‘Shameful’: national work-with-kids system long overdue
Flaws in working with children checks and childcare staff ratios have been exposed as state and federal leaders concede changes are overdue.
A former royal commissioner has rebuked governments for dragging their feet on creating a national regime for working with children checks.
State and federal ministers have been scrambling to fast-track reforms to Australia’s childcare sector after it was revealed on Tuesday that a Melbourne carer was charged with more than 70 sex offences.
Joshua Dale Brown allegedly abused eight children aged under two at a Point Cook facility in the city’s southwest from April 2022 to January 2023.
The 26-year-old, who had a valid working with children clearance, was not known to police or subject to any complaints before his arrest in May.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse called on the federal government in 2015 to “facilitate a national model” for working with children checks.
Robert Fitzgerald, one of five members of the royal commission, said the recommendation remained unfulfilled.
“My view is that is shameful,” the now-age discrimination commissioner told AAP.
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“Ten years on, that job should have been completed and the fact that it isn’t means there are gaps in our child safeguarding regime.”
Every state and territory maintains separate working with children schemes with different rules and requirements.
Victoria, Queensland and NSW have all committed to reviewing or tightening up their regimes.
Uniform schemes would not completely negate the risk of child sexual abuse but would be an important first step, Fitzgerald argued.
A 2022 Victorian ombudsman report exposed “serious flaws” in the state’s scheme after former Melbourne City Mission worker Alexander Jones was convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 2018.
Jones was investigated for multiple alleged sexual offences in NSW but granted a permit in Victoria because his national police check was clean, as he had not been charged.
It remains the case that people under investigation for serious offences can hold a working with children check in Victoria.
Only criminal charges or a regulatory finding can lead to it being revoked.
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Strengthening working with children checks will also be discussed at a meeting of state and federal attorneys-general in August.
Victoria’s Minister for Children Lizzie Blandthorn said national reform work was “frustratingly slow”.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare described the system as complicated but conceded the reforms have taken “too bloody long”.
Fellow senior frontbencher Clare O’Neil said she didn’t have a good answer for why the royal commission’s recommendations had been left on the shelf.
“A lot of these predators would pass a working with children check,” she said.
The crisis has also cast a spotlight on educator-to-child ratios across the country.
The ratios do not require more than one carer to be around a child or group at any given time, unlike the Netherlands’ “four eyes” principle.
A father whose two children attended the Point Cook childcare centre wants CCTV installed throughout the facility and questioned the lack of staff supervision.
“There should also be two people there at all times,” said Satbir, who didn’t want his surname included.
NSW has flagged a trial of CCTV cameras in centres, while an urgent Victorian review is looking at making the technology mandatory.
Support is available:
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
