people packaging things that make them look like food, and that can be with retailers in WA also.” When The West Australian contacted Temu about an example of the polymer expanding balls on its website, the product was later removed from sale. Mr Phillips said the five-year injury data showed rates were stable, but more federal investment, and a cohesive nationwide child-injury prevention strategy, was needed to get the numbers down. “Twenty three children a year (dying) is still a classroom full of children, just in WA,” he said. Poisoning, nursery furniture, burns, swimming pools and quad bikes and scooters and skateboards continued to account for a high number of accidents. He warned Consumer Protection inspectors would be out in force ahead of Halloween, targeting retailers selling highly flammable costumes. In July, the European Union accused Temu of breaking its digital rules by not assessing the risk of its products, and not doing enough to protect consumers from dangerous and illegal products. It pointed to a mystery shopping exercise that found consumers were “very likely to find non-compliant products among the offer, such as baby toys and small electronics”. And when consumer advocacy group CHOICE tested 15 battery-operated children’s toys purchased from Temu in October 2024, all failed to meet Australian safety standards for button battery product. Temu removed the items from its website in response. A Temu spokesperson said consumer safety was a top priority for the platform, and revealed the company was in discussions with the ACCC about becoming a signatory to the pledge. “As a third-party e-commerce platform, we have a system of seller vetting, proactive monitoring, and responsive takedowns to prevent, detect and remove unsafe products,” he said. “We work closely with globally recognized testing and certification organizations — including TÜV SÜD, Eurofins, SGS, and Bureau Veritas — to help ensure that the products offered by third-party sellers meet safety and quality standards.” A spokeswoman from the ACCC confirmed to The West Australian Temu had approached the commission about the pledge. “We have sought, and are assessing further information on their approach to ensuring products supplied through their platform to Australian consumers are safe,” she said. “The ACCC also engages with other online marketplaces who are not current pledge signatories, like Temu and Shein, to encourage them to take active steps to promote product safety on their platforms address product safety risks promptly, and implement effective measures to protect consumers from unsafe products.” The ACCC is expected to discuss options to improve product safety outcomes with current and prospective signatories later this year.