Shocking but no longer shocked: Another paedophile

Our sector must be honest. We and many others have all known for a long time that some parts of our system are not working as we aspired or want it to.

Of course we are ... angry, outraged, sickened, fuming, infuriated, disgusted, blood boiling, retching, seething!

We have prided our early childhood education and care to be part of that village to raise all children. But are we operating/accepting with false confidence?

The Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) as the national authority showed the quality ratings of all services across all jurisdictions, in particular:

In ACECQA’s defence, it is the states/territories’ Regulatory Authorities who assess and rate all early childhood education and care services. They also regulate early childhood education and care services by conducting scheduled as well as unannounced spotchecks/compliance visits.

Since January 2012, upon Meeting the National Quality Standards (NQS) or above, every early childhood education and care service is not only encouraged to promote its ratings, there are legal penalties if services do not.

So, how could parents have known the risks, not just with that Victorian paedophile, but also in NSW’s (and Australia’s worst) paedophile (charged with 1,623 offences against 91 children across 11 QLD services and 1 NSW service)?

In fact, virtually all the early childhood education and care services that both predators were employed at were rated Meeting or Exceeding the National Quality Standards. One even worked for a service that was declared by ACECQA as Excellent (ie all seven Quality Ratings were rated Exceeding the National Quality Standards).

While the malicious intents of predators are abhorrent and undermine confidence in our sector, especially for those who entrust us to take care of their precious children, we (including the regulators) must restore the confidence of families with quality and safety measures in ECEC services that are embedded in their daily practice.

This will require all known gaps to be closed, including:

• the weaknesses of Working With Children Checks (until a national working with vulnerable people check is developed);

• resilience testing of providers’ existing practices that protect children; and

• all of our workforce to hold each other to the highest account as they are the ones who have direct visibility on each other in their daily work.

For families, it is about having their children at services where there is stable and supported educators and teachers, with low turnover and strong and effective leadership, led by a present, capable and visible provider.

The ACA National Committee has called for a national register of care workers. Of course, this is a start. This register should not be just early childhood educators and teachers, but also those who work in aged care, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and, where possible, everyone who works with vulnerable people.

But this national register also needs to be able to proactively notify employers with any up-to-date information about their employees. This should include alerts when even the police are investigating individuals that may be of real risk. Equally, employers will need additional legal indemnity/protection from industrial and/or legal action for redirecting or standing aside an employee who is under investigation but not (yet) charged/convicted. After all, the onus should be in favour of protecting children.

In parallel, the NSW Government must:

1. ensure their issuing of services’ Quality Ratings, their assessment and rating process, their compliance regime, their Authorised Officers, their Regulatory Authority and the National Quality Framework are accurate, fit-for-purpose and produce non-subjective results that parents and the public can be consistently relied upon;
   
   

2. extend fair trading laws to allow parents to prosecute the local Regulatory Authority for effectively issuing false and misleading Quality Ratings of services that ultimately could not be relied upon;
   
   

3. introduce new whistleblower protections so as to ensure concerns can be raised without any repercussions or industrial fear (as ACA NSW requested and the Wheeler Report has recommended);
   
   

4. ensure the legal accuracy of the volumninous breaches/non-compliance notices issued by the NSW Regulatory Authority, as well as its utility for regulatory actions to proactively protect children;
   
   

5. use the nine (9) already legislated national laws as well as publicly examine why they have not been consistently used to date;
   
   

6. examine the current zero NSW convictions of Australia's worst paedophile (ie Operation Tenterfield); and
   
   

7. develop and implement effective child safety training for all care workers and ensure TAFE and all other Registered Training Organisations guarantee their graduates’ child safety competencies (eg via the Job Ready aspect of Skills NSW where currently only 50% does not have any rating).

Children from birth to 5 years old cannot be relied upon to speak up. Hence, child safety is the responsibility of every adult. And without real and immediate actions, parents’, the public’s, even fellow early childhood educators’ and teachers’ trust will never be restored.

For any further information/clarification, please contact the ACA NSW team via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.

PUBLISHED: 8 JULY 2025