But however curious are the laws in the land of chocolates and cuckoo clocks, they're rather vanilla by comparison with other places. Riddle me this, how many people in the UK have had to pack their toothbrush upon being found guilty of handling salmon in "suspicious circumstances" – yep, that's a law.

Leapfrog the Atlantic and things get more absurd. It's illegal in Alaska to stare at a moose from a moving aircraft. Further down south, things take a nasty turn. It's a man's right in South Carolina to beat his wife, provided such fury is dispensed on the courthouse steps on a Sunday before noon. Arkansas is enlightened by comparison – there you can only legally beat your significant other once a month.

Forget about the law being an ass; some laws are plain nonsense, while others have more holes than a wedge of Jarlsberg. This is not, however, a phenomenon confined to jurisdictions lying north of the equator.

In 2012 the NSW Parliament passed the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act. The stated purpose of which is to "protect children" by preventing various nefarious types from engaging in "child-related" work. Which is utterly appropriate: unbending vigilance is a standard that should be expected with such issues. But draw your own conclusion as to whether NSW's new laws come close to that threshold.

Child-related work by definition includes paid or volunteer work involving physical or face-to-face contact with people aged under 18. In the sporting context, this captures myriad duties performed for sporting clubs and organisations. Coaching swimming's up-and-coming elite; managing an under 6s netball side; teaching ballet.

For sport, the scheme begins next month, although I'm told the NSW Office of the Children's Guardian is encouraging sports to phase in to the new requirements over months or longer, lest the government's systems buckle under the stress caused by people actually trying to comply with the law.

The new laws create a permit system. People wanting to take on front-line positions imperative to running children's sport must apply for, and obtain, a "Working with Children Check". For people with no adverse history, the Children's Guardian will generate a unique number, which the person must then provide to every sporting organisation with which they are volunteering. A person need only apply for this permit once every five years. The process is cost-free for volunteers, and a permit is completely portable between sporting organisations.

On application, the Children's Guardian must undertake a search of the national criminal databases and other registers. The scheme is binary: clearances only issue to those who do not fail the tests prescribed in the law. Clearances must be refused for applicants with convictions for crimes of a serious violent, indecent or sexual nature, although other types of conduct trigger further risk assessments that must be carried out before a final determination is made.

At this point you probably are thinking the government has introduced an appropriate and impervious mechanism, thatsafeguards the literally hundreds of thousands of children involved in sport in NSW. Perhaps you also have reached the conclusion that, whatever the inconvenience that might be experienced by having to obtain a government permit in order to coach a football team of seven-year-olds, the hassle is an inconsequential bother when balanced against the greater good. Yep, you'd be forgiven for thinking all of that, except that the devil's well smothered.

Last year the government made regulations under the new legislation. As regulations are designed to do, these provided further detail and context to the organisation, extent and operation of the WCC scheme. Unfortunately the regulations water down the laws to such an extent that they stand at risk of having about as much purpose as the laws in Iowa, which make it a crime for a moustachioed gentleman to have the temerity to kiss a woman in the gaze of the public.

Relevantly, the regulations decree that if a child plays in a sports team, and if people such as the child's parents, stepparents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces or nephews (among others) volunteer to coach, train or have any other role with that team, they are legally exempt from having to satisfy any requirement of obtaining a clearance to work with children.

And you might say, "Fair enough." But for anybody who has had a little boy or girl start out in team sport, it is hardly common that the coaches, managers and trainers are not parents or some other relative of a kid in the side. Which in turn means the vast majority of volunteers will be exempt from any legal requirement to establish their bona fides to the clubs they work for.

Properly considered, this is a problem. In a paper published in 2000 by the US Department of Justice, which analyses 120,000 cases of child sexual assault committed in the 1990s, the authors found that the perpetrator of such revolting criminal acts was a family member of the victim in 44 per cent of cases where the victim was aged between six and 11. This only reduces to 24 per cent where the victim was aged between 12 and 17.

Draw your own conclusions, but in order to be effective, any regulatory scheme needs to cater for the lowest common denominator. Conversely, the new laws in NSW seem monstrously weak.

As to what organisations can do to act diligently where the law lacks bite, the path forward is ill-defined. My own inquiries indicate the Children's Guardian is not bothered if clubs and governing bodies create rules demanding clearances even when the law exempts a parent or some other person. But people who have attended Children's Guardian presentations given to sporting bodies tell me that warnings have been given about possible legal challenges if clubs seek to force exempted people to provide clearances the law says they don't need.

Given the stated purpose of the law is to "protect children", what's certain is that the new scheme is a shambolic, farcical state of affairs. One that can only be fixed by the government closing the chasm between what is appropriate and what is the law.

Darren Kane is a Sydney sports lawyer.

Twitter @sportslawyer7