Albanese government's tougher childcare safety rules don't go far enough
As tens of thousands of pages of regulatory childcare documents continue to pour into NSW parliament exposing systemic failures including abuse, neglect and expired or missing Working With Children Checks, the Albanese government has released a new suite of child safety measures.
Touted as "tougher child safety rules" and backed by every state and territory, the new measures include 24 hour mandatory reporting of abuse, a vape ban and stricter rules on technology use in childcare centres.
While any change is better than none, parents, educators and experts say the reforms are tokenistic, a Band-Aid fix, and ignore the deeper structural failures festering in the childcare system.
To put it into perspective, the reforms steer clear of more substantial issues such as establishing a national childcare commission, as recommended in September 2024 by the Productivity Commission, or conducting an independent review into the National Quality Standards and its oversight body, the Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).
Nor do they address the growing calls for a national Working With Children Check (WWCC) system, despite the arrest and conviction of paedophile childcare worker Ashley Griffith, whose case exposed dangerous gaps in child protection, particularly the fractured and inconsistent nature of WWCC across states and territories.
Critics say these incremental announcements, dropping every few months since the ABC's investigation into the $20 billion childcare sector, are a clear attempt to avoid a royal commission or full parliamentary inquiry and instead offer piecemeal fixes while sidestepping the deeper reckoning many argue the sector urgently needs.
The previous reforms included getting tougher on centres that fail to meet the national quality standards from opening new Child Care Subsidy approved services and taking compliance action against existing providers with "egregious and continued breaches".
The NSW regulatory documents, which are slowly being released following a call for papers by Greens MP Abigail Boyd, reveal widespread issues including deficient documentation, highlighting deeper failures in training, oversight, and accountability across the early childhood workforce.
The documents offer a rare glimpse into what's happening behind closed doors in centres across the country, exposing patterns that go far beyond isolated incidents.
Boyd said she sees nothing in the reforms that would prevent the types of horrific incidents she reads about every day in the regulatory documents.
"Instead we get these piecemeal reforms that just tinker around the edges and don't face, head on, the systemic problems that have been created by allowing big companies to prey on our children for profit."
She said until there is significant systemic reform, there will continue to be neglect and abuse of children and exploitation of workers.
"The kind of reform that will re-establish trust in services and restore the sector to one where children are prioritised and workers are respected."
In the three months since the stories first aired, thousands of parents, insiders and experts have contacted the ABC, painting a disturbing picture of a sector in crisis.
Chey Carter, a former childcare worker and now an industry consultant said if we don't fix the structural issues that drive poor quality and impact child safety, little would change. "If we don't address the foundational issues then we are building compliance on top of dysfunction," she said.
Carter, who previously worked for Affinity Education, a major provider owned by private equity, said the real threats to child safety often come from organisational decisions that prioritise profit, convenience, or optics over care. "We cannot legislate our way out of a culture that silences those who raise concerns," she said.
Affinity has come under increasing scrutiny after 7.30 obtained leaked footage showing a childcare worker at one of its centres repeatedly slapping a baby and laughing. The footage was posted on Snapchat and reported by a concerned parent who saw it.
In a recent workforce survey Carter conducted for NSW educators, 34 per cent of respondents said they had avoided reporting serious child safety concerns due to fear of retaliation. Many described being punished, isolated, or having their hours cut after speaking up.
"I witnessed a staff member physically hurt a child," one respondent said.
Another said: "I provided a written statement and was told by the second-in-charge that she would follow it up… Following this, my working hours were drastically reduced."
And another was quoted saying they reported an incident to the Department of Education and the director started treating her differently after the department came out and investigated. "It was clear the complaint came from me."
"If we don't address the foundational issues then we are building compliance on top of dysfunction," she said.
Carter said supervision was another serious issue raised in the survey.
"Workers told us they are routinely expected to manage unsafe ratios, often left alone with groups of children leaving them unable to safely respond to incidents," she said.
The National Quality Framework Review of Child Safety Arrangements Report highlighted that in 2022-23 inadequate supervision was the second most frequently breached section of the National Law.
"Being alone with children isn't just a supervision issue, it's a serious child protection risk," Carter said.
A common theme in the answers of survey respondents was the chronic staff shortages in the sector.
"It's become normalised for one educator to be left alone with an entire group of children when another staff member needs to step away — even just for a bathroom break," one respondent said.
The brutal reality is Australia's childcare sector is now dominated by for profits, with more than 73 per cent of long day care operated by the private sector, including private equity, listed companies and investment bankers.
It has created unintended consequences as too many centres put profit before care.
Centres cut corners by skimping on food, gaming staff to child ratios by rostering just enough staff to meet minimum legal ratios on paper, even if it compromises supervision, overusing trainees and casuals to keep costs down, and some spend less than $1 a child per day on food.
It has also created so-called childcare deserts, which are areas deemed financially unviable. These are typically lower-income or regional communities where high overheads and lower fee-paying capacity make it unattractive for for-profit providers to set up services. The result is families left with long waitlists, no access to early learning, and in some cases, parents forced to leave the workforce due to a lack of care.
A parent whose child was sexually abused by a predator at childcare, who can't legally reveal her identity, said the mandatory reporting of 24 hours was appropriate and should never have been seven days. But she said it doesn't address the lack of understanding of what should be reported, whether childcare workers should rely on four year olds to disclose their own abuse, employment and visa insecurity.
She said the centre her child was at had a policy in place regarding the use of personal devices and service issued devices. "Having policies does not mean that there is a culture of doing the right thing and consequences for doing the wrong thing," she said.
"All of it is lots of good sounding words, but pointless without appropriate regulations, changes to legislation, funding for regulators, better screening and monitoring of providers and childcare workers, regulation rather than voluntary compliance and proper consequence," she said.
Georgie Dent, the chief executive of The Parenthood, a parent advocacy organisation representing more than 80,000 parents, carers and supporters, said to ensure children's safety and wellbeing there needed to be systemic reform.
"There is no question that monitoring educator behaviour is an important safeguard," she said.
"But we must also confront the underlying reality — that the current system enables business models where profit can be prioritised over children's safety and wellbeing.
"Surveillance alone will not protect children in a system that too often rewards cost-cutting and corner-cutting."
She said safety quality, access and affordability needed to go hand in hand. "Band-aid fixes won't deliver the kind of early learning system that every child and every family in this country needs."
She said the way to fix it was to reform funding.
NSW regulatory documents that the ABC has gained access to in recent months highlight damning evidence the sector is broken.
Last year in a southern Sydney suburb, a compliance direction was issued to a childcare centre after allegations emerged that it failed to meet legal obligations, including accusing two educators of child protection breaches.
The notice said the nominated supervisor and other staff were aware of the allegations but failed to report them to the Office of the Children's Guardian. It said most staff interviewed by the regulator did not know they were legally required to report such allegations. It said one long-term staff member had worked at the centre for 15 years without ever being informed of her child protection responsibilities.
It told the centre it needed to set up processes including "provide evidence that all staff have participated in training around the existence and their obligations under child protection law… reporting via the Department of Communities and Justice and the Office of the Children's Guardian as required." It said failure to comply with the notice was $2200.
At a childcare centre near Tamworth in NSW, a March 2024 investigation examined allegations that an educator engaged in inappropriate physical contact by lying next to a child during sleep time and placing an arm across their body. A second educator saw the incident but failed to recognise the interaction as inappropriate and failed to report the matter, according to the documents.
Until the sector has meaningful reforms, more of these hideous incidents will continue against children who have no voice.
As the National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds says: "child safety should never be compromised for commercial or government administrative reasons. Currently we are taking unacceptable risks with the safety of our youngest citizens."
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