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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.
Reforms don't go far enough
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.
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Private sector dominates childcare
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.
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